So a Mario movie is in the works as part of a collaborative effort between Nintendo and Illumination. Already hopes are high I assure you all now. For one look at Illumination’s track record. Three Despicable Me movies, a Minions spin off, Hop (which was an atrocity on the nature of man), Sing, The Secret Life of Pets and most importantly, the Lorax (which in itself is just a meme). If these films alone don’t suggest to you that maybe, just maybe Illumination are some of the most money hungry people on Earth, which says a lot looking at their competition, look at their upcoming titles aside from this new Mario title: Minions 2, A Secret Life of Pets 2, Sing 2. Seeing a theme? Furthermore all of their films have been produced with a budget of under $100 million, which is ludicrous for an animation studio. Now while I for one am all for creating a quick buck or too, when it comes to film the picture should come before the product. Of course, milk a good film until its teat starts bleeding for all the merchandise it’s worth, but don’t make a film purely to be milked (The Emoji Movie). Some of the most successful films in recent years are because faith was put in the director to produce something great, off of which can then be monetised, where as films that are purely made as a quick cash grab (the Emoji Movie) will go down in history as notoriously and comically bad (The Emoji Movie).

Mario himself is a very vague concept to turn into a film. Of course he’s widely beloved and extremely popular, but one of the biggest problems people have had with Mario for years is the classic concept “a big fuck-off lizard guy has stolen my royal girlfriend and I need to go retrieve her for the 19th time. I refuse to believe that enjoyment can be gotten out of a one and a half hour to two hour long film that ultimately revolves around these events. Nintendo have much more interesting and story driven characters to create a film about, include some in Mario’s own franchise. Wario has more bloody character development than Mario, sprouting many unique storylines from games of his own. Regardless Mario would always be the first choice for Nintendo, due to him being their glorious poster boy.

The scene has been set recently with the rise of movies such as Minions and The Emoji Movie for a new era of cinema, feature length advertisement. In all honesty I want to enjoy this film, but the track record of both Illumination Entertainment and prior Mario movies and media, this is looking to be something of which will haunt bargain shelves in Sainsbury’s stores for years to come once all is said and done.