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07 Apr

Charles Martinet Deserves Better Than His Super Mario Bros. Movie Cameo

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This Super Mario Bros. Movie article contains spoilers. When the cast for Illumination and Universal Pictures’ The Super Mario Bros. Movie was first announced in 2021, there was only one thing anyone could talk about: actor Chris Pratt replacing beloved veteran Charles Martinet as the voice of the Italian plumber. Martinet, a voice acting legend who has played the character in one form or another since 1991, would have to step aside for one of the biggest stars of the moment, a Marvel Cinematic Universe favorite no less. But also a performer with very little actual voice acting experience, certainly…

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06 Apr

The Bourne Legacy Revealed the Secret World Behind the Original Matt Damon Trilogy

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The scene where 2012’s The Bourne Legacy first comes truly alive features neither parkour or car chases; it also lacks fisticuffs or a single gunshot; heck, it doesn’t even have Matt Damon. To be sure, the fourth (and generally ignored) film in the Jason Bourne franchise has its fair share of death-defying stunts and white-knuckle action. However, the movie really clicks to life when a coterie of bureaucrats gather inside a windowless room, sharing hushed whispers. The scene is dominated by who was intended to be the series’ new big heavy, Col. Eric Bryer (Edward Norton), who is revealed to…

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06 Apr

The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review: Great Graphics Hide Uninspired Gameplay

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The shadow of the original Super Mario Bros. movie circa 1993 is strong. As one of the first video game movies, the picture had for a brief time the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and Arnold Schwarzenegger circling key roles. The stink we now usually associate with “video game movies” was not yet a thing. Of course that stench really began because of Super Mario Bros. and its status as a legendary Hollywood disaster. The scent became so overwhelming, in fact, not to mention humiliating, that Nintendo lowered the gates to their kingdom, refusing to let Hollywood enter again…

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06 Apr

Why Lumalee’s Super Mario Bros. Movie Role Is Surprising Fans

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This Super Mario Bros. Movie article contains spoilers. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is filled with easter eggs and references. For that matter, the entire movie is basically one big reference, which is part of its appeal and charm. However, the role of a Super Mario Bros. Movie character named Lumalee has already stolen the hearts of many early viewers and caught quite a few Super Mario fans by surprise. See, Lumalee first appeared in Super Mario Galaxy. A member of the Luma species, Lumalee is the name given to several star-like creatures that appear throughout the game. In Galaxy,…

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06 Apr

How the First Super Mario Bros. Movie Caused Nintendo to Withhold Rights for Decades

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Video game film adaptations haven’t always been smooth sailing, but with Illumination Entertainment’s work on the Super Mario Bros. Movie, the iconic franchise appears ready to receive a rejuvenation in the world of cinema. It’s taken a long time to get to this point, with Nintendo becoming very guarded over the rights to their properties and characters. It’s also become a difficult part of being a Nintendo fan: knowing that many of these beloved titles may never get adapted into a big screen spectacle. But why is it that so few productions have come from the Japanese console and game…

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06 Apr

2011’s The Thing Prequel Connects Perfectly with the John Carpenter Movie

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Warning: The Thing spoilers jump out of nowhere in this piece! “The last place you want to be in a storm in Antarctica is locked up with a bunch of Norwegian guys,” Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a Columbia graduate and vertebrate paleontologist, is warned as she is flown into the tundra surrounding “Thule,” the central research station in The Thing (2011). The sequestered Norse researchers have never seen John Carpenter’s claustrophobic 1982 alien invasion classic, The Thing. After all, director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and writer Eric Heisserer’s 2011 prequel is set at the Antarctic facility from which the…

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06 Apr

Does The Super Mario Bros. Movie Have a Post-Credit Scene?

