It’s a me, IP!
Mario is Banking Tons of Coins and You Really Shouldn't Be Surprised
Fresh from taking my kids to Disney World for Spring Break, I can only marvel at how these parks are aesthetically designed to be all-encompassing experiences, yet pragmatically designed to be incredibly efficient money siphons.
Leaving aside the small fortune I spent over the week, the aesthetics of these parks have undergone a striking shift in recent years - areas like Adventureland, Frontierland, and Liberty Square (all major areas of the central Magic Kingdom park) and other major “themes” of the “theme parks” are seemingly a byproduct of an earlier era. Newer areas in the parks are defined and themed around specific IP, most recently in the form of Galaxy’s Edge (Star Wars) and Pandora (Avatar). Hell, even some of the more generalized theme parks are getting an IP-filled shot in the arm, where the newest ride in the futuristic Tomorrowland area of Magic Kingdom is based on Tron.
One could view Galaxy’s Edge as merely a savvy exploitation of recently (and expensively) acquired rights, but realistically both Galaxy’s Edge and Pandora were a reaction to the challenger park system just twenty minutes up the road from the marquee mouse house parks. Universal Orlando was arguably saved from closing by the inclusion of The Wizarding World, stretching a Harry Potter experience across both of its theme parks, where attendance increased some 36% upon the inclusion of the massively popular (albeit increasingly problematic) IP.
If the idea of a theme park is to structure amusements around a consistent aesthetic and set of ideas, blockbuster IP like Star Wars, Avatar, and Harry Potter all seem like a natural fit: Massive, fantastical, well-documented, and uniquely stylized worlds with a significant fanbase who would jump at the chance to experience them first hand (from my perspective it is a stretch for Avatar to sit in league with Star Wars, but then I’m part of the pocket generation which is old enough to have the original Star Wars trilogy set its hooks in me yet be aggressively ambivalent to Avatar).
Book-ending our vacation with a viewing of The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a fitting enough ending to the trip - aside from the fact that the next massive IP that Universal has tapped for its parks is none other than Super Mario Bros. (technically “Super Nintendo World'' but it is entirely Mario-themed at this point), the record-breaking financial success of the movie is a different kind of testament to the power of IP and fandoms. At the time of writing, the movie has already chalked up the biggest opening for an animated feature ever, beating out four other Disney films that had previously occupied the top spots.
The mouse house has once again been put on notice, it would seem.
Many were seemingly surprised at the financial success of the movie…aside from those who are attuned to the gaming space, anyway. Gaming enthusiasts would tend to agree that Mario is to video gaming as Mickey Mouse is to traditional animation: Classic, iconic, recognizable world-wide, and family friendly. Sure, some of the success of the movie can be fairly chalked up to a paucity of family-oriented films as of late, but like the Mario Bros. games much of its success is due to the wide appeal and renown of the IP.
And yet, wide appeal somewhat belies its disparate reception as indicated by fairly bipolar Rotten Tomatoes scores (with critical reception hanging around the mid-50% mark and audiences in the high 90%). Critics hate The Super Mario Bros movie for the same reason audiences loved it: It's a direct translation of the game. Again, we shouldn’t be surprised - what was the biggest TV show of the year if not The Last of Us, which was (for the most part) a scene-to-scene recreation of the game. Critics presumably found more to love with Last of Us because it was already a cinematic, narrative-heavy game, whereas Super Mario Bros. never really has much of a story to speak of (before the Mario-stans get up in arms - I’ve played them all, and no, compelling story is not what is driving this franchise).
As we’ve discussed in the past (with a shameless nod to my companion AdWeek article), the renewed success of movies and shows based on video game IP can largely be attributed to two factors:
Broader cultural acceptance of video games, due in no small part to the growth of the gaming audience.
Showmakers who are increasingly staying true to the narratives, themes, and otherwise of the games being adapted, due in no small part to the sophistication of storytelling in some modern games.
The first factor has yielded a large audience who is acquainted with (or even loves) the characters, lore, and other aspects of particular gaming franchises. More simply, there are increasingly large fandoms calcified around gaming IP. By respecting what makes the IP successful, showrunners are not only catering to the fans but leveraging what makes the games successful in order to make other similarly successful entertainment products.
So, if The Super Mario Bros. Movie seemed like fan service…yeah. That was kind of the point. And we ate it up to the tune of several hundred million dollars. The relatively light and fun plot was probably enough for kids, whereas I (ostensibly a grown man) found myself recreating the meme of Rick Dalton/Leo Dicaprio pointing at the screen consistently over the 90 minute runtime.
Disney and Universal are making Star Wars and Harry Potter theme parks for the same reason we’ll continue to see an increasing number of video game adaptations for film and screen: IP with large/devoted fandoms have drawing power. As previously noted, not all entertainment organizations have the depth of IP available to the likes of Disney - the wellspring of IP waiting in some 65 years of video gaming has been relatively untapped and, with the right execution, can range from being exceedingly lucrative to critically renown. The potential for stories discussed more regularly across media (e.g. transmedia) ranging from the passive to interactive seems that much more plausible (and interesting when you consider how organizations such as Netflix have evolved).
Great IP is a constant, so long as it is delivered well and in a way that respects the core of what makes the IP successful, because that is how positive engagements with the fandom of the IP are facilitated. Early video game adaptations learned this the hard way by treating the IP as a license for particular marks, characters, or otherwise and assumed the fandom would follow. The trend of high quality video game movie adaptations is a correction to this trend. Much in the same way we’re approaching an era where video gaming will not be seen as an exceptional form of media consumption relative to TV or movies, so too may gaming IP be seen through a similar lens as IP from comic books, TV, or movies: Something than fans will gravitate-towards and celebrate, so long as it is true to what made them fans in the first place.