Mario and Nintendo chat from the original thread at 'Beyond Big Thunder Mountain' Blue Sky concept revealed for Magic Kingdom

[celluloid]

I've been a part of a site called Hollywood stock exchange for about 20 years. It's like a regular stock market but all the stocks are movies. Right now it's at 216 million. It's usually pretty spot on.

That seems a little low when you consider Mario is the only Easter Weekend release and the weeks after that are Rated R films.

Friday, April 7, 2023

The Super Mario Bros. Movie - Rated PG - Chris Pratt, Charlie Day

Friday, April 14, 2023

The Pope’s Exorcist - Rated R - Russell Crowe, Alex Essoe

Renfield - Rated R - Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Hoult

Friday, April 21, 2023

Beau is Afraid - Rated R - Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey

The Covenant - Rated R - Jake Gyllenhaal, Antony Star

Evil Dead Rise - Rated R - Alyssa Sutherland, Lily Sullivan

Friday, April 28, 2023

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Rating TBD - Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams

I don't think the April 28th coming of age story is going to knock it down too far by that point.

That Three Day holiday weekend that parents like to spend with their kids and all those weeks of Rated R films, and then the legs it may have for weeks as Schools start going into Summer Vacation at the end of May tells me it is going to past that 216 million.

But I could be wrong. I say this as someone who is excited for Reinfield from the same studio as Mario.

 

[the_rich]

That seems a little low when you consider Mario is the only Easter Weekend release and the weeks after that are Rated R films.

Friday, April 7, 2023

The Super Mario Bros. Movie - Rated PG - Chris Pratt, Charlie Day

Friday, April 14, 2023

The Pope’s Exorcist - Rated R - Russell Crowe, Alex Essoe

Renfield - Rated R - Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Hoult

Friday, April 21, 2023

Beau is Afraid - Rated R - Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey

The Covenant - Rated R - Jake Gyllenhaal, Antony Star

Evil Dead Rise - Rated R - Alyssa Sutherland, Lily Sullivan

Friday, April 28, 2023

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Rating TBD - Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams

I don't think the April 28th coming of age story is going to knock it down too far by that point.

That Three Day holiday weekend that parents like to spend with their kids and all those weeks of Rated R films, and then the legs it may have for weeks as Schools start going into Summer Vacation at the end of May tells me it is going to past that 216 million.

But I could be wrong. I say this as someone who is excited for Reinfield from the same studio as Mario.

The way it works is that they only track it for its first 6 weekends. That's why I think 250 because it'll still make money through tbe summer.

 

[celluloid]

The way it works is that they only track it for its first 6 weekends. That's why I think 250 because it'll still make money through tbe summer.

That just seems really wild to me. I can't imagine the movie only doing a tad better than Pussn' boots 2 The Last Wish globally, as great of a film that was for a sequel spin off as it was. Mario has to top that by a long shot due to the hype of the character in his first animated film.

What do you think Across the Spiderverse is going to do then if Mario only gets to 250 and you say Spidey Miles will top it?

 

[the_rich]

That just seems really wild to me. I can't imagine the movie only doing a tad better than Pussn' boots 2 The Last Wish globally, as great of a film that was for a sequel spin off as it was. Mario has to top that by a long shot due to the hype of the character in his first animated film.

What do you think Across the Spiderverse is going to do then if Mario only gets to 250 and you say Spidey Miles will top it?

I dont think it's gonna be much higher. I'm looking at 275 with an outside shot at hitting 300 if it's as good as the first. But I'm being bullish. On that site they are both around the same.

 

[Sharon&Susan]

I'd be really surprised if the Mario movie made under 300 million worldwide since every other Illumination movie (other than Hop from 12 years ago) has grossed more than that.

 

[the_rich]

I'd be really surprised if the Mario movie made under 300 million worldwide since every other Illumination movie (other than Hop from 12 years ago) has grossed more than that.

No, I think 250 million domestic not worldwide.
Some people were saying a billion which I don't see happening.

