'Super Mario Bros. Movie' Sets Record for Highest-Grossing Animated Movie Opening Ever (thewrap.com) 83
The Super Mario Bros. Movie "has now earned the largest global animated opening weekend in box office history," reports the Wrap, with a worldwide five-day launch of $377 million, passing the $358 million record set by Disney's Frozen II on Thanksgiving weekend in 2019."
Domestically, "Mario" was projected when it opened in theaters on Wednesday to earn a five-day opening of at least $125 million from 4,343 theaters, and it has shattered that figure with $204.6 million grossed. Both that and its three-day total of $143 million are a studio record for Illumination, with the three-day total being the third highest seen on Easter weekend and second only to the $182 million earned by Pixar's "Incredibles 2" among all animated films. It is also the new animation record holder for Imax with $21.6 million grossed worldwide.
And of course, the film has blasted past every box office opening record for video game adaptations, nearly doubling the three-day domestic record of $72.1 million set by "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" last year and shattering the $210 million global record set by "Warcraft" in 2016. "This weekend's record-breaking debut proves audiences of all ages and demographics will pour into theaters for a hysterically funny and authentic universe expansion of an already iconic franchise," said Universal's domestic distribution president Jim Orr. "Nintendo and Illumination's creative synergy along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri's extraordinary leadership created an entertaining juggernaut that will be sure to power up the box office for weeks to come...."
Thanks in large part to "Super Mario Bros.," overall weekend estimates have risen to $194 million, 76% above the same weekend in 2019.
And of course, the film has blasted past every box office opening record for video game adaptations, nearly doubling the three-day domestic record of $72.1 million set by "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" last year and shattering the $210 million global record set by "Warcraft" in 2016. "This weekend's record-breaking debut proves audiences of all ages and demographics will pour into theaters for a hysterically funny and authentic universe expansion of an already iconic franchise," said Universal's domestic distribution president Jim Orr. "Nintendo and Illumination's creative synergy along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri's extraordinary leadership created an entertaining juggernaut that will be sure to power up the box office for weeks to come...."
Thanks in large part to "Super Mario Bros.," overall weekend estimates have risen to $194 million, 76% above the same weekend in 2019.
My family and I enjoyed it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My family and I enjoyed it (Score:5, Funny)
my family enjoyed it and that's all that counts for me in the end.
That's what the Germans originally said about Hitler too.
Godwin'd Re:My family and I enjoyed it (Score:3)
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+1 for "most unexpected Godwin" of 2023 award.
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Lore? What lore? All the movie said was that they were two brothers living in Brooklyn with their extended Italian family trying to start their own plumbing business. Not much lore there.
I would have also loved to hear some lore on Peach, but all we got was, "She appeared mysteriously one day as a baby in the Mushroom Kingdom, so we made her the queen!" Or King Koopa, but we didn't get nothing about him. Or why there are pipes connecting these worlds, but strike three to that, too.
Would it have hurt to hav
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Lore? What lore? All the movie said was that they were two brothers living in Brooklyn with their extended Italian family trying to start their own plumbing business. Not much lore there.
Haven't seen the movie yet. How does it treat the canon established in Super Hornio Brothers? This is a major concern for me.
Re:My family and I enjoyed it (Score:5, Informative)
You're asking too much for the target audience. The live action 90's film had 6 games to work off, had a somewhat more interesting "lore" reason for being, but ultimately it could be described as "parallel universe of dinosaur world that exists as a parallel Manhattan.
The trend at the time was "video game tie ins, no matter how stupid and campy", See Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat additionally as "bad video game movies" , hell this trend continued, and pretty much was only broken by "Sonic the Hedgehog" who has never had life action adaption, and already had plenty of animated television series and games to lean in on. Was Sonic the hedgehog the "film" I wanted? Maybe not, but if as much love went into the 90's Mario bros movie went into the 2020's Sonic Films, we'd probably have had a Mario Bros live action series that people wanted to see.
Instead that 90's versions is often derided (by the actors) as the worst thing they ever worked on. It's comparable hiring "uncle moe" from the Simpsons to hire the barflies to produce a film and absolutely nobody knows jack about the source material.
