My wildest, swing-for-the-fences theory here, is
that this Super Mario movie is gonna be a musical [Bowser]: Peaches Peaches… Nailed it. Fun fact: that song Peaches. Yeah. That thing is
now eligible for the best original song oscar. Academy Award winning songwriter King Koopa has
a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Hello? Internet. It's a me! Film Theory. The show that definitely
beat the obstacle course on the first try. So the Super Mario Brothers movie came out and let me
just say it. It was a blast. Was it high cinema? Kino as the kids online say? No, obviously not.
The pacing was a bit uneven. The random eighties pop song inserts just didn't work, and Peach’s
motivations for taking Mario with her on the adventure were weaker than a stack of goombas. But
darn it, if I didn't have a smile plastered across my face the second the Gamecube jingle played
as a cell phone ringtone, or when the brothers platformed their way through a 2D construction
site, or when the DK rap kicked into high gear during Donkey Kong's WrestleMania entrance.
So awesome! On that topic though that was probably my biggest complaint about the movie.
The creator of the DK rap isn't credited. Yeah, while all the other songs have their writers and
musicians properly credited, the DK rap is just from Donkey Kong 64. Real classy there
Universal. I mean, I know Seth Rogen said. But that doesn't mean that the man
behind this masterpiece, epic game composer Grant Kirkhope, should be overlooked.
Artists deserve to be credited for their hard work, and that includes the DK rap, no matter
what Seth Rogen thinks about it. And the snub was obviously enough to upset Grant. So
here's what I propose loyal theorists. Let's work together to change the Mario movie. If you
have yourself a Twitter account, go and use that toxic platform to do some good today.
Tweet at Universal or specifically @Universalpics , asking them to change the credits
in the digital release of the Mario movie to include all the proper credits for the writers and
performers of the DK rap. And make sure you use the hashtag #SaveTheDKRap so we can get this
puppy trending. If it gets enough attention, if media outlets and YouTubers and streamers
start making enough noise with this story, maybe Grant and everyone else who worked on this
thing will get the credit that they deserve for writing a song that so many people love. Or
at least me. It was.. I was so hype when they played this. I will fully admit my bias here.
I'm not usually the type to get really excited about nostalgic, like memberberry stuff,
but man, that was an Easter egg I did not see coming and it hit hard. But beyond the
music, the missing credits and the beautiful animations we all know what I was really there to
see THE LORE, and let me tell you there friends, there was so much in this thing.
We here at Theorist HQ actually have a ton of ideas and we're definitely going
to be diving further once it's available to scour frame by frame. So super jump on that
subscribe button right now so you get notified of when all those episodes come out. But
as of today, in true video game fashion, we're going to be speed running our way through
4 mini theories that may just change the way you look at these core Mario characters forever.
Today we're covering everything from Peach's mysterious origins, and the twisted logic of
the mushroom kingdom to the realities of the wider meta Marioverse. So suck down a mushroom
and design yourself a cart friendos. Let’s Go! So let's kick things off with theory number one.
You cannot die in the mushroom kingdom. One subtle detail that I think most people overlooked
in this new movie is how they visualize the damage that Mario was taking. Through all of the
punishment that he takes in the mushroom kingdom, Mario comes away basically unscathed. For
instance, in the arena battle against Donkey Kong, Mario gets rocked. He's grabbed, smashed, tossed,
slammed and made into the equivalent of plumber Play-Doh. And yet his body reflects none of that
damage. He is literally on the verge of passing out. But there's not a scrape or bruise
on him either during or after the fight. Big deal, right? It’s a Mario Movie. What do I
expect? It's not like they're going to show the main character bleeding or something. Except
that's exactly what they show us during the movie's final fight. During the final battle,
all the characters are sucked back out of the warp pipe and launched into Brooklyn. And here we
once again see Mario taking a lot of hard knocks. Except this time his body is showing all the
damage, complete with a black eye and a bruise on his cheek. I mean, these sorts of design choices
aren't made casually, especially for big feature film collaborations between two companies like
this, and especially when one of those companies is Nintendo, one that's so protective of their
characters that they gave Disney notes about how Bowser would hold his teacup in Wreck-It Ralph.
It's also not like Bowser was rougher with Mario out here than anything we saw happen inside the
mushroom kingdom. There are multiple occasions where both Mario and Luigi probably should
have died during their adventures. Adding to this idea early on in the movie, we see Bowser
use his flame breath on a disobedient Koopa, but instead of killing him, this act scorches
off all his outer flesh, transforming that Koopa from a turtle into a dry bones.