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This Super Mario Bros. article contains spoilers. There’s no denying that Nintendo and Universal Pictures’ The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a visual feast, especially for those fans who love easter eggs. Yes, the movie is absolute jam-packed with callbacks and references, down to the tiniest details that populate the Mushroom Kingdom and all the other colorful, magical lands beyond it. From fire flowers that sprout from the grassy plans beyond Princess Peach’s home to a pack of multi-colored Yoshis prancing around in a blink-and-you’ll miss it cameo to the DK Rap and blue shells terrorizing Rainbow Road, there are…

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05 Apr

Seth Rogen Fought to Put The Donkey Kong Rap in The Super Mario Bros. Movie

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“He’s the leader of the bunch, you know him well, he’s finally back to kick some tail.” That’s right, Seth Rogen is lending his voice to Donkey Kong to this week’s The Super Mario Bros Movie animated feature from Illumination Entertainment, and he’s brought with him a famous (of sorts) ‘90s rap. The actor confirms as much when we ask if there was an iconic line or catchphrase he got to say as Donkey Kong. “I pushed hard for the [“DK Rap”] to be in the movie,” Rogen reveals to Den of Geek. The rap that Rogen refers to is…

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05 Apr

Barbie Trailer Has the Cast and Fans Ready for a Beach Off

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Nearly four months after our first teaser of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which promised a nigh Kubrickian  epic in a shade of pink, Warner Bros. has at last dropped a full trailer for the movie. And while it just stops short of putting Aqua’s classic “Barbie Girl” over the proceedings (sadly, bad legal history between the band and Mattel make it unlikely the song will ever appear in the movie), the first real look at Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in the new film confirms they are definitely living in a Barbie World. And they’re inviting you to go party. What’s intriguing about the trailer, still appropriately scored to…

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05 Apr

Captain America Actor Vents About Disappointing Marvel Role

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One of the most impressive signs of the MCU’s might occurred early in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As Cap and Black Widow make their way through a ship held captive by pirates, they’re stopped by the ring leader: Batroc the Leaper. To comic book fans, Batroc was one of the goofier characters in Cap’s rogues gallery, a Frenchman straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, endowed with the power of jumping really well. But in The Winter Soldier, Batroc was played by UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre, who proceeded to have a really cool action sequence with Cap.…

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05 Apr

Dennis Quaid Helps Tell A Forgotten Sports Story in The Long Game

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When filming The Long Game, major golf enthusiast Dennis Quaid learned something about making a golf movie the the hard way. “You don’t get to play that much golf at all,” Quaid tells Den of Geek during a visit to our 2023 SXSW studio. Directed by Julio Quintana (of Netflix’s Blue Miracle, which also starred Quaid), The Long Game is based on the 2012 book Mustang Miracle by Humberto Garcia. Both the book and now the film recount the real life story of the 1955-1957 San Felipe High School Mustangs golf team in Del Rio, Texas, which made up exclusively…

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04 Apr

Thor 4 “Took a Bullet” for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 at Marvel

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Remember Asgardians of the Galaxy? No, not the pretty okay comic series that spun out of the Thor-centric Marvel event War of the Realms. We mean the MCU team set up at the end of Avengers: Endgame, which seemed to suggest that Thor would be joining Peter Quill and co. to go on ribald space adventures. Thor’s time with the Guardians was a big part of the advertising of Thor: Love and Thunder, but the movie quickly discarded the heroes to set the god of thunder on his own adventure. Some people may have been disappointed by this missed opportunity,…

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04 Apr

Blue Beetle Trailer Teases a New Kind of Origin Story and Lots of DC Easter Eggs

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As we all know, Warner Bros. Pictures is releasing four DC movies this year: Shazam! Fury of the Gods is already out (and, er, very likely done), while The Flash speeds into theaters in June and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will arrive in time to celebrate the year-end holidays. Sitting right in the middle of those three – all of which have varying but more than decent degrees of, shall we say, brand recognition – and perched in an August release slot is Blue Beetle. Certainly a lesser-known name outside of diehard DC readers, Blue Beetle’s history encompasses three…

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04 Apr

Would J.R.R. Tolkien Have Wanted a Lord of the Rings Movie and TV Universe?

