By J.D. Harlock
In 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie was released, fulfilling the childhood fantasy of the generations that have idolized the iconic platforming duo. In an unprecedented yet refreshing role reversal for the silver screen, this iteration had Mario team up with Princess Peach to rescue Luigi from Bowser after being warped to the Mushroom Kingdom via a sewer pipe. Along the way, Mario interacts with fan-favourite characters from throughout the series, as the creators capitalize on every opportunity to sneak obscure references to the lore wherever possible, satisfying casuals and die-hards alike with their commitment to truly honouring the source material. A culmination of all that was Super Mario, this animated adaptation was the perfect moment for us to celebrate the franchise. And yet, the discourse surrounding it focused on comparing it to the first American adaptation, Super Mario Bros., from thirty years earlier. Taking the wildest liberties, this iteration followed plumbers Mario and Luigi as they traversed a cyberpunk city in an alternate dimension, where dinosaurs have evolved into humanoid creatures, to rescue Princess Daisy from King Koopa, who has kidnapped her to merge his decaying world with Earth. Of course, comparisons to other adaptations are standard in fandom debates, but the discussion ended up hijacking the entire conversation. For some reason, many thought the 2023 attempt was superior simply because it was more “faithful” to the source material of an 8-bit pixel man in overalls stomping anthropomorphic turtles. Defenders of the 1993 cult classic explained that the lore hadn’t been as fleshed out back then, and that the few elements included were enough to be faithful to the nascent franchise. Now, I can see where they were coming from. After all, the film follows two plumbers from Brooklyn called Mario and Luigi, who are transported to a parallel world to rescue a princess from the clutches of King Koopa. Outside of that, there are fun nods to the lore that admittedly tend to be surface-level, such as the presence of the Bob-omb or the supporting cast sharing some of the traits of the characters they’re named after. Be that as it may, I disagree with their assessment. It’s not a faithful adaptation of Super Mario Bros. Regardless, the 1993 adaptation is an admirable effort that’s a fun romp, and I’d be remiss if I lived in a world where it was never made, which raises an interesting question:
Does faithfulness to the source material always lead to a superior adaptation?
No, not particularly. Case in point, the 2023 adaptation isn’t the first “faithful” adaptation. Unbeknownst to most, one was already produced a few years prior to the 1993 adaptation in the form of 1986’s “Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach!”, which had convenience store owners Mario and Luigi sucked into their Famicom to traverse the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Peach from King Koopa. A collaboration between Grouper Productions with Nintendo to promote Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and Nagatanien’s branded foods, it received a limited theatrical run by VAP Video in Japan, becoming so rare that, for decades, it was considered to be lost until a copy was found and then subsequently uploaded to YouTube in 2007, in turn, rescuing the film from relative obscurity. Hot on the heels of the Super Mario Bros., which was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) “killer app” that kickstarted the craze, The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! is far more faithful than the 2023 adaptation to the source material without needing to shoehorn elements from prequels, sequels, or the spin-offs. Nevertheless, it’s by far the worst of the cinematic excursions Mario and Luigi have been on, with the truncated running time somehow feeling longer than that of the following adaptations combined. If anything, The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! shows how unfeasible it is to faithfully adapt some of the video games from that era, where gameplay was at the forefront and storytelling was an afterthought. It feels aimless, as if a random plot generator was desperately grasping at bizarro humour with an ending that comes out of nowhere, leaving you as frustratedly unsatisfied as its hero, who longs for something more. Obviously, the animators had very little to go on, even less than those who attempted the 1993 adaptation, so their attempts to incorporate elements of the NES title, which were already bizarre, turned it from the whimsical fairytale adventure that Nintendo imagined to an acid trip that looks and sound like Super Marios Bros. without any of the charm.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the 1986 or the 2023 adaptations. I did, despite their issues. I’m also not saying the 1993 one is perfect. It’s not. And it wouldn’t be even if the production hadn’t turned into a living nightmare, as the cast and crew have repeatedly attested. Having read a draft of the Parker & Jennewein script for it that was tossed out, which was a whimsical fairytale fantasy in the Mushroom Kingdom that had the platforming duo rescue Princess Daisy in a family-friendly adventure inspired by the Wizard of Oz, I concede it could have been a better film—even with Mario taking a level in jerkass and Luigi acting a fool, being noticeable problems that needed to be addressed in revisions. Not because it was more faithful—we found out that wasn’t true when the same team had scripted faithful adaptations of comic strips (Richie Rich) and cartoons (The Flintstones) to the ire of fans—but because it had a better script. I simply choose to take each attempt on its merits.