 

[SplashJacket]

The people arguing the lack of cultural significance of Mario & Company are cut from the same cloth that originally thought Star Wars and super heroes were for nerds and Harry Potter is for children.

It’s downplaying the utterly monumental Nintendo and Mario brands and cultural and icon power.

 

[Marc Davis Fan]

The people arguing the lack of cultural significance of Mario & Company are cut from the same cloth that originally thought Star Wars and super heroes were for nerds and Harry Potter is for children.

It’s downplaying the utterly monumental Nintendo and Mario brands and cultural and icon power.

It's true. I was at Universal Studios Hollywood today and the number of people wearing Mario/Nintendo stuff was... wow. Of course, this is day 3 of Super Nintendo World being open to the public, but still...

 

[celluloid]

The people arguing the lack of cultural significance of Mario & Company are cut from the same cloth that originally thought Star Wars and super heroes were for nerds and Harry Potter is for children.

It’s downplaying the utterly monumental Nintendo and Mario brands and cultural and icon power.

This! People who don't play Mario are a minority if they play video games, clearly as The Nintendo Systems are always the biggest family sellers. It is a part of Americana/Japenese culture as much as Mickey Mouse at this point.

It may not be Potter or Star Wars on an allegory level as I stated earlier, but plenty successful enough for joy and merch.

I mean, Disney built an ENTIRE LAND themed to CARS. A property that has no humans in it at all, just anthropamorphic machines. It was a well enough done land that it did well.

Super Nintendo is a much bigger hit than that and like Mickey, has been reinvented similar yet different enough to keep going.

 

[Ayla]

I think there is a huge divide on Mario, it fits pretty evenly among generational lines, if you are a boomer or Gen X Mario doesn’t mean much to you, but trust me he is a cherished part of most millennials and zoomers childhood. It makes sense, as while he was in earlier games, Mario didn’t become Mario until 1985 (the year Super Mario Bros debuted.)

You older people can’t really comprehend it as video games weren’t a thing in your childhood, but they are essentially a new media, and Mario is essentially the Mickey Mouse of it. He might not be your favorite or most consumed game, but it’s highly likely he was your introduction to video games and remains a stalwart with pretty consistent fantastic games staring him. He’s video game comfort food. Just wait till his movie debuts in a few months, that film is going to print money so long as the movie strikes the tone of every trailer released. It’s a love letter to the character and is not only accessible to kids but striking all the right notes to get adults to see it too.

Wait, wait, WAIT ~ are you seriously mansplaining video games to Gen X? Oh, boy.

 

[Touchdown]

Gen X was born 1965-1980. Mario became wildly popular in 1985. Gen X was 5-20 years old, while younger Gen X likely got drawn into Nintendo a good chunk of them were past the target age. I said roughly, the so called xenials were swept up in Mario mania.

While I am aware Atari and arcades were very much Gen X, Mario is a bit too late for most of them.

 

[UNCgolf]

The people arguing the lack of cultural significance of Mario & Company are cut from the same cloth that originally thought Star Wars and super heroes were for nerds and Harry Potter is for children.

It’s downplaying the utterly monumental Nintendo and Mario brands and cultural and icon power.

No one has said anything like that. Mario is big. It's just not as big as some people seem to think and there are some pretty obvious, logical reasons that explain why.

It feels like brand loyalty is blinding people here and causing some defensiveness. They're reading "Mario may not be as big as you think it is" and deciding that means "nobody cares about Mario and it's doomed to fail" when no one has said anything even remotely close to that. No one is saying someone is wrong to love Mario, or that there aren't millions of people who do. There have also been suggestions that anyone who says so just doesn't play video games and so doesn't understand, which is both wrong (several people have pointed out they've played Mario going back to the 1980s) and a bad argument anyways.

Mario as an IP has some significant differences from most other IPs which makes it really difficult to draw conclusions. The Mario film will provide a nice new data point, although (like always) there are various other factors that could make it underperform (or overperform). But it also has the potential to create new fans among kids.

