I love a Mario game, so I don’t particularly need a movie version. There are countless ways to hang out with Super Mario and his crew; you will never run out of choices. Supposedly this one is perfectly fine? The live-action 1993 film is not great, but I have to give it props for finding a lot more ways to incorporate women than this one has (there are exactly three female voices credited in this movie, one of which seems to be the director’s daughter — not uncommon in animation when you need a kid’s voice for a short time, I don’t think? — and the other of which are Princess Peach and then Mario’s mom, who doesn’t even have a name and therefore might ALSO not be a very big part. You can’t factor in Daisy? Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy? Or use your imagination to make any of the bajillion creature characters be a woman? I hope they did the latter, at least, and the IMDb listing is just super incomplete. Like, Bowser has female minions! Come on, people.
Side note: My favorite thing about the original movie is that Mario’s full name is credited as “Mario Mario,” and Luigi’s as “Luigi Mario,” which sparked a whole debate at Nintendo wherein everyone went back and forth until the CEO — the main opponent of Mario Mario — died, and then two months later they were like, “Okay it IS Mario Mario.” Scandal!
