MarioWiki:BJAODN/April Fool's 2022/Mario movie leak
The Super Mario Wiki has been privately contacted by an individual who claims to have early details about the upcoming Mario film. Unlikely as it sounds, the individual has provided proof their attendance at the screening. We are thus sharing this information for the sake of the public interest.
Words from our anonymous source
I was selected to watch a test screening for the movie in February. The movie isn't done so some scenes weren't properly lighted and edited and others were not done yet, so we only saw animatics, storyboards or a black screen describing what the final scene will be like.
After we were done, we were asked to fill cards with questions about various aspects of the movie and how much we liked it (I recall one being "How much do you like Chris Pratt as Mario?"). The documentation called it "Super Mario Movie World" but I am not under the impression this will be the final title.
The summary
-The movie starts in-media res with Mario being chased by Bowser in a purple car while Bullet Bills are crashing around and exploding. The scene freeze and Mario talks to the camera, saying something like “that’s-a me, Mario! You might-a wonder how I ended up here, that’s-a my story…
-Opening credits montage: The scene opens in the skies of Brooklyn, panning through the city and landing on Mario and Luigi working on a construction site near a wharf. They're operating levers and dropping cement in trucks, to the music of Mario's Cement Factory in a 'big band' arrangement. There's a lot of scaffolding and cranes/girders around. Mr Game & Watch makes a cameo in the background.
-Another record scratch, music stops and a shadow falls over the bros. Spike the foreman rolls up to them high and mighty in his gold digger, reminding the brothers of the important shipment of oil barrels they're expecting and tells them their responsibility to have them unloaded carefully, and if they screw it up he'll personally send them to the "minus world".
-The bros. are waiting for the shipment, a bit disgruntled with their boss. They say that if Spike ate more mushrooms he might actually be a 'fungi'. Luigi pulls out a flyer featuring an 8 bit version of Donkey Kong and says there is a circus parade downtown today. They'll have time to see before the shipment comes, and it could cheer them up.
-The bros. get to the street and watch the circus parade go by. There's a convoy of cages which contain the Kongs. First there is Dixie Kong and Diddy Kong doing tricks, and Cranky Kong follows in his own cage in an armchair snoring. Then there's DK in his own cage, who is visibly enraged at all the commotion from the crowd. Suddenly he picks up a wafting scent, and Pauline has just emerged from a café who specializes in banana pancakes. With love in his eyes, he tries to bust out of the cage, rocking it off the parade float and falling to the ground, busting the lock.
-The crowd screams and part ways as Donkey Kong runs towards Pauline, positively thinking she's the source of the banana scent. He grabs her and runs off through the city. Mario and Luigi follow Donkey Kong to the wharf, wanting to save the 'beautiful girl'. The oil barrel shipment has arrived.
-Donkey Kong climbs to the top of a steel girder, and he throws the oil barrels, rolling down girders suspended by cranes while Mario and Luigi dodge them on the ground. Some burst into flames. They kick into action and there's a music scene (Jump Up, Super Star!, continuing the big band theme) of them super jumping and gradually climbing up the suspended steel girders, dodging the oil barrels rolling down. Luigi throws Mario a hammer and he does the quick swinging thing from the game. They catch Pauline's possessions as she drops them (like the parasol).
-DK defeats himself by slipping on a banana peel but everyone thinks Mario is this hero and hails him. DK (suspended for a moment with the 8-bit chest beating sound) falls to the ground with a big thud and dust cloud. Pauline glides down with her parasol and thanks the brothers. Then Spike returns, and loses it because the oil barrels are everywhere and on fire. Pauline, Mario and Luigi try to explain what happened, and the bros. turn and point to Donkey Kong. But he has disappeared. Enraged, Spike promptly fires Mario and Luigi.
-Jobless and broke, they walk home while news bulletins can be heard/seen through shop windows about an escaped oversized ape roaming the city. Do not approach and do not feed him bananas. The brothers reach their downtown share apartment. They open the cupboards to find nothing but a few cans of mushroom spaghetti.
-Disheveled, Mario goes to the bathroom mirror and stares into it, absentmindedly combing his mustache. He turns the tap on, but the water pressure clogs up. He grabs a toolbag and starts tinkering under the sink. Luigi comes to the doorway and asks gently what they'll do now, we can't be out of work, they've got a high interest kart loan. Mario emerges from under the sink with a wrench and tests the water pressure, which is back to its normal flow. Mario looks directly into the mirror, so Luigi is reflected in the same frame. 'We'll start a plumbing business'
-'Let's-a-go' A montage starts of the bros. printing business cards, getting phone calls, giving each other a thumbs up when tightening a pipe and checking off completed jobs on a map of Brooklyn. This montage splits to Donkey Kong sneaking into the circus caravan convoy and freeing Diddy, Dixie and Cranky Kong from the cages (who would rather keep snoozing but is shushed and forced to come along). DK finds Mario's business card with the bros. photo and indicates with anger to the other Kongs that he's public enemy #1.
