The Big Picture: Mr. Mario Goes To Hollywood

[ANTIcarrot]

To which my answer is: How much would it have cost to make (say) Spirited Away or How To Tame Your Dragon in live action? We could start by comparing the budget of a live action and low SFX film like Fellowship Of The Ring with a 90% CGI film like Avatar. And the answer is... $93M vs $280M

Because humans are cheap, but anything else is horribly expensive. Hence in addition to the inevitable white-washing of the actors, you get human-washing of the story, concept, or world. Or worse, you get safe-washing, where any 'risky' interesting ideas get sergically removed for the script so as to not offend, chalenge, or educate any one who might be watching. And that really sucks if you enjoy a story because of the exotic elements.

Compare any DC movie to the DCAU, and tell me which is richer, with better, more fully realised and neuanced characters. It is not the live action films and it is certainly not the latest 'gritty and realistic' batman and superman films.

I'm with the joker on this. The best thing about CGI and anime? They're cheap. So you can have people places and things that are more than just walk on roles, or cut-scenes to break up the humans only grind sections.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Yes, it is just you wanting a real-live feature film Mario Bros. Bob, because the rest of us here in the real world have accepted that such a thing is impossible and more than a little stupid. Do you really think they're going to make some kind of sprawling Lord of the Rings epic out of a plumber that jumps on walking mushrooms?

We don't need Mario: the Movie. He's got the character of a cardboard poster of himself, fighting another cardboard cutout for a third cardboard cutout. Get over it. The essence of the Mario games hasn't been an epic tale of monsters and mythology like Zelda has, it's just a cuteish series of video games with identifiable characters doing pretty much the same thing with progressively enhanced graphics. Narnia, Middle Earth, the Marvel Universe, hell, even Cybertron have buckets of back-story and characterization, actual world-building, heaped upon them. Children cried over the death of Optimus Prime, but no one is weeping when Mario falls down another hole.

Buy all the merchandise you want, dress like Mario and flex your fan-erection all you like, but read my text: THERE CAN NEVER BE A GOOD MARIO MOVIE, AND NEVER WILL BE. It amazes me that you can fly into nigh spittle-flecked rants over the idiocies of certain fan groups who love or hate a thing, yet remain completely oblivious to the irony or hypocrisy of your own indulgences. You're the man who practically told us to fuck off and shut up about Michael Bay yet spend the next three weeks pissing and moaning about the career of Kevin Smith. Three. Gorram. Weeks. Bob. Three. Kevin Smith. Three weeks. I can only assume it was lashing out for hating Tusk and envying the rest of the world for having avoided it.

So no. Enough about Mario already. Not gonna happen. We common folk have to deal with disappointment all the time. I'm probably never going to see a Dead Space or War/Fall of Cybertron sequel. I have made peace with that. And those particular franchise aren't even a decade old yet. Ugh. I need a stiff drink now.