The Illumination Super Mario Bros Movie, dispensed with the pretense that the 90's film existed, or that any of Mario's Game-Lore was written in store, because there are at least 3 non-diegetic sources of Mario games used in the film, that I would have (if I was Miyamoto) asked "I don't think that will work".
- Mario with an Italian-American family. We know from the games as of 1995 (two years after the 90's film release) that Nintendo regards Mario as having been "Born" in the Mushroom Kingdom. That's been established lore that contradicts the Donkey Kong Lore
- Donkey Kong had an entire 2 season animated series, just like Mario did. The film made call backs into these, but clearly didn't use lore written for them.
- It's very weird how they shoehorned Mario Kart into it, and like Donkey Kong, this was something I would have called "not-working" as trying to establish a canon reason for the characters to have vehicles, that are then subsequently lost.
Like "Mario Oddesy" completely throws a wrench in existing Mario Lore, and I would have been surprised had it been referenced at all.
Like here's what I expect of a sequel
- Mario's parents are based on designs Nintendo had, the rest of the family, Illuminations invention. Nothing wrong with that. However I do feel we need to reconcile the events of "Donkey Kong" since Cranky Kong clearly exists and Mario has never met him prior to the events of the film. Is it possible that Donkey Kong(Cranky Kong) once came to earth?
- Peach's origin is even more of a question, because nobody ever asked why Peach is the only human character in the mainstream Mario games. Even in the RPG's, the only other canon "human" character was introduced is "E Gadd". Rosalina and Daisy, for all intents are characters that don't exist outside their series. Like as some internet youtubers have pointed out, the literal way Mario lore is read, would mean that Rosalina is literal god.
- Donkey Kong's lore is also up for question, because up until THIS FILM, "This version" of Donkey Kong has only existed in the Donkey Kong Country game. There was never and cross over of Mario and "This version" of Donkey Kong in a main Mario series. Rather the "Mario versus DK" series which is a very different game series is the only time we see DKC Donkey Kong in a game that is not DKC.
- Wario has an entire game series, so if he's introduced as an antagonist in a second film, that needs to be reconciled with the "Baby Mario/Baby Luigi/Baby Peach" lore since Baby DK and Baby Wario exist in the same continuity starting with Yoshi's Island.
That after-credit teaser? Yoshi.
Whatever comes out as a sequel, I'm up for, as long as they don't invent things that don't exist in the games, or at least can't be connected to the games. Because that's why that 90's movie didn't do well. Nothing in that film can be reconciled with the games.
U insensitive clod! (Score:3)
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>Lore? What lore?
Spoilers ahead.
Toadstool Kingdom is the technology, Kong Kingdom is automotive, Koopa Kingdom is dark magic.
Mario's Family is Italian.
Mario hates Mushrooms.
Mario's first career wasn't plumbing.
Mario's family does not approve of his choice to break out and do his own business, especially his father.
Mario is short for a human.
Mario is a skilled plumber, having saved Brooklyn with his plumbing skills.
Mario has parkour skills (Luigi does not)
Luigi was barely featured to get any lore on him.
P
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I think not.
People want to be entertained (Score:5, Insightful)
Hollywood finally understands that we want to be entertained. We don't want to be lectures in movies.
Star Wars, Avengers, and many other hit franchises lost these in recent times. Yes, we can take new things, yes, society moves on. But lackluster stories, wooden acting, and actors don't actually having fun is not the right thing. Remember “He's not my Luke Skywalker" quote from Mark Hamill.
Seems like this is our Mario. And critics hate it.
Re:People want to be entertained (Score:5, Interesting)
Hollywood finally understands
False. You don't care about wokeness. Movies have always been "woke" and pushed political agenda. What you want is a good written story or something entertaining so you can actually enjoy the movie.
When you don't enjoy the movie you look for reasons why, and when people don't understand writing, character development, visual storytelling, etc, they grasp onto the only thing their simple minds fall back on, "wokeness".
Hollywood will continue to lecture going forward. And you'll continue to enjoy it when it's well written.
Re:People want to be entertained (Score:5, Insightful)
Even those original examples all had a message underneath;
The Galactic Empire is fictionalized version of Nazi Germany
The Ewoks were inspired by the Viet Cong and indigenous population rising against imperialist invasion.
The first Iron Man centers around an arms dealer having a moment of reflection on his life from the people his weapons were used against, to say nothing about so much of the original comic source material.