Mind you, I’m not stating that adaptations can’t or shouldn’t strive to be faithful to the source material. What I’m concerned with is us treating faithfulness as a barometer of quality when adaptation like The Da Vinci Code (2006), Watchmen (2009), or The Simpsons (2007) were faithful to a fault to their source material, translating both the flaws as well as the strengths of the source material or adaptations like The Goldfinch (2019), Fantastic Four (2005), or Entourage (2015) were faithful to their source material, but sucked anyways. At a time when Hollywood seemed like it was only willing to adapt a property once, I can understand the frustrations fans felt. Nowadays, it’s clear that demand for a faithful adaptation compels the industry to deliver just that…eventually. Finally, we’re receiving the faithful adaptations we’ve always wanted, but I think we should also have different interpretations of popular source material, whether faithful or not, as it’s shown time and again to reinvigorate franchises creatively as was the case with Casino Royale (2006), Batman Begins (2005), and 21 Jump Street (2012).
Ironically, the 2023 adaptation is just that, a different interpretation that isn’t that faithful to the source material. Contrary to popular perception I discussed early on, it diverges in ways that would’ve had fans of other franchises rioting (e.g., Mario teaming up with Peach to save Luigi, Mario coming into contact with the Kongs in the Jungle Kingdom to form an alliance against King Koopa, and Peach originating from the human world instead of being the daughter of king and queen of the Mushroom Kingdom). The funniest part to me is that the last of the three divergences I mentioned was a change from the source material lifted from the 1993 adaptation that’s so reviled for being unfaithful. Only when held up against the 1993 adaptation does the 2023 one seem to be the faithful adaptation that the fandom claims it is. If we’re talking about faithfulness to Super Mario Bros. on the NES, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is even less faithful, but much of its lore was tucked away in the manuals packaged with the cartridges and then retconned in several instances. Confounding this scenario is that the American localization by Nintendo of America had established Brooklyn as the hometown of the protagonists in marketing and promotional materials. It was slowly phased out in the early 2000s to align with the official canon in Japan, which never envisioned them as characters from our world transported into another through pipes. Curiously, alleged purists don’t seem to have an issue with having Mario and Luigi originate from the real world. Because what they’re really after is an adaptation that captures the spirit of the source material, and, in the furor over faithfulness, these kinds of adaptations remain in distressingly short supply.
Ultimately, adaptation is an art form in and of itself that requires nuance in critiquing it. Capturing the spirit of a source material might necessitate change, but fans are convinced that any alteration in the translation is automatically sacrilege, even if it is superior to what’s found in the source material. It’s a shame that revered adaptations like The Godfather, Ghost in the Shell, and The Fugitive wouldn’t have been as recognized if subject to the same critical lens with which we’ve suddenly chosen to judge the art form. Inevitably, when finally we move past it, a new wave of cult classics will come to our attention—ones that were adaptations, which were rashly dismissed for not being faithful enough only for us to realize that they weren’t as bad as we remember and we were what was wrong with them the whole time. 
J.D. Harlock is an Eisner Award-nominated American writer, researcher, editor, and academic pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of St. Andrews, whose writing has been featured in Business Insider, Newsweek, The Cincinnati Review, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, The Griffith Review, Queen’s Quarterly, and New York University’s Library of Arabic Literature. You can find him on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, & Twitter.
Photo collage by Matt Wolfbridge.
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