First, if you haven't seen Super Mario Bros the Movie yet, please do not. Do not let a single thing we say in this article persuade you to do so. It is an evil movie, the cinematic feature version of a brown note, an ourborous of hatred and destruction, a black hole from hell. It is so bad, Mario will be ruined for you forever. For those of you who have seen it, just know, the pain never goes away. It'll possibly ruin the franchise for you, it'll ruin your opinions of a few good (and some not-so-good) actors, and you'll feel like you might as well have just spent your time sitting around watching paint dry. Actually, do that. You'll probably get a bit more enjoyment out of it.

Super Mario Bros. the Movie is a nightmare of a film. It's about real live humans pretending to be video game plumbers saving a Princess from a dinosaur. Except it has more in common with Blade Runner than Mario. It is a horror show, and -- perhaps due to it creating a black void of time once people watch it -- there's a lot of neat things you might not know about it. Such as...

15 First True Video Game Movie

 At this point in time, with there being adaptations for every game under the sun -- Assassin's Creed, Doom, Rampage, Hitman, Driver, Crazy Taxi, Sonic, Final Fantasy, and even that homebrew your cousin made last week -- you might find it hard to believe that there weren't a lot of video game movies until recently. You might also be surprised to know that Video Game Adaptations exist despite the inaugural one featuring a giant lizard, mushroom monsters, and the most dystopian city since Mad Max. (Wait, that sounds awesome. It was all that but also a Super Mario movie. Okay, better.) Yes, somehow video game movies became a thing -- with some of them even approaching the level of adequate -- despite the entire genre starting off with a movie about two obnoxious New Yorkers falling into a hidden kingdom where the dinosaurs never died.

14 It Was Made By The People Behind A Surprising Film

Super Mario Bros. is a very dark movie. However, is it as dark as some other stuff? No. No, no, no, no. However, the film came into being thanks to a producer who had just proven himself on a movie called The Killing Fields, an Oscar winner, about a Cambodian tragedy. It's a harrowing, horrible movie, that features, as one of its leads, a man who had recently gone through the actual Cambodian events. How did this brave producer get from there to here? Simple: money. He decided that Mario could make him some money, so he pitched to Nintendo, got the rights, and the rest is, erhm, the subject of this article. Read on!

13 Co-Directed By The Creator Of A Popular Digital Sensation 

Max Headroom was a weird viral (before that really existed... so, VHSal?) sensation that was half Space Ghost Coast to Coast, half Johnny Mnemonic, and half the really bad weed your sister left in her room for nine years. It was powerful and striking when it first came out, mostly due to its advances in weird film techniques, such as the fact that that dude up there isn't actually a poorly CGI'd man, but a human who went through hours and hours of make-up. The creators of Max Headroom were chosen as they were a pair of striking, bold auteurs who could make a dazzlingly fresh and original movie, inspired by a red-suited dude who jumps on just so many turtles. Their original idea was dark and interesting, and pretty much nothing like Super Mario. But more on that later.

12 Danny DeVito Could Have Been Mario

Before we get into the weeds, let's reflect on a crisis that was averted. As we'll soon discover, nothing about working on this film was fun, which is why -- perhaps -- noted psychic Danny DeVito avoided it. He was in talks to play the lead role of Mario and honestly, who is a better physical match for the Italian plumber than DeVito? The man has perfect comedic timing, is willing to make a fool of himself, and can even play to children. He would have been wonderful as Mario, but unfortunately for us -- fortunately for him -- it didn't work out. So Bob Hoskins, fresh off his successes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Hook came in as the fire-spitting, Tanooki suit-wearing hero. And boy would he regret it.

11 Approaching The Story The Wrong Way

Let's take a step back and talk about another dark movie: Rain Man. It's the story of an autistic man who can count cards and a dude who takes advantage of him. It won Oscars. Your weird, art-interested "the Q stands for questioning" sibling probably loves that movie. Now, imagine wanting to make Super Mario Bros. Is the screenwriter for Rain Man who you would go to first? Nah, it'd be more someone like, say, the Richie Rich writers. Because they could do kid-oriented and bombastic. Okay, good call, and the directors eventually decided to go that route, but first they went to the Rain Man guy. In what world does a Super Mario Bros. movie exist, the credits of which feature the Max Headroom creators, the Killing Fields producer, and the writer of Rain Man? How did this film exist? How?!

10 Luigi Crashes A Van, Breaks Mario's Fingers

As mentioned, working on this film was about exactly as pleasant as... well, something really unpleasant. The stars of the film drank to cope with the horrible reality of making this film, with the actor who played Luigi getting so inebriated he crashed the plumber's car the Mario Bros. have, and broke the Mario actor's fingers. Now, Bob Hoskins, who played Mario, doesn't even think that was the worst part of working on this movie. He thinks the film itself was the worst part. Imagine breaking your fingers and that not being the low point of your filmmaking experience. That's what this set was like. That's what this pit into the underworld was like.

9 Mario's Dad Thought It Was Too Faithful

Yeah. You read that right. Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario. And Link. And you, probably. At very least, your entire childhood. He actually dug the Super Mario Bros. movie, because he likes outsider art presumably, but he did have one complaint. A quick rundown again: this movie takes place in a dark alternate world where people are turned into mutated fungus, by a Max Headroom lookalike, playing a bad rip-off of Lex Luthor. At the end, the alternate world merges with our own, and everything starts to rip apart. Mario and Luigi use flying boots and guns. The setting is Manhattan (and the darker Dinohattan). What's Miyamoto's complaint? That it was too faithful to the games. You can spend the remainder of this entry (and your life) dealing with that thought -- the movie was too faithful.