Re:People want to be entertained (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait till they figure out what The Deer Hunter or Full Metal Jacket were about.
Re:People want to be entertained (Score:5, Insightful)
Even those original examples all had a message underneath
That's because most stories begin with a systemic injustice which needs rectification. The Matrix has enslaved humanity, George McFly was still being bullied, Sauron is kind of a shmuck, Mr. Banks needs to learn to be a father to his children, Christmas isn't about the presents, et al.
Someone who is truly satisfied with the status quo doesn't go on a hero's journey. They'd sit in their swamp and go "Gee, there's all these fairytale creatures showing up in my front yard, but this is fine. [knowyourmeme.com]" Roll credits. Yeah, that'd be a pretty boring movie.
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Yes you often can't make a movie with a story like that without those underlying themes, however Hollywood's pushing political agendas go way beyond the hero journey and well into every aspect and every theme you can imagine.
Well back into the days of black and white (the movie colour, not the skin colour) Hollywood was producing movies that pushed various messages about black and white (the skin colour, not the movie colour). The only thing different now to then was that we didn't use the word "woke", peop
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Let alone, the first issue of Captain America literally has him punching Hitler.
Sad to see a man being canceled for his conservative beliefs!
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The Avengers movies are the opposite. All about preserving the status quo. In the TV spin offs they actually put down the rebels and tell them to lobby their elected representatives instead.
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Hollywood finally understands
False. You don't care about wokeness. Movies have always been "woke" and pushed political agenda. What you want is a good written story or something entertaining so you can actually enjoy the movie.
Of course. There is a big problem with the present storytelling, woke or not. A good story is critical, and The storyteller must remember that successful stories attract people who become mentally invested in those movies. And since the present paradigm is to continue rebooting or making sequels, you have to put up with people who are mentally invested.
When you don't enjoy the movie you look for reasons why, and when people don't understand writing, character development, visual storytelling, etc, they grasp onto the only thing their simple minds fall back on, "wokeness".
That is drastically simplified. There are plenty of critics of present day movies who have a markedly better understanding of storytelling, character origin
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Did you just DE-conjugate a verbed adjective back into an adjective with the residuals?
Man, all that's missing is calling it a pronoun. I miss English, or at least SOME English.
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Re:People want to be entertained (Score:4, Funny)
I’m amazed you restrained from using the word woke.
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I’m amazed you restrained from using the word woke.
Some words are so overused they mean nothing any more. The "W" word, the "I" word. For all their sound and fury, they signify nothing any more.
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Hollywood finally understands
Uh, no. They made Princess Peach into a badass and the fascists are going apeshit she wasn't portrayed as being helpless [twitter.com]. They're afraid girls will see this and become feminists.
Clearly there was a political message to this movie. *eyeroll*
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They made Princess Peach into a badass
They made the princess into a badass? Now where have I seen that before? Almost 22 years ago. [youtube.com] Technically made by same studio, even (Universal bought DreamWorks in 2016).
I don't recall there being any similar stink being made back then. Kinda like how Disney had an actual gay man voice a character with a drag scene [youtube.com], in one of their animated movies back in 1994, and somehow that movie was hugely popular and critically acclaimed.
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Which goes to show this is all political pandering. As we saw from the Fox tabloidtweets, they'll say one thing to keep their base, but say the complete opposite in private.
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LOL, yeah sure. As if people really don't like females kicking ass. We've had female leads well back to the 80s and likely before that. Sigourney Weaver from Aliens to Linda Hamilton in Terminator to Angelina Jolie from Tomb Raider. Women kicking ass.
Nothing wrong with a strong female lead. Of course, all those movies were actually GOOD.
I haven't seen this Mario movie, but making Peach awesome won't be a problem if it's actually a well written movie.
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Certainly somebody is having that bad reaction, but not most people. The majority of fans loved the movie [metacritic.com]. Anyway, in the Mario games that I played when I was a kid, Princess Peach was a playable character, and a badass. So this seems to fit with cannon anyway.
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Anyway, in the Mario games that I played when I was a kid, Princess Peach was a playable character, and a badass. So this seems to fit with cannon anyway.