What this tells us is that people's biology seemed to act differently across the different
worlds or kingdoms of the Mario universe, and that for whatever reason, the mushroom kingdom
is one where your spirit or living self is somehow contained within the bones of your body. What this
tells me is that in the final act of the movie, as Luigi is lowered down into the pit of lava,
and nearly burned to death, what really would have happened if that scene had continued would
have been him turning into a living skeleton rather than immediate and permanent death.
Still a downgrade from fleshy human status, for sure, but hey, at least it's not
death-death. So take a chill pill there, Luigi. Death only appears to be permanent if it's
out in the real world. Theory number two. Did you notice the cavalcade of Nintendo references
that are packed into this movie? Of course you did. It's impossible not to notice them.
There were so many in this thing that the New Rockstar's Easter Egg video that breaks this
puppy down is going to be longer than the actual movie. Some of my personal favorites, obviously
the songs I mentioned earlier like the DK rap, but there was also the Super Mario rap from their
old TV show that was used in the commercial. All the construction signs of Game-and-Watch
characters on them. That's really fun. There's the shot of Mario versus Bowser, framed
like it's a K.O. in Super Smash at the end. And that moment that Mario defeats Bowser by
launching him with his tail, a direct callback to Mario 64. But it was the non Mario game
references that got me the most interested. Mario has a toy R-wing model from Star Fox in
his room. There's an F-zero poster hanging from his wall. The Punch-out Pizzaria is a big old
nod to the Boxing Adventures of Little Mac, which is also fitting since Mario was the
referee of that original game. There's also an Ice Climbers Easter Egg on one of
the awnings of the streets of Brooklyn. There's the whole scene of him playing Kid
Icarus, which we're going to talk about a lot more later. But to me, it's what isn't
there that stands out the most. In a movie that's literally a Nintendo victory lap crammed
full of every IP they got. The omissions are telling. Did you notice the distinct lack of
anything related to Zelda? Metroid? Pokémon? Kirby? Well, that tells me that Nintendo has
carved those IP out to shop around. I suspect that according to the contract, anything that
appears in this movie would have to have been committed to a production in partnership with
Illumination. And since those are the main IP that Nintendo is lining up to continue their multimedia
movie push, keeping them out was an intentional choice to have them remain as free agents.
Speaking of missing characters, the Mario movie is literally a timeline of Mario games.
The whole thing begins with Mario and Luigi talking to Foreman Spike about their construction
jobs and being part of The Wrecking Crew. And it all ends with Bowser's wedding, where he wears
the exact outfit from Mario Odyssey. Basically, this thing is giving you a complete picture
of Mario across the years beginning to end, and then they put in practically every
power up you'd want to see in this thing. Mushrooms, stars, fire flowers. Sure, that's to be
expected. But also mini mushrooms, tanooki suits, ice flowers, the frickin cat suit. That made me
wonder, where could they possibly go next? When your first film is literally a highlight
reel of 35 years worth of games, what else can you possibly include? Well, obviously
with Bowser temporarily out of commission, the next one has gotta star Wario and our meme
lord and savior Waluigi tried to nab Yoshi Eggs from Yoshi's Island. That one seems like a
no brainer. Maybe throw some koopalings in there for good measure. And after that, we're
going to be taking a trip to space to explore some galaxies. Where finally, I'd expect we meet
our last and most important character, Rosalina. And it's then in the proposed third movie of this
trilogy where we’ll be revealed Peach’s Origins. Which then brings us to theory number three.
Peach is a star. During a scene in Act Two as Mario, Peach and Toad are on their
way to try and recruit the Kong army against Bowser's invasion. The trio spend
a night in a field full of fire flowers, Mario and Peach use the opportunity to do some
character development, telling each other, and the audience about their backstories and motivations.
And it's here that Peach reveals that she doesn't know where she's from. The only thing that she
does know is that it's not the mushroom kingdom. It's here that we see her earliest memory arriving
in the mushroom kingdom from a pipe as an infant and then getting adopted by the toads. Mario
wonders if Peach could be a human from his world. But given the way Peach reacts to this question, I
kind of doubt it. She just kind of softly smiles, turns away, looks up at the night sky and
says, It's a big universe out there with a lot of galaxies. Now if that right there isn't a
giant neon billboard spelling out Theory Bait. I don't know what is. So obviously it seems like
they're setting up some future films to explore Mario Galaxy stuff, and that stuff is going to
be directly related to Peach’s backstory, but I suspect we can actually get more specific here.
