Mario stomps his way into the National Recording Registry

Time to talk about something fun and frivolous. The Super Mario Bros. movie is out …

Bad movie #2 for tonight is 1993's Super Mario Brothers. pic.twitter.com/fdqooqrLft

— Shaun Davis (@real_ShaunDavis) August 5, 2021

… oh, no … not that one …

Listen up world, new high score📈#SuperMarioMovie pic.twitter.com/fmoJekcuQ0

— The Super Mario Bros. Movie (@supermariomovie) April 14, 2023

Yeah, that’s the one. Well, it turns out that on top of dominating the box office …

‘THE SUPER MARIO BROS MOVIE’ has passed $700M worldwide.

Read our review: https://t.co/4Bxh7jIQLd pic.twitter.com/uJ4VfsiXzs

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) April 17, 2023

‘THE SUPER MARIO BROS MOVIE’ is already the highest grossing video game adaption of all time.

Read our review: https://t.co/QXygmQUMEc pic.twitter.com/B5MTV9g8X6

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) April 14, 2023

The franchise got a smaller accolade. The theme song from the original Super Mario Bros. game was admitted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry:

The famous theme music from Nintendo's classic Super Mario Bros. game will be archived by the Library of Congress as part of its permanent collection, the U.S. library said Wednesday. https://t.co/bvSH7amvkO

— The Japan Times (@japantimes) April 15, 2023

A video game theme song, probably the most recognizable in history, is also a first for the #NatRecRegistry. The Super Mario Bros. theme by Koji Kondo helped establish the game's legendary status & proved that the Nintendo sound chip was capable of vast musical complexity. pic.twitter.com/RHPaXV1WLs

— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) April 12, 2023

Some just celebrated:

it's just nice to see Koji Kondo recognized among The Great Composers. absolutely deserved https://t.co/Wbnu9sItT9

— brandon.wad (@Thatoneguy64) April 12, 2023

As it should. It’s iconic asf. Babies come out the womb knowing that song 😅. pic.twitter.com/JAyw9zW2q3

— Trando🤴🏾 (@grandotrando) April 13, 2023

Jokes aside, he has a valid point. According to the Library of Congress website: ‘Each year, the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress chooses 25 recordings showcasing the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage in order to increase preservation awareness.’ Still, it has been a big enough deal in American culture for around forty years that we might give the Library of Congress a mulligan.

Naturally, a cynical person might suspect that the timing is intentional, too. After all, how often does the Library of Congress get in the news?

In any case, if the Library of Congress is going to preserve something popular and maybe even current, we submit Jack Black’s song Peaches for consideration:

Bowser and Lyrical Lemonade join forces in the name of love.#SuperMarioMovie pic.twitter.com/pyPd1IXmq6

— The Super Mario Bros. Movie (@supermariomovie) April 7, 2023

That’s a joke, but it is a fun song and the music video is appropriately ridiculous. The whole thing has gone viral, apparently soaring on the music download and streaming charts. Black is no stranger to music, being in the band ‘Tenacious D,’ and he’s no stranger to video games. One of his first acting jobs was an ad for Activision’s Pitfall!, all way back on the Atari 2600 and when he was only fourteen years old:

Remember Jack Black in the advert for Pitfall on the Atari 2600? pic.twitter.com/Pdxu2jKnKU

— Nostalgic Gamer (@16bitnostalgia) January 3, 2023

We don’t think he was pretending very much to be that enthusiastic over the game—we think it was at least 80% genuine. As you might’ve surmised, in the movie he plays Bowser…

… er, not that Bowser. This guy:

And he’s also easily the best thing in the new Mario movie—although there is no weak link in the cast. We have seen the movie and it’s a good time. Some of it will be hard to understand if you’ve never played one of their games but … who hasn’t played one of their games? For instance, we don’t think it counts as a spoiler to say that Mario and Luigi defeats Bowser in the end. However, the exact way they defeat Bowser, mechanically, is obvious to anyone who has played any of the games, but it’s barely set up in the movie. So, if you are confused, maybe take the advice of Basil Exposition:

Initially, we agreed with critics who said that there was nothing deeper than surface-level entertainment (although there is plenty of that), but we were unkind in that initial assessment. As silly as that Jack Black music video is, it hints at the deeper element going on. Here, Bowser is portrayed as kind of a stalker. Yes, he’s pathetic on some level, and it is very much also played for laughs, but he’s also recognizably scary and toxic, too. It’s a smart take that is fully in line with the games.