If you're referring to Super Mario Bros. 2, that's only because the game was just a re-skin of a Japanese game called "Doki Doki Panic". That's why 2 seems so oddball compared to the original and Super Mario Bros. 3 - Nintendo was too lazy to make a proper sequel for the US market. Nintendo did make an actual Super Mario Bros. 2 for the Japanese market, but they determined it would be too difficult for the US market. It was eventually released in the US as "The Lost Levels".
So yes, the entire reason the
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"Doki Doki Panic" isn't a translation - the Japanese title has the English loanword "Panic" in it. That's what the game is called in Japan.
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Even without taking that into consideration, I have zero problems with her being a badass.
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The Princess was a playable main character in Super Mario Bros. 2 (along with Mario, Luigi, & Toad) back in 1988.
Even without taking that into consideration, I have zero problems with her being a badass.
My guess is that a couple people post something on Twitter, and people who want to make political hay out of it try to extrapolate that to everyone in the demographic they want to go after. We can guess who the people are who want to claim that another group is so terribly upset about Princess Peach are. And why they might want to amp up that meme.
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Hollywood finally understands that we want to be entertained. We don't want to be lectures in movies.
The most popular video on YouTube is Pinkfong's "Baby Shark" song. Produce something parents want to take their kids to see and you'll make bank, simple as that.
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It's the Pixar formula. Kids movie but enough adult references and bits of innuendo to make it enjoyable for parents too.
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Actually, there was a lecture in the movie. It was Princesses don't need saving. And they can use their female charm to guile smitten men to lower their defenses whenever it works to their benefit.
Oh, and that they can twirl and swing battle axes one handed with ease.
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Well, it wasn't 'princesses don't need saving.' She did, objectively, need saving. But not because she was a helpless woman or a princess.
It's that 'people helping each other can accomplish more than people acting alone,' and 'people working together towards a common good are more powerful than despots wielding fear.'
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We don't want to be lectures in movies.
Not really true. Even movies like "Predator" lectured to you about the CIA meddling in Latin American politics.
It's been that way since the dawn of time.
Re: the lowest common denominator (Score:1)
Hollywood finally understands that we want to be entertained. We don't want to be lectures in movies.
Star Wars, Avengers, and many other hit franchises lost these in recent times. Yes, we can take new things, yes, society moves on. But lackluster stories, wooden acting, and actors don't actually having fun is not the right thing. Remember “He's not my Luke Skywalker" quote from Mark Hamill.
Seems like this is our Mario. And critics hate it.
Because you didn't "hear" or "see" the messages in all those previous movies, doesn't mean they didn't have messages.
Not really a surprise (Score:2, Troll)
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I'm surprised as I hadn't heard of this movie yet...
Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Lightyear made $220 million, total, from a $200 million budget last year. That's not a good showing, especially for a Pixar film. There were no kids movies out at the time. It's only competition was a second week of Jurassic Park, and in it's second week, Top Gun came out - not exactly family movie night stuff.
Two weeks later Minions raked in $700 million from a $80 million budget in theaters alone.
It's not competition that is causing problems.
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That's not a good showing, especially for a Pixar film.
Some of Pixar's more recent-ish films seem like they'd be tough for a kid to sit through. I can't imagine the preadolescent version of me having the patience required for WALL-E or UP.
It's very likely that Lightyear's undoing was that parents didn't feel like sitting through another snooze-fest while their kids whine that they'd rather be at home playing on their iPads.
Lightyear's marketing was weak and confusing (Score:2)
I think it could have done a lot better if not for the state of toy and video game tie ins too. You just don't see the same level of multimedia advertising as you used to. It did get Happy meal toys but those don't get nearly as much of a
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Wait wait wait. Space theme movies outside of Star Wars aren't uphill battles. Where do you get that crap? Most the Star Trekk movies were enjoyable and there have been others that were fun to watch also. The Alien movies were good and there have been other one offs that were enjoyable as well.
Star Wars itself is the uphill battle. It wasn't been good since the 90s, and the 90s movies are only considered "good" when pitted against today's horrible showings. In the 90s, those prequils were just "okay" compar
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The entire problem with Lightyear was that they retconned an established character (from Toy Story and the rides at Disney's theme parks) to a point where it broke suspension of disbelief. Few people wanted to see Buzz Lightyear reimagined as a character who inspired his namesake toy. It was just too meta.