8 Rushing The Script (And You Can Tell)

One of the biggest problems with this abysmal film is that the tone makes no sense. On the one hand, it's a Cronenbergian body horror film, but its plot is (really, really bad) Pirates of the Carribean-esque fantasy adventure. It was shot wherever Philip Marlowe lived and on rejected Blade Runner sets. The film is all over the place. What gives? Well, see, the movie went through a bunch of scripts. The final version, though? That one was written about a week and a half before shooting on the film began. The directors had crafted a weird, severe movie that was almost nothing like Super Mario but might've really rocked. The executives took one look and said, This won't sell toys! and decided to replace the script. Actors tried to bail. The directors fought against it. In the end, the producers went ahead with their foul ritual and this unholy abomination was born.

7 Where Did Their Last Name Come From? Hint: Answer Is In The Article

Ever begin a sentence and not know where you're going with it? Mario was created like that. Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, made everything about him up as he went along. First he was a random man saving a Princess from a gorilla. Then he was a man who jumped and fought turtles. Then he had a brother. He became a doctor, then a sports legend, and eventually a sentient hat capable of possessing dinosaurs. But as he evolved, he did so according to the whims of whoever was making the next game. Miyamoto had no grand plan for him. He didn't even have a last name for him. But someone needed to name Mario and his brother Luigi. The creators of the film decided to do it for Nintendo, giving them the names Mario Mario and Luigi Mario (which makes sense given the name of their games are the Mario Bros). Miyamoto slapped his seal of approval on it and this movie changed the games, forever.

6 King Koopa's Actor Was A Real Monster

Actors sometimes are a bit hard to work with. Some of them will pretend they can't walk. Others will send used condoms to co-workers. It's a weird job, and pretty much everyone in the industry is hard to work with. So you know that when directors complain -- as the Super Mario Bros directors did about Dennis Hopper -- then you know some seriously bad stuff went down. Dennis Hopper, who previously had been in dark films such as David Lynch's Blue Velvet, appears in Super Mario Bros as an egomaniacal corporate head/over-the-top evil king -- which is a pretty big change, and as we mentioned, not the role he signed up for. Maybe that's the reason that he almost never listened to the directors, ignored their staging, and generally fought with them whenever he could, like a petulant teenager who doesn't want to do his homework. Or maybe he was just really getting into his role as a jerk.

5 Wasn't There Already An Animated Mario?

During the arduous creation of this film -- a film which went through at least seven scripts that we know of -- lots of things were considered. At one point in time, the idea of making the film animated was thrown around. While this would have made sense, it would have changed things considerably. For one, the script being rewritten a week before the film began would have caused major issues. Another is that if the directors got their way, the film would have been less Sleeping Beauty and more Heavy Metal. Any way you look at it, the film being animated would have been much worse for everyone involved. It may even have killed it. Unfortunately, this idea wasn't chosen -- possibly due to the existence of an animated Mario already -- and so we got Bob Hoskins in a jumper and a street that looks like wet cigarette butts smell.

4 If It Had Succeeded, Disney Would Have Had Mario

The world is dark and full of horrors, and soon Disney shall own all of them. They're buying every company and the only thing that may stop them is Nintendo. But if this movie had succeeded, then Disney would have possessed... Mario. Well, okay, Disney wouldn't have owned him, but they would have been able to market toys, t-shirts, etc., making money off of him the same way they make money off Marvel heroes now. A little-known fact is that this cinematic golgotha was distributed by Disney and if it had succeeded, it would have paved way for a happy partnership between Nintendo and Disney. And if that had happened, well, let's just say your very soul would be trademarked the Disney corporation.

3 Success = Much Weirder Games 

This movie failed so hard they bent space and time in two, creating the Berenstein and the Berenstain universes. Yep, this is what caused it. However, had it not failed so utterly that God himself could not watch its fall, it would have altered the Mario games... forever. See, the movie was designed to function as a prequel to the original Mario game (????) and the idea was the next Mario game that came out would reference it. Then there'd be another movie that functioned as a sequel to that game. The next game would be a sequel to that movie. And so on and so forth, telling one whole story through the games and movies, kind of like that other box office bomb The Dark Tower attempted to do. At this point, a creator saying their story is going to be told through film and any other medium is a surefire sign of a horrific failure, like unto the fall of Adam.

2 The Story Lives On

Most movies don't get sequels. It's a sad fact for those of us who were really hoping for more Gigli. Very few movies are so sure that a sequel is coming that they'll end their movie on an obvious hook. But Super Mario Bros did. And for years, that hook dangled like a, uh, hook, but one with just real bad bait on it. Just the worst bait. Until about five years ago when the screenwriter for the movie decided to finish his magnum opus and continue the wondrous adventure of the Brothers Mario in... a webcomic. Yep. There's an actual, canon and official Super Mario Bros movie sequel, and it's a webcomic. We haven't had the strength to get through much of it, but from what we can tell it deals with the Mario Bros saving the world again. But this time from Wart, another Mario villain. If you want to read it, go here. Alternatively, throw pepper flakes into your eye, for roughly the same feeling. 

1 Another One?!

So, after all we know, after all we've seen, what is the only conclusion you can draw? Well if you're Nintendo, it's "That's fun, let's do it again." Why not! The first film was only one of God's biblical plagues, an action so horrible it unleashed the Seventh Seal and brought about the end times. Why not make another one!? Of course, this one will be animated. And it'll be created by the folks behind movies like Despicable Me and Minions. However, Miyamoto, as we mentioned, has said he thought the Super Mario Bros. movie was already too much like the games. So get prepared for... anything. At this point, we'd settle for a let's play of Sonic (2006), AKA the one where Sonic smooches a human woman. Anything would be better than Super Mario Bros the Movie.