"With the success of the Mario movie", a counter-opinion

[AnonymousSpeed]

I don't mean to call anyone out on this, but for the same of demonstration, I am linking two threads which use the same quote from the title and seem to operate off a similar premise.

The idea here, as I read it, is that the Mario movie has paved a path for Nintendo to do more film projects, but I think that's a wrong reading. It's really following that path now that's already been open.

It's not even the first successful and well-received movie based on a Nintendo franchise- that would be Detective Pikachu, which even has a similar Rotten Tomatoes rating of being mixed with critics and popular with audiences. If anything has opened a door for future video game movies (and especially more fantastical or cartoony ones), I think that and the Sonic the Hedgehog movie are more deserving of the credit.

Just kinda my impression tbh I don't do market analysis.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It's not even the first successful and well-received movie based on a Nintendo franchise- that would be Detective Pikachu, which even has a similar Rotten Tomatoes rating of being mixed with critics and popular with audiences. If anything has opened a door for future video game movies (and especially more fantastical or cartoony ones), I think that and the Sonic the Hedgehog movie are more deserving of the credit.

Just kinda my impression tbh I don't do market analysis.

I think the main difference has to do with franchise and Nintendo's history with adaptations compared to Sonic or The Pokémon Company:

With Detective Pikachu, it's important to remember that Pokémon is not solely a video game franchise; the Pokémon Company is a multimedia franchise spanning video games, anime, trading cards, toys, etc. The Pokémon Company already knew plenty about navigating movie production thanks to the multiple anime movies, and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is ultimately another addition to the list of various media the Pokémon Company deals in, and the Pokémon company had less reason to fear the movie being a failure thanks to, among other things, the massive success of the very long-running Pokémon anime.

By contrast, the history of adapting Nintendo video game franchises such as Mario has been... not great. The 90s saw a series of cartoons, some of whom were well-received and got a decent amount of views (the Kirby cartoon and the Donkey Kong cartoon), but those two were the exception. The Mario cartoon and the Zelda cartoon were complete garbage, and the Fire Emblem anime suffered the same problem Fire Emblem itself would suffer in the 2000s: reviewed well by the five people that watched it, and the animation studio ran out of money after only two episodes. Those three set the tone, and then came the live-action Mario movie, which was such a nightmare that it completely soured Nintendo to the idea of adaptations of their video game franchises.

In the mid 2010s, Nintendo gradually warmed up to the idea of trying again at adaptations of their video game franchises, only to get burned again. They had ironed out a deal with Netflix for a live-action Netflix original Zelda TV series, and Netflix immediately broke the agreement in very stupid ways, such as intentionally leaking the deal to draw attention to it, so Nintendo promptly tore up the contract and reverted back to not wanting any adaptions.

 

The reason the Mario Movie's success is a big deal is that it represents things finally going right for Nintendo in terms of an adaption of one of its video game franchises: Illumination agreed to everything Nintendo demanded without ever going behind Nintendo's back, made a movie respectful to the franchise, and the result has been well received by audiences and is a huge financial success. 

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

Hi, me from that topic I made. To be honest, I have some friends who believe that a FE movie will happen, and I was (and am) still on the side who thinks FE is not anywhere near popular to score a Hollywood feature. To be fair, the fact that anyone thinks any JRPG can score a Hollywood movie is expecting too much.

Edited April 28, 2023 by NotYourKindOfPeople