It honestly doesn't really matter that much in the end. It's a land at a new theme park, and it'll be a successful land. They don't need it to be the sole reason people are coming, because there are multiple other things at EU to draw in guests -- as long as it's attracting some people and selling some merchandise (and it will; I don't think a single person thinks it won't do that), Universal will be happy with the investment.

 

[Alanzo]

The central arc of a Mario game is "Bowser (or Wario or some other affiliate) is bad and Mario (or Luigi or some other affiliate) beats him". Plus a ton of classic Nintendo cuteness.

There's not a ton of motivation on display or lessons learned along the ways. Major note here that the upcoming movie could add serious flesh to the bones here.

On the other hand, the lesson in Cars is "take a minute to enjoy life and don't worry so much about being the best. Take it from me, I was just like you and I realized that the ultimate trophy was just an empty cup". There's a lot more heart , and emotional buy in, in at least this Cars 1 story. That, plus memorable characters with distinct personalities, might resonate with people more than a very fun but much more hollow Mario world.

 

[celluloid]

Gen X was born 1965-1980. Mario became wildly popular in 1985. Gen X was 5-20 years old, while younger Gen X likely got drawn into Nintendo a good chunk of them were past the target age. I said roughly, the so called xenials were swept up in Mario mania.

While I am aware Atari and arcades were very much Gen X, Mario is a bit too late for most of them.

You are fine. It sounds like that poster is a little sour about it. Particularly since "Mansplaining" is irrelevant. Characters got story arcs and voices much later than that. So what you said was still valid.

Video games have a much larger development team than they did as they became produced more like cinema.

 

[SplashJacket]

No one has said anything like that. Mario is big. It's just not as big as some people seem to think and there are some pretty obvious, logical reasons that explain why.

It feels like brand loyalty is blinding people here and causing some defensiveness. They're reading "Mario may not be as big as you think it is" and deciding that means "nobody cares about Mario and it's doomed to fail" when no one has said anything even remotely close to that. No one is saying someone is wrong to love Mario, or that there aren't millions of people who do. There have also been suggestions that anyone who says so just doesn't play video games and so doesn't understand, which is both wrong (several people have pointed out they've played Mario going back to the 1980s) and a bad argument anyways.

Mario as an IP has some significant differences from most other IPs which makes it really difficult to draw conclusions. The Mario film will provide a nice new data point, although (like always) there are various other factors that could make it underperform (or overperform). But it also has the potential to create new fans among kids.

It honestly doesn't really matter that much in the end. It's a land at a new theme park, and it'll be a successful land. They don't need it to be the sole reason people are coming, because there are multiple other things at EU to draw in guests -- as long as it's attracting some people and selling some merchandise (and it will; I don't think a single person thinks it won't do that), Universal will be happy with the investment.

Mario is one of the biggest brands and most recognizable IPs anywhere. Full stop.

You almost can't be hyperbolic about how big the brand is, because it is literally one of the most significant brands on the planet.

Downplaying the brand's significance, is, however, misguided. It's not that people are saying Mario is irrelevant, because they're not, they're just misjudging its actual significance.

It has nothing to do with whether or not it's "wrong" to love Mario, no idea where that came from, and +even if it was "wrong" to love Mario, that wouldn't discount it as one of the biggest brands in the world.

 

[UNCgolf]

Mario is one of the biggest brands and most recognizable IPs anywhere. Full stop.

You almost can't be hyperbolic about how big the brand is, because it is literally one of the most significant brands on the planet.

Downplaying the brand's significance, is, however, misguided. It's not that people are saying Mario is irrelevant, because they're not, they're just misjudging its actual significance.

It has nothing to do with whether or not it's "wrong" to love Mario, no idea where that came from, and +even if it was "wrong" to love Mario, that wouldn't discount it as one of the biggest brands in the world.

Using this graph is a wild misunderstanding of Mario as an IP, which is the entire point.

You see how the vast majority of profits are from video games? That's because it's literally like 150 games over 40 years. People like Mario video games, but it often has nothing to do with Mario himself -- it's because of Nintendo and general quality.