Hear me out on this. But what if Peach is literally a humanoid star, one of the
superstars that had somehow taken human form. It might sound like a stretch but let's
look at some of the evidence. If we look back at that scene where Baby Peach arrives in
the mushroom kingdom, there's lots of little details that start adding to the theory.
Firstly, Peach arrives out of a pipe that's constantly glowing. Unlike Mario who arrives
in a pipe that flashes as it spits him out, but then turns entirely dark. That right there
tells me there's some really powerful magic on the other side of that pipe. And the most
powerful thing that we see in this world are the superstars. And wouldn't you
know it, they glow just like the pipe. Secondly, the skirt that baby Peach is wearing
in the scene is covered in a repeating pattern of stars and moons. A character's design
in an important flashback like this, likely had input from everyone up the chain of
command in both Illumination and Nintendo. So this detail is something that they are 100% wanted
in there. Thirdly, Peach is clearly powerful. Not only is she a capable warrior, but it also
appears like she's always been powerful, since she was able to do the obstacle course that Mario
struggles with on her first try. The only other time we see anyone as capable as her. Is when
Mario and Luigi have the power of the superstar at the end of the movie. Also, this is a bit of
a minor point, but I figured I should mention it. We also see both baby Mario and baby Luigi in the
film, and both of them have these weird little beady eyes, basically just pupils without
the white sclera around it. But baby Peach, her eyes are fully formed. They're big and they're
blue and they have a giant sclera. Probably has more to do with being consistent with the already
existing designs of the baby versions of these characters that we see in the video games.
But it does certainly add more evidence to the Peach isn't human pile. The babies that we
know are humans have eyes that look this way and the babies that might not be human but might come
from outer space look like this. Another big point here, when Peach first meets Mario, she excitedly
asks him, You're human! You are a human,Right? Before commenting that she thought he'd be bigger
and asking where he came from. But obviously that then begs the question how does Peach know
what a human is? For someone who grew up with a race of fungus people since she was a literal
infant. It’s a weird piece of knowledge to have. The bigger issue here, though, is that kids lose
their memories. At a certain point in childhood, usually around the age of three, when they
become verbal, they undergo what's known as childhood amnesia, the natural and gradual loss
of memories from the first few years of life. In this scene, we see Peach using a pacifier,
but also able to walk. Now human babies begin walking anywhere between ten and 18 months,
and pacifiers can honestly hang around as long as parents are willing to let their kids use
them. The long and short of this is that Peach in this scene is probably around the age of two.
And even if Peach were a human and knew about it at this age, that knowledge would likely
have been lost as part of the childhood amnesia process. Instead, the knowledge of what
a human is seems more like some sort of innate knowledge that an intergalactic traveler might
have, or at least someone who's gotten a lot of knowledge about the different galaxies
and the races that are contained therein. There's also a ton of evidence that we can
actually bring in here from the games as well. In some truly ancient Game Theories that are almost
nine years old at this point. We talked about the origins and parentage of the character Rosalina,
the space traveling princess from the Mario Galaxy Games, who is quite literally, mother to the
stars. Those theories are great, by the way. They hold up really well. They're old, but man,
to this day they are some of my favorites that we've ever done. Anyway, to quickly summarize here
throughout Super Mario Galaxy, Rosalina reads from a storybook about a sad little girl in search
of A luma's missing mother. Though it's never explicitly stated, the story is likely about
Rosalina herself. In the book, we see glimpses of Rosalina's mother, who looks an awful lot like
Peach and who also has herself Peach's earrings. We also see Rosalina's childhood castle, one
that has itself the exact same silhouette as Peach's Castle in most depictions, symmetrical
spires on the sides and one large spire in the middle. Genetically, Rosalina's eye color, hair
color, earlobes and even her left handedness would all match with Peach. And even the author of
this storybook portion of the game has gone on record to say that his original intent
was for Rosalina and Peach to be related. There's also the French translation of this
story, which makes mention of a father's signature mustache. So isn't it suspicious,
then, that the movie goes out of its way to further the connection between Peach and other
galaxies? The filmmakers are outright doing everything in their power, but spelling out Peach
is Rosalina's mom in the night sky. Additionally, the captive nihilistic Lumalee from the movie
outright says time like hope is an illusion. Another point towards that old theory of
iterative variants of the universe and the connection between Peach and the stars. I
suspect that in movie three they'll be coming to this realization of the family connection,
and then there will be a final reset of the timeline to start things all over again. Exactly
what we saw with the original Mario Galaxy. And finally, that brings us to theory number
four, or, I guess more observation number four. As we talked about earlier, we see Mario playing
Kid Icarus on the Nintendo entertainment system, the very first home console that Nintendo released
stateside. Now at first you might be thinking to yourself, so what? Famous Nintendo product
being featured as an Easter egg in a movie about Nintendo's biggest franchise.
