“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has been absolutely crushing it at the box office with the highest opening weekend for an animated movie in history, making over $500 million worldwide. The movie features Mario (Chris Pratt), Bowser (Jack Black) and many more outstanding voice actors. The movie is based on the plot from the game series “Super Mario Bros,” which began in 1981 with its latest release in 2017.

This story starts by introducing the audience to two Brooklyn plumbers named Mario and Luigi (Charlie Day),  They both go through a green pipe that leads Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom while Luigi goes to Dark Lands. Mario meets Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and the anthropomorphic mushrooms, including Toad (Keegan-Michael Key). Luigi soon becomes lost inside the Mushroom Kingdom and eventually trapped under Bowser’s reign, so Mario, Peach and Toad go on an adventure to save Luigi and the Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser and his army.

The voice acting talent in the film is extremely skilled and filled with lots of iconic actors. One of the main issues that fans have with the movie is that they didn’t make the original Mario voice actor (Charles Martinet) the actor for Mario in the movie. Instead, they opted for Pratt to voice him because they felt he could bring a greater performance. Martinet instead voiced Mario’s father in the film, making the fans happy to see he was included.

During the movie, Bowser was supposed to sing a song written by Illumination Studio about how much he loves Peach. However, Black decided to write the song himself, creating the famous “Peaches.” Black even had a music video produced with the help of Lyrical Lemonade; it later was uploaded onto YouTube going 14 million views along with becoming a trend on TikTok and Instagram.

Fans of the game series are grateful to see that the producers are taking the time to craft the story that remains faithful to the original lore that the games follow, unlike the first movie adaptation that took the big screen.

A live-action movie called “Super Mario Bros.” was also released in 1993, and was received poorly by critics, earning only $39 million at the box office with a $48 million budget. The movie was not able to portray characters like the Goombas and Toad that respected the Mario fanbase and the games that they love. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was a major improvement from the first film with better visuals and accurate character designs allowing the fans to enjoy the beloved video game characters.

The theaters are packed with fans and children watching the movie as it tops the highest grossing animated film in history, even overshadowing other movies such as “Air,” which only earned $35 million at the box office. Once the film was released into theaters, it destroyed the competition and allowed fans to have hope in the world for more movie adaptations of beloved video games in the future.

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