Even based on the simple numbers in that chart it should be obvious that Mario, as an IP, isn't as popular as some things below it like Harry Potter. Video game sales are a fundamentally different thing when it comes to Mario because of how he is used in the Nintendo ecosystem.

This is a great example of how statistics can be twisted to fit a viewpoint that falls apart if you're willing to dig deeper and actually understand the numbers.

Again, and for the last time -- Mario is big, but not as big as you'd think looking at a graph like this. The presence of stuff like Shonen Jump and Anpanman here should have been enough to give you pause. Anpanman is almost double Mario here but it's certainly not more recognizable than Mario to an average American.

One final example in another attempt to illustrate the point... Mario has something like 775 million total video game sales, which is #1 by far, but it's in well over 100 titles. Grand Theft Auto has nearly 400 million in sales in roughly 10 titles (depending on how you want to count, although the vast majority of sales come from an even smaller subset anyways -- GTA 5 has like 175 million on its own). Someone could try to argue Mario is obviously a more popular video game right now than Grand Theft Auto based on that total sales number, but it would be a very bad argument.

Mario is a big IP, but it's not one of the small handful of mega-IPs. That can always change, though -- things aren't guaranteed to stay mega-IPs forever, and new mega-IPs can be created. I wouldn't put money on Mario becoming a mega-IP, but it's certainly possible, especially with the film release. If the film is a huge hit that means it'll likely have reached a wider audience than the games alone have, and could also spawn a film franchise. Plus, it could supercharge merchandise sales.

 

[celluloid]

Using this graph is a wild misunderstanding of Mario as an IP, which is the entire point.

You see how the vast majority of profits are from video games? That's because it's literally like 150 games over 40 years. People like Mario video games, but it often has nothing to do with Mario himself -- it's because of Nintendo and general quality.

You could replace this with Mickey's legacy with cartoons and Disney and the quality they have traditionally represented in the past it would be the same thing.

 

[UNCgolf]

You could replace this with Mickey's legacy with cartoons and Disney and the quality they have traditionally represented in the past it would be the same thing.

I agree and said that above. Mickey is similar to Mario in that he's not necessarily that popular on his own but functions more as a corporate icon.

That said, Mickey Mouse sells absurd amounts of merchandise and has for decades -- Mario doesn't even come close there.

 

[celluloid]

One final example in another attempt to illustrate the point... Mario has something like 775 million total video game sales, which is #1 by far, but it's in well over 100 titles. Grand Theft Auto has nearly 400 million in sales in roughly 10 titles (depending on how you want to count, although the vast majority of sales come from an even smaller subset anyways -- GTA 5 has like 175 million on its own). Someone could try to argue Mario is obviously a more popular video game right now than Grand Theft Auto based on that total sales number, but it would be a very bad argument.

Mario is a big IP, but it's not one of the small handful of mega-IPs. That can always change, though -- things aren't guaranteed to stay mega-IPs forever, and new mega-IPs can be created.

The Brand Mario makes billions more a year than Rockstar could ever dream of. The kind that makes Mario, and the lands and characters that surround the zeitgeist more than worthy of a theme park land.

To the second bolded point. EVERYTHING changes. Anything over 20 years popular in art. You will find that is about the length of time(20 to 30 years) in most theme park lands and attractions last with few exceptions.

 

[celluloid]

I agree and said that above. Mickey is similar to Mario in that he's not necessarily that popular on his own but functions more as a corporate icon.

That said, Mickey Mouse sells absurd amounts of merchandise and has for decades -- Mario doesn't even come close there.

Well Mickey has been around a lot longer. If you discount the money Mario brings in from the near 200 games he has been a part of.

Then you would have to have Mickey out of the theme parks he has made money off of. And stick to his cartoon Medium. Its a whole synergy thing with any character. Mario and Mickey are the same in that branding regard.

And seeing as how Mickey has appearances in multiple theme parks attractions, all over them for 60 years, I think it is fair that Mario translates well to getting a few theme park attractions.