Of course, in the games, things get really weird between Princess Peach and Bowser, particularly in Super Mario Sunshine, when Mario and Peach confront Bower Jr. and ask him why he has been so much trouble. You have to watch the video to believe it:

Happy Mother’s Day to Princess Peach who never, not even once, denied being bowser jr’s mom pic.twitter.com/XHQk4sXZMN

— Michal Shafrir (@Miexriir) May 10, 2020

Now, it is fair to point out that later in the same game, Bowser Jr. learns Peach is not his mother …

Far too many people talk about Bowser Jr and Mario Sunshine as if the game doesn't have a scene stating that Bowser lied about Peach being his mom and that Bowser Jr knows that.

— Andrea 🔆 The G in LGBT stands for Gundam (@FeoUltima) April 14, 2023

… but what was with Peach’s reaction when Bowser Jr. told her that she was his mother? She didn’t say, ‘What are you talking about?’ or just, ‘No way, kid.’ She said, ‘I’m your mother?’ as though thought it was somehow possible that she was the mother of this weird turtle-dinosaur thing, but she wasn’t sure. Is that the kind of thing most women would be unsure about? We don’t think so.

Something tells us that won’t be in the sequels.

Also, André over at Midnight’s Edge argues very persuasively that this movie is perfectly aimed at kids, and in the process, it became sort of political by not being political. Midnight’s Edge reports on rumors that originally Illumination was going to make Mario a supporting character in his own movie. According to that rumor, Peach was going to be a ‘Girl Boss’ cliché, who subverted expectations by repeatedly rescuing an incompetent Mario, while Luigi would be completely sidelined. But Nintendo had more creative control than usual, and they vetoed that plan. Nintendo reasoned that Mario is the main character of the brand, and he needed to be seen as the hero. And the result was a movie about a guy who lives with his parents (like many kids), looks after his little brother (like many kids), and wants to make his parents proud (like many kids), thus a movie that kids would uniquely relate to:

#SuperMarioMovie is a smash hit, which dethrones #Disney and humiliates the naysayers that were the establishment critics:https://t.co/WouZsoFS1K pic.twitter.com/ND5F9C9o1V

— The Official ME (@Midnights_Edge) April 8, 2023

We are not sure if we agree with everything in the video, but much of it is very credible and persuasive, as is their argument in this video that the success of the movie is a warning to woke Hollywood:

#SuperMarioMovie is a gamechanger, and #Nintendo an overnight powerplayer in #Hollywood. Not everyone are too pleased about that though…https://t.co/yJaNH6bzyq pic.twitter.com/d1QDA1ejrI

— The Official ME (@Midnights_Edge) April 10, 2023

Indeed, at least one person is desperately trying to find woke content in it:

The joke is that a male character pretended to be a woman by dressing as a princess. And what you automatically thought was that it's lgbtq+ representation?

LMFAO what a stupid moron you are. hahaha pic.twitter.com/PAK4SqNaLu

— The Left Can't Meme (@Internet_TLCM) April 15, 2023

Would a transgender person even want that representation? He’s a bad guy.

Hard Drive, a satire site that focuses on gaming, even created a parody of Every Easter Egg in ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ article …

Every Easter Egg in ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’https://t.co/em9sdzDbkp pic.twitter.com/X3pBP5lnTF

— Hard Drive (@HardDriveMag) April 16, 2023

… which satirized the tendency to find wokeness where it isn’t, as seen in this screenshot from the article:

this is just correct https://t.co/pTGARm9Pvv pic.twitter.com/6WY8pfUs2d

— you've activated my YAOI card (@passtheyaoi) April 17, 2023

And the commenters had fun, too, including what we assume is a person impersonating Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of the Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda series, among others) responding to a strange request:

im happy miyamoto is finally going to give the people what they want https://t.co/PVK9xm7HLE pic.twitter.com/2ZdEKy1w8J

— soiimenta🆖️🇵🇷 (@SoiiMenta) April 17, 2023

Meanwhile ‘Mr. Wolfyface’ captured other funny comments:

Why are the comments under this article so out of pocket 💀 https://t.co/iP1dT1hTHP pic.twitter.com/jCLLRtDj7l

— MrWolfyface (@MrWolfyface) April 16, 2023

The final comment he captured is the funniest: ‘That movie was awesome. I got shot by a home invader once I got back from watching it, just got out of the hospital a few days ago. Police still looking for him. Loved the soundtrack.’

Sometimes, we really love the Internet.

Mario stomps his way into the National Recording Registry

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