 Nintendo and Illumination Studios just released an official poster for the new Super Mario Bros. animated movie coming out, so I thought it would be fun to not only break down that poster but also go all the way back to 1993 and talk about the last Super Mario Bros. movie. While I myself don't design movie posters, I do have a degree in visual communications, I've been a web designer and front end developer for the last 15 or so years, and I'm a movie critic by night. So maybe think about sticking around and subscribing to the channel as I post tons of movie reviews and poster breakdowns each and every week. Let's get started. I'm old enough to remember seeing the Super Mario Bros. movie in theaters as a child and being completely let down by the final product. The late great Bob Hoskins was Mario Mario, and his brother Luigi Mario was John Liguizamo. The movie was very dark, it was grimy, it had almost no association with the video games that were very poppy, very punchy with the color. And here we have the first poster, giving fans a troubled look at what's to come. This puppy was illustrated by Stephen Corny, who's been in the industry for a long time. He's a very talented illustrator. He's done recent posters such as The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a beautiful one for that Dora the Explorer movie that no one saw, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and some real classics like Stakeout, Funny Farm, Labyrinth, and a really cool Peter Pan poster that dates all the way back to 1960. I don't know if anyone dictated to Stephen how this poster was supposed to look, but I hate it. I really do. But just trying to find the original poster online is damn near impossible. I think this one is punchier with the colors, it's more vibrant than the original, that is very subdued, it's very dark, you barely see anything. This one at least has a bit more life to it. However, when you think of Mario, one of the first things that jumps to mind is his red jumpsuit. They have those iconic hats, the yellow buttons holding up the suspenders. This is all blue! They're not even wearing suspenders! Instead what we have here are some very basic Joe Blow plumbers who seem to really enjoy what they do for a living, and they have a very odd clothing style when it comes to footwear. Yes, they're rocking those iconic jump boots, or whatever they were called from the film, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, I don't want to remember it, I'm sorry. I know that it's got like a cult following now, I don't know why, it's horrid to watch. Anyway, I remember the trailer very well, and it had those jump boots on full display, they were flying around the room, which is funny because it's only in one or two scenes of the picture. Anyway, to the poster, it has the tagline at the top, this ain't no game, I like it, it's effective, it's got a double meaning, obviously this is based on the hit video game, so it's telling audiences, hey, we got a movie here, this ain't no game, but also, this ain't no game. We're not playing, there are stakes here, this is serious business, featuring a couple plumbers and goombas and a talking dinosaur thing. This poster has both a retro and a futuristic style to it, Corny's using the blues here, which is often associated with movies that are futuristic or sci-fi in nature, that comes through here for sure, but then he's got this chrome, this metallic sheen to everything and these bloom lighting effects that really do bring you back to an older school look and feel. This is often synonymous with action, you think explosions, you think a fire, we do have some glowing off the sides of both of our figures, drawing your eye in saying, hey, these are the hopeful heroes of the franchise, these are the guys to root for. It is a simple poster, which I like, I prefer when there's just one focal point and not 45 different ones like a lot of modern MCU movies do, got a nice black background, so it's really drawing your eye in to both the heroes and right down to the title. It's effective, it's a beautiful illustration of the characters, but it's not a good representation of the video game and what fans are clamoring for when they go to one of these movies. However, since the movie was such a piss-poor representation of the game too, the poster kind of makes sense. Let's move on. Here we have the new 2022 Illumination Super Mario Bros. poster. Wow, it's a lot going on, a lot happening here. Love it or hate it has a very specific art style to their stuff. This looks a bit different than your typical minions or despicable me or secret life of pets, things of that nature, it's very detailed. If you look at Mario, even his suit has wrinkles in it, you can see the fabrics, it's a hustle bustle town going on, and the background is so rich in color, it's chock full of things going on, I'm sure as an avid video game player, you could pick out tons of references. I myself have played a fair amount of Mario games, so we can go through this poster and find some of the Easter eggs together, but I'm talking about the poster design and for me, I look at this and I say, wow, this is a beautiful photo. Not really a poster. I mean, I would definitely put it up on a wall if I was a kid. I would definitely think this is awesome, but it's missing like all the ingredients of a poster. There's no title first off, there's no credits at the bottom, there's no tag line. You just have the Nintendo plus illumination, that's all you need. Everyone knows who this character is, which brings me back to the 93 poster where they don't even give us the colors of their outfits. Even back in 93, everyone knew who Mario was, so that's all you need. I don't know if maybe later they're gonna put the title on and blur that background a little bit. To me, I look at this and I do think, okay, everything is really sharp. Everything is kind of fighting for the foreground. In Mario, his head is shooting upward. He wants people's eyes to go up and see what he's seen. All right, things that stick out for me. We have the toadstools in the front. There's the treasure tracker toad guy. I honestly don't recall those ladybug things being any of the Mario games. They probably are. They're just not sticking out for me. In the background, we have a shop with a cheap cheap on it, but then there's a purple one across from it with some spikes on the back. I don't remember that one. Maybe that's in one of the later games that I didn't play. We have a treasure chest from Mario Brothers 3. You could find those when you go in those little toad huts and you had to pick the right one. I was always disappointed when I got the frog suit. There's only like two or three places where it's useful. There's a pal barrel suspended in the air akin to the pal hammer. You could get in some of the older games and also in Smash Brothers. On the left hand side, we got the music notes from Mario 3. We got the P block that you can find in a multitude of the games. As we make our way up the mountain, it's nice to see all the different colored pipes that are obviously very iconic to Mario Brothers. Some of the background trees are very lush. They're very detailed. And then we also have the more simplistic grid style mountains that you see really showcasing that it's going to blend the styles from both the video game and from Illumination Studios. I'm just scanning over this for the first time. And there's tons of little Easter eggs you can find. This whole floating panel looks like something out of Mario Galaxy. Like you could run around the whole thing, anti-gravity style. Plus, there appears to be a line of rings floating in the air. This is something that a Tanuki suit could handle very nicely. And then as we get to the top of the kingdom, we see Peach's castle and all its glory and all its splendor. I'm just scanning around one more time to make sure they didn't put any red-hidden coins in this. That would have been a nice touch. This is really cool. I like it. I'm excited for this movie. I know a lot of people are crapping all over it. Chris Pratt is Mario. Yeah, that's, I don't know. We'll see. As an aside, my family is rewatching Parks and Rec right now. Man, Chris Pratt was funny as hell in that. And he ad-libbed a lot of lines. Just a very talented guy. He could probably pull this off if he's given the right material. Hopefully that's the case. I don't have any problems with illumination. You know what you're going to get with them. Hopefully, though, they do step their game up for this, because it is such a big property. And I do love it. I think most people love Mario. So here's hoping for the greatest product we can get. Well, there you have it. My thoughts on two very different Mario Brother posters for what I will imagine are going to be two very different Mario Brother movies. Let me know in the comments what you thought about these posters. Like the video if you had a good time. Again, please subscribe if you haven't. I do movie posters once a week now. Put out a ton of movie reviews, occasional reactions, skits, doing a lot of stuff in the movie space, and TV show on occasion. So love to have you stick around. Take care. If you really liked what you saw here, know that I'm a one-man operation. I write, film, edit, do the whole shebang for this show, for this channel, every single week. 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