-The next day the bros. get a call from the mayor to locate an issue with the city's underground system. On the way to the job, the Kongs who are traveling through the city with stealth spot the plumbers from afar. They follow the bros. into a manhole, where they find the Mario Bros. arcade enemies running havoc. Mario and Luigi, holding plungers, nod and jump into action. There's a Scooby-Doo-style chase sequence (with pipes standing in for doors). At one point Mario & Luigi turn into their 8-bit sprite.
-Eventually they enter another pipe and find the Mushroom Kingdom. They find Toads and Mario gets really scared. He speaks in Charles Martinet's Mario voice until he calms down and lapses back in Chris Pratt's voice.
-The "main" Toad gives exposition about the conflict between the Toads and Koopas. He explains Bowser wants to marry Peach to take advantage of her magic powers so he can secure the "Star Spirit" and gain dominion over the Mushroom Kingdom. Luigi hypes up Mario to the Toads and Mario is nervously just like "heh heh yeah sure" the whole time.
-Bowser attacks Peach's castle with Kamek and Petey Piranha as his enforcers. There's a whole montage where Peach punches Bowser out of it a bunch of times but Kamek just teleports him back. Eventually Peach gets tired and says she might as well let herself be kidnapped because that's what princesses do.
-From this point, there's a bunch of action sequence where the bros. and Toads travel through environments from the games (field, lava, ice, etc) intercut with scenes where Bowser tries to charm Peach but is met with rejection. These were the bulk of the unfinished footage so we only had storyboards or descriptions like "Mario and Luigi uses Toad as a riding sleigh".
-There's this subplot where Donkey Kong follows the brothers into the Mushroom Kingdom to get revenge but he gets foiled by some contrived event without anyone noticing him. Like he slips on a banana peel thrown by a kart-racing Toad, he tries to shoot a coconut at Mario's head but a bunch of things happen that ricochet it back to him, etc.
-Eventually the gang catches up to Bowser but Donkey Kong intervenes and exposes Mario for not defeating him (he holds the banana peel he slipped on and everything). Luigi takes it especially hard because he idolized Mario and abandons him. Bowser blasts away Mario with his fire breath.
-A burnished Mario is found by Cranky Kong who gives him a pep talk and there's a training montage at Cranky's pad. (jumping over barrels, parkouring the first level of Donkey Kong, you get the idea). DK assists in the training because he didn't want to hurt Mario that bad.
-Mario hears screams from the nearby woods and finds Luigi getting attacked by ghosts from the Luigi's Mansion series. Mario yells encouragement to Luigi and together they defeat the ghosts. Now feeling they're back to being the Super Mario Brothers, the two decide to head off to Bowser's castle.
-Mario & Luigi go to Bowser's castle front gate. The bureaucratic guard refuses to budge but Luigi scares him with the Luigi death stare.
-Donkey Kong leaps over the gate and joins them.
-Inside the castle, the bros. eventually find Peach in her room. To get her out, they have her and Luigi swap clothes. To create a distraction while Mario helps the Princess get out, Luigi (pretending to be the princess) heads into the main hall with a pretend-enslaved Donkey Kong (made to look like a Guerilla from Super Mario RPG). He actually fools the Koopas until he accidentally exposes himself by not caring for peaches.
-The climax is a three-ways battle: DK fights Petey, Luigi fights Kamek and Mario fight Bowser.
-Earlier in the movie, there's a gag where Bowser brings an axe in the throne room and explains he tried to introduce Bowser Jr. to the more masculine hobby of woodcutting (not approving of his son's aspirations of being a painter) but found it difficult because the Koopa kingdom isn't known for its rich treescape. It's a chekov's gun: at the climax, when Mario looks cornered by Bowser, he grabs and the axe and cuts the bridge to the throne. Bowser falls into lava.
-There's a dance party ending. The song is a remix of Justin Bieber's "Peaches".
-There's a post-credit scene where some unseen person claims he won't let a "hairless pipsqueak" overshadow him and then the camera pans over to reveal it's Wario.
-Petey Piranha is voiced by Peter Cullen. James Spader is Wario. Daisy Ridley is Pauline. Dixie and Diddy vocalize with stock monkey audio.
