Video game adaptations are hard because, on one hand, you want to honor the source material while on the other you want to create something new and original. For example, when it came to The Super Mario Bros. Movie — which received mixed reviews when it came out last year — it would have been easy to just replicate the game’s music and call it a day. However, the composer for the flick didn’t do that, and for good reason.
The Mario games all have iconic scores, and composer Brian Tyler knows that. As a lifelong fan of the world of Super Mario, he is no stranger to the themes and audio of the games. So, part of the challenge while making the film was deciding what stays and makes for fun Super Mario Easter eggs, what goes, and whether or not the film should replicate the Mushroom Kingdom we already know or pay homage to it while still being original. While speaking to Deadline about these choices, the composer said:
We ended up going outside of the sound of a game and into doing a recorded full live orchestra.
So, they decided to do their own thing. However, Tyler continued to talk about his creative process and how they were also able to include references to the games’ OG music, explaining:
On top of that I used some of the sounds from the music of the games from the ’80s to early 2000s. I’d be doing a drum fill and some of the sounds would be on a drum kit from Mario Kart, so there’s this kind of merging of all these different kinds of things to make it sound really unique.
While they did include elements of the games’ iconic scores, Tyler also got into what it means to be a fan and having to push back against the desire to just recreate all the things you love about the source material:
I’ve never encountered a challenge like that where you’re negotiating with your inner nostalgic. I tried to make sure that magical quality of the time was there, but it can’t just be fan service where you’re doing everything as a nostalgic dopamine hit, but then it doesn’t really work dramatically.
And it seems like his work greatly paid off. Not only is the music and sound design for the Mario movie unique and wonderful, but Tyler managed to hide some Easter eggs here and there too that still pay homage to the legendary games. Plus, other original music in the film, like Jack Black’s iconic “Peaches,” made the movie all the more memorable too.
Overall, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a great video game adaptation, because it’s able to honor the games we all grew up on while telling a unique and new story. Now, with Super Mario Bros. 2 in the works and more video game adaptations on the 2024 movie schedule, it’ll be worth paying more attention to the scores and the ways they both honor and diversify themselves from the source material.
To go back and see how Brian Tyler’s unique score was used, you can stream The Super Mario Bros. Movie with a Peacock subscription.