What's the big deal with that? Well, it's actually huge. You see, if Mario's a real
person in this universe, that means that his games don't exist. Now, some version of Donkey
Kong or in this case, Jump Man still exists in this universe. We see an altered version of
the original Donkey Kong Arcade cabinet in the Punch-Out pizzeria with a yeti in place of DK and
different humans in the places of Mario and Lady. But everything that Mario as an IP has touched
doesn't really seem to be a thing in this world. The existence of the Punch-Out pizzaria means that
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out couldn't have been a game. In fact, Mario's complete lack of acknowledgment
towards any of the Mushroom Kingdom, Donkey Kong, Koopa Army, the Yoshi imagery, all of that
means that basically nothing related to Mario Brothers or Yoshi's Island or Donkey Kong
country exist as video games in this world. Now on the surface that might not seem like much
until you remember that without the Mario games there would be no Nintendo. See, when the NES hit
store shelves the United States was in the midst of the video game crash of 1983. Consumers didn't
trust video games because there had been such a huge surplus of poorly made garbage games like
the infamous Atari version of E.T. years before. That sentiment was only able to get turned around
when Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System, marketing the thing as more of a toy
than a video game which proved games really could be good, actually. And the main way they
proved that the original Super Mario Brothers platformer was a package title for the console.
Americans only started to trust video games again when they popped in Super Mario Brothers
and saw that it was a high quality, fun game. And the numbers absolutely reflect this fact.
The Nintendo Entertainment System had a launch lineup of 17 games, including the likes of Kung
Fu, Hogan's Alley, Gyromite, Excitebike. A lot of ones that, you know, really set the world
on fire, clearly. And then, of course, you had the creatively titled games like Golf, Pinball,
Baseball, and of course, there was also Mario. And of that group, Mario stood head and shoulders
above the rest. Of the NES’s top five selling games, three of them are Mario games. Super Mario
Brothers alone as a pack-in title for the console, sold 40 million units. It is one of
the top selling video games of all time. Those Mario games at the top of the
list total around 65 million units sold. The only game in the top five to not be a
pack-in or Mario game sold 8 million. Zelda, Nintendo's second highest performing IP only
sold 6.5 million, and don't even get me started on Kid Icarus who couldn't even crack the top
30 with only 1.7 million units sold. What I'm trying to say here is that without the Mario
Games, the NES likely wouldn't have caught the public's attention, and Nintendo likely wouldn't
have survived the changing era of entertainment. Heck! Video gaming itself may not have existed
as a medium, considering that Mario was the game that won back everyone's trust. At the very least,
the industry would have likely been set back by at least a decade from where it is today. No Super
Mario means no new revolutionary 3D video game controls with Mario 64. That then translates to
no new 3D platformer revolution leading to games like Banjo Kazooie, Spyro the Dragon and Ocarina
of Time. No Mario Kart, no Super Smash Brothers completely omitting two of the most impactful
and highest selling video game franchises of all time and the lackluster growth of video games
would probably also translate to differences in the Sony PlayStation and Xbox. And all of this is
without even touching all the ancillary businesses like the CGI tech, all the amazing lighters and
shaders and game engines that have been built off the backs of gaming and all of that gaming off
the back of Mario. With Mario being a real guy in this world instead of a video game character,
it means that one of the other Nintendo IPs had to have been the one that spearheaded the revival
of video gaming as we know it. And based on the fact that Mario has F-Zero posters and Star Fox
replicas but no Triforce merch, no Kirby Plushie, no Samus calendar, it means that none of them were
made into games in this universe either. In short, what we're seeing in the Mario movie is a
timeline where Kid Icarus was the killer app for Nintendo's rebirth of gaming, all its vertical
platforming, all its eggplants, all of this. Oh no, we've entered into the darkest timeline. But hey! That's just a theory,
A FILM THEORY aaaaand cut. Given the wild success of the Mario movie
and the Last of US series. I expect we're going to be seeing a lot more of these
video game tie-ins in the future. I mean, we're already apparently getting a
minecraft movie led by Jason Momoa, and I shudder to think about what we're
going to have to talk about on this channel when the FNAF movie finally comes out.
But we will be there. So if you want to see what theories we come up with when those
movies start release and trailers smash that subscribe button like you're smashing Bowser in
the face. That way you're going to be the first to see when all of those things go live. And as
always, my friends, I will see you next week.