It would be like if JKR wrote a story about how some real-life guy named "Harry Potter" who was like her plumber or something, went about his daily life doing his job. If that got made into a movie most
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I remember the Weird Al movie (UHF) was considered a failure, but the studio put it out against 3 blockbusters for this goofy little comedy.
I prefer to think of UHF as the movie that explains why Netflix can put out a documentary about some weird dude's drama involving tigers and lots of people willingly watch it.
"Let's see what's in the box? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! STOOPID! YOU'RE SOO STOOPID!"
UHF is also a great example of Rick and Morty's unoriginality. Weird Al was doing "Interdimensional Cable" before it was cool.
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Rick and Morty is funny because it's more about parody then originality. Never really thought of that show as "original" just really entertaining because of all the various references and random stuff it goes on about. Futurama did a lot of that and so did Family Guy.
Do these gross numbers account for inflation? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Which runs into the problem of population increase, for which the fix is 'tickets sold per capita'.
But then you have changes in audience habits - more people wait for streaming now rather than rush to the theater, so you have to wait longer to get a decent comparison... and it's more difficult to do when you don't know how many people are watching the streams.
If you're focused on just seats in a traditional theater, tickets sold per capita is still flawed, because it doesn't account for distribution confide
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Movie ticket prices keep going up so if they aren't breaking records every year something is wrong.
I know inflation is bad, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 only came out 6 months ago. I don't think the differences will have as much of an effect as you think. No one is comparing this movie to Gone with the Wind.
Even the earliest movie in the summary being compared is from 2016 where inflation would only move the figure by 25%. Except it wouldn't because the overwhelming majority of Warcraft's box office was from the Chinese market where it was only released in 2018.
TL;DR: Inflation is completely irrelevant to ev
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Except it wouldn't because the overwhelming majority of Warcraft's box office was from the Chinese market where it was only released in 2018.
There was a Warcraft movie?
Pedro Pascal as Mario.... (Score:2)
This is the way the world ends... (Score:2)
Not with a bang but covered in derivative garbage designed for the lowest common denominator.
The people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
And their 4-year-old (mentally and otherwise) offspring.
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Saw it on opening day (Score:2)
Theater was packed with as many kids as adults. And the movie pandered to both audiences. I hope Hollywood takes notice. If they want to put butts back into seats, family movies pack the most bang for the buck.
(I felt the movie itself was subpar. It definitely catered more to younger audiences. And there was hardly any plot or character development. I enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog a lot more, as they at least tried to create a story that attempted to do both, while SMB just filled time with race sequences and
Dollar counts don't equal ticket counts (Score:3)
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We're literally comparing just the past 5 years. No one is comparing this to something that came out in the 80s or any other period where you think inflation starts actually moving the needle. Ticket counts almost perfectly match dollars in this case.
Windfall tax? (Score:2)
56% rating on Rotten (Score:4, Informative)
I'll wait for the VHS tape from Blockbuster
96% "audience" rating on Rotten (Score:3, Interesting)
If you haven't already noticed, go look at the most popular movies in recent years, the audience score is always high, where as the so-called-critic's scores are abysmal. Now for SHIT WOKE movies that are nothi
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I'll wait for the VHS tape from Blockbuster
If I could...+1 FUNNY
I'm sure it's better than the one from 1993. (Score:2)
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Mortal Kombat wasn't a bad popcorn flick in its day. But yeah, the original live-action Super Mario Brothers movie was weird as fuck.
Good! (Score:1)
Because John Leguizamo can go suck rocks.
People who say "bros" drive me up a wall. (Score:2)
It sounds wrong and it makes me want to throw my Nintendo when I hear it.
You sure about that? (Score:2)
Because by any definition, that's an animated film. Shit ain't real, yo.
lumalee (Score:1)
lumalee was the star of the show imho...
"Ooh, fresh meat for the grinder."
"There's no escape. The only hope is the sweet relief of death."
correlation (Score:1)
This correlates well with the statistic that median IQ has been steadily decreasing.
Haven't seen it yet. (Score:2)
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My daughter said it was great. Does Peach finally put out in this movie, or are they saving that for the sequel?
They're saving that for after Miyamoto dies and Nintendo somehow doesn't make any good games for 2 decades and they hand the franchise over to Mindy Kaling.