That headline might sound like some kind of bizarre April Fool’s Day hoax, but I promise, every word of it is true. Someone (two someones, actually) found an extended director’s cut of the Super Mario Bros. movie adaptation from 1993 on an old VHS tape.
So who managed to sniff out such an odd piece of cinematic history? That would be Ryan Hoss and Steven Applebaum, the operators of Super Mario Bros.: The Movie Archive and the caretakers of an extensive collection of production material related to the film.
Trust the fungus and read on to learn more about Super Mario Bros.‘s almost-mythic place in the video game movie canon and how this extended cut will give fans a glimpse at a version of the movie that’s even crazier than what we got in 1993…
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After a furious bidding war in 1990, the rights to create a live-adaptation of the Super Mario franchise were awarded to Roland Joffe, an art house director best known for The Killing Fields and The Mission. Joffe’s resume was the first sign that Super Mario would probably undergo some changes before warping onto the big screen. Though Joffe would ultimately partner with Disney to finance the film, a family-friendly tone was probably never in the cards after he hired Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, the creators of Max Headroom, to direct.
Max Headroom was famous for its dystopian vision of the future, and Morton and Jankel used that same template to remake the Mushroom Kingdom into something that looked more like Blade Runner for kids. Gone were the colorful worlds and cartoonish characters, instead replaced by a thick layer of grime, sleaze, and an oozing fungus that seemed to cover every inch of the set. The actors were famously miserable (including Dennis Hopper, who played Bowser as a corrupt politician/businessman) and the production was a disaster, as recounted by Keith Stuart in a retrospective for The Guardian:
This anecdote reveals a lot about the making of the the Super Mario Bros. movie, which has slipped into cinematic legend for all the wrong reasons. But though it was a disaster in several different ways, it was not the creative washout that it could have been. The film’s strange cyberpunk tone, its epic dystopian sets and combination of computer-generated effects and traditional animatronics were groundbreaking and remain visually arresting – but none of it had very much to do with Super Mario.
‘The stench of it stays with everybody’: inside the Super Mario Bros movie
No one was completely happy with the Super Mario Bros. movie when it was released. Not the directors (they were ultimately pushed out by Disney before the film was completed), not critics (the reviews were dreadful), and not Nintendo (it’s failure kept the consolemaker away from moviemaking for more than two decades).
But a lot of people, not just Hoss and Applebaum, did enjoy the adaptation for just how far away it got from a typical Mario adventure. That’s why the pair were thrilled to discover this extended cut of the movie, which they’ve dubbed “The Morton/Jankel Cut.” Now available to download from the Internet Archive, this new version of the movie features more than 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage, including some of the more adult content the directors were planning to include:
Previously-unseen deleted scenes include the Mario Bros running afoul of the (probably Mafia-connected) Scapelli plumbing company, Koopa murdering a technician by de-evolving him into slime, and Iggy and Spike rapping about the overthrow of King Koopa at the Boom Boom Bar. (Along with some dancing women who were censored for the theatrical cut.) There’s more of Lena, Daniella and the Brooklyn Girls. Most scenes are extended in this version, with a lot more of the cast including Dennis Hopper as Koopa.
Super Mario Bros: The Morton Jankel Cut
The tape was heavily damaged, but Hoss and Applebaum recruited editor Garrett Gilchrist to clean up what they had into something watchable. And while they’re not done yet, they’re eager to share it with fans. The trio even created a short film that details the work that went into the restoration process:
It took nearly 30 years, but Nintendo never gave up on the idea of a second movie starring Mario. They’re currently working with Universal Pictures and Illumination to produced an animated Super Mario Bros. movie for release in 2022. I’m sure it’ll be fun and a much more faithful adaptation of the game franchise, but I’m almost more eager to watch this version to find out just how strange Morton and Jankel’s live-action adaptation could have been.
UPDATE (4/6/23): The Internet Archive removed the video upload of the Morton/Jankel Cut sometime in the last few months, as well as the description page posted by Applebaum and Hoss. However, the majority of the text can still be found under the “June 1, 2021” post at Super Mario Bros.: The Movie Archive.
UPDATE (10/12/23): Umbrella Entertainment has announced plans to officially release the Morton/Jankel Cut on 4K UHD and Blu-ray as a two-disc 30th Anniversary Edition and a three-disc Collector’s Edition on January 31, 2024.
These new editions of the movie will come packed with a blockbuster amount of special features, including a handful of featurettes and four brand new audio commentaries (one of which features Applebaum and Hoss).