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More and more screen adaptations of the works of JRR Tolkien are in development these days. In addition to Amazon’s The Rings of Power, a prequel series set during the Second Age of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Warner Bros. Discovery announced in February that new films are also in development. The first will be an animated movie called The War of the Rohirrim, set 183 years before The Lord of the Rings and telling the story of a legendary king of Rohan called Helm Hammerhand, owner of the great horn at Helm’s Deep, which was named after him. We can only speculate…

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04 Apr

New Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Trailer Has a Surprising No Way Home Reference

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The Spider-Man films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have referenced the world of Miles Morales before. Though Miles exists in a different universe than Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, the live action web-slinger did meet Miles’ small time criminal uncle Aaron Davis (Donald Glover) in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and in the closing part of Jon Watts’ MCU trilogy, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jamie Foxx’s villainous Maxwell Dillon aka Electro receives the news that infinite parallel universes exist by musing “there’s got to be a Black Spider-Man out there somewhere.” Of course, there absolutely is, and he’ll be back this summer for a…

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04 Apr

Air Review: Ben Affleck’s Michael Jordan Movie Makes the Net

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Ben Affleck wants to make sure you know that his new movie as a director, Air, is set in 1984. The film opens with a blizzard of images and sounds from that time, ranging from Ronald Reagan’s reelection to the “Where’s the beef?” Wendy’s commercials, to just about any other specific visual cue you can think of from that year. Once that’s over, however, the needle drops pick up the slack almost to a fault: We hear the “you’re motoring” line from Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” in a shot of a car in motion. Meanwhile Big Country’s “In A Big…

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03 Apr

The Best Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Easter Eggs You Might Have Missed

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This article contains Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves spoilers. With Paramount and eOne’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves now in theaters, and blowing past studio projections for its opening weekend, it’s a good time to be a D&D fan. It also seems to be a good time to examine the easter eggs that old fans and new may have missed. If we missed anything please feel free to drop it in the comments. Cult of the Dragon Early on the film treats us to a delightfully narrated “getting to know the character” monologue by one of the film’s…

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03 Apr

Dungeons & Dragons Settings and Campaigns That Should Get Their Own Movies

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor among Thieves is at last here, and as led by Chris Pine with a song in his heart, and a lute in his hands, the film acts as a massive introduction to the Forgotten Realms of early D&D lore for a wider audience. That’s right, the game that was once accused of promoting evil is going mainstream with a feel-good comedy! Which is definitely one valid approach to the material. Indeed, over the many, many years that Dungeons & Dragons has existed, a vast array of worlds (known to tabletop gamers as “campaign settings”) have presented…

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03 Apr

Great Fantasy Comedies to Watch After Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

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It felt good didn’t it? Watching a fantasy film where folks could crack a smile and actually enjoy their adventure. There was certainly danger and monsters in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves—not to mention the roleplaying tabletop game’s namesakes!—but that didn’t mean you couldn’t enjoy the ride. In the last 20 years, fantasy has largely come to take itself exceedingly seriously where the fate of kingdoms or the entire world often hangs in the balance, and the central heroes who may start merry end the story broken, traumatized, and in a few instances ready to murder their homicidal lover……

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02 Apr

Murder Mystery 2: Are Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler the Real Villains Here?

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The murder mystery is having a bit of a heyday right now. Rian Johnson’s follow up to Knives Out, Glass Onion was a big hit for Netflix with critics and crowds equally pleased. Murder shows on the telly are everywhere. Detective shows are rife. See How They Run was really good and kind of underwatched… And Murder Mystery, a Netflix Original starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston became one of their most watched films when it arrived in 2019. So we’ve got a follow up, Murder Mystery 2, available to stream now on Netflix. And frankly it’s a bit of…

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