My two cents about the Mario Movie

As our household is a household of Nintendo lovers, we went out to see The Super Mario Bros Movie.

Okay. Here’s my basic summary. The movie isn’t high art but it is clearly a love letter to the Mario franchise by people who deeply love the Mario franchise. It isn’t a deconstruction of the idea of Mario but a reconstruction of the games in a movie medium. Our entire family enjoyed the movie but it was aimed right at us.

I’m not going to spoil the plot, other than a couple remarks, but there are no surprises. You can see the plot points coming a mile away. But what I did like is that the script leans into the story beats.

Okay, this is a spoiler. This version of the brothers are from Brooklyn (not all of them are) but they aren’t pulled through a random pipe into the other world. No, they get pulled in while trying to stop a major civil engineering disaster. Mario leaped for the call before he knew it was there. He is never portrayed as a reluctant hero, just a novice one.

Peach is arguably the most redefined character as a lady of war (and it can be argued since Peach has been a badass in many versions of the character, dating back to the American Siper Mario Bros 2) but we loved her. She is the Batman to Mario’s Spider-Man. Mario won’t stop. Peach cannot be stopped. Even in her darkest moment, she comes out swinging.

(Okay, Lumalee is the most redefined character, as well as the inevitable dark horse darling of the film. It’s like they were thrown in to give even people who hate everything else something to love) 

I won’t bore you with other points I liked about the film (thank you very f you’ve read this far) The visuals are a treat. Jack Black is a hoot as Bowser. Luigi could have used more character development.

But the Super Mario Bros Movie succeeds at what it’s trying to do by celebrating its source material.

(I still fear my dream of a feature length Legend of Zelda movie where the Hero of Time Link uses the Ocarina of Time to open a time warp that lets Breath of the Wild Zelda team up up Sheik and Tetra  (plus Miidna for snark) to save the universe in a cross time caper will be never come to be)

Okay, Mario doesn’t work in D&D

 One of the dangers of years of playing D&D (or probably a bunch of other games) is the urge to figure out what the class and level of a fictional character would be. I remember watching Brotherhood of the Wolf with gaming buddies and we were constantly adjusting our stats of Fronsac as we watched.

Of course, TSR was as bad as any of us. An early column of Dragon Magazine called Giants in the Earth was literally just statting out whatever fictional characters they thought they could get away with. (No Lord of the Rings because the Tolkien estate was known to be litigious but I did find out about Karl Wagner’s Kane because of it)

For the most part, I’ve grown out of this tendency. But I’ve found myself thinking about how D&D would interpret Mario.

Since he jumps around and kills his enemies by landing on them unarmed, he’s clearly a monk. End of story. That’s not why the Shaolin plumber fascinates me as a D&D concept.

No, it’s the fact that Mario has been in literally hundreds of games. The guy has to have crazy experience points and shot past epic levels long ago. That’s the only explanation for why a plumber monk has taken the time to devote skill points to go kart piloting.

Obviously a first edition Mario just has to walk into the same room as the Grand Master of Flowers and he’d automatically get the title. Mario is the Perry Rhodan of video game heroes. (Yes, that means I’m telling you all I know about Perry Rhodan is that he’s been in over 400 books)

And yes, this whole train of thought is nonsense. Mario has no relationship to Dungeons and Dragons and makes no sense in the context of it. His abilities and limitations are defined by the technology used to implement him and the challenges the designers have him overcome. He can wrestle a turtle dragon into submission but an armless mushroom goblin can kill him with one touch. No edition of Dungeons and Dragons can justify that.

What this entire exercise actually shows is one more example of human natures desperate tendency to explain things and explain them in a format we can claim expertise in.

An outsider's look at Pokemon Go

Unless you count playing boardgames online, I'm not much of a video gamer. However, I did marry a video gamer, which helps round out our household nicely.

So I am actually aware of Pokemon Go. Otherwise, I would just think I was seeing a lot of people reading deeply meaningful texts all at the same time.

As a non-video gamer and a dad, I have a lot of appreciation for Nintendo. As a company, they seem to really encourage family friendly fun and activities, including encouraging kids to get some exercise. And they gave me Professor Layton. That's a franchise I can really sink my teeth into.

For everyone who is like me, Pokemon Go is a game that combines hunting and live trapping cute little monsters with GPS. You actually have to get out of the house and hunt the Pokemon down on foot. 

I've been calling it Pokemon the LARP.

I actually consider this to be pretty brilliant. I understand that the game eats battery power like it was going out of style and probably isn't that good for data plans. I know folks have wandered into bad neighborhoods looking for Pokemons and a Wyoming girl found a dead body (which sounds like the start of a weird crime drama - They collect Pokeman and Evidence!)

However, I like that it encourages kids to get off the couch, go outside and explore their environment, along with getting some exercise. Plus, the idea of creating a mashup of the real world and virtual reality is still new and exciting, even if other games like Ingress have already done it. 

The other night, I saw a group of people standing outside a closed library, staring at their phones. I wanted to pull over and ask them what faction they were in.

I don't know if Pokemon Go will be a two-week phenomena or a lasting game or a sign of games to come. If nothing else, it's a fascinating social experiment and an infesting idea for a game.