Nintendo is doomed! Doooooooommmmmmmed!
What? No. This is not going to be that kind of editorial. Per their latest financial report, Nintendo is sitting on a warchest of $10,997,600,854. Even though the company posted a major operating loss in their most recent financial quarter, they could still keep the lights on for 24 years just by dipping into their piggy bank. And while they might be conservative, they’re not as conservative as people like to think. Nintendo’s video game business was just an offshoot of their attempt to manufacture toys in the late 70s, which came after they tried operating a taxi service and running a hotel.
As part of their recent financial report, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told investors that the company plans to license their characters like never before: “We are not at a stage where we can share the specifics with you today, but we are seeing possibilities in licensing character IP in areas Nintendo has never worked before. I expect to be able to discuss some of the details before the end of this calendar year.”
I’m not sure where Iwata plans to take Nintendo’s characters, as they already adorn t-shirts, toys, bedding, board games, card games, and hundreds of other products. We definitely know that this next wave of licensing will include a smartphone app that hooks into Mario Kart 8 and a passel of NFC figurines like those that tie in to Skylanders and Disney Infinity. But if Nintendo really wants to make the most out of their extensive stable of characters, they’ll resurrect an idea they had in the early 90s… and I’m not talking about the time they teamed up with Ralston to sell the “Nintendo Cereal System” in grocery stores alongside Corn Flakes and Chex.
Nintendo should pull a Marvel and get into the movie business.
It’s almost fitting that the video game movie trend was kicked off by Super Mario Bros. in 1993. Mario was (and still is) one of the most recognizable faces in the entire industry. And turning his story into a movie seemed like a no-brainer. Before “rescuing the princess” became a video game cliche, it was the favored motif for fables, fairy tales, myths, and legends. That part of the story was kept intact, but the bright and cheery Mushroom Kingdom was replaced with a Blade Runner-esque urban hellscape helmed by a pair of directors who created the similarly dystopian Max Headroom. Bob Hoskins (who played “Mario Mario”) and John Leguizamo (as his brother, “Luigi Mario”) hated working on the film due to the constant bickering by the directors. And Dennis Hopper, who was asked to play Bowser as a slick Bond villain, called the production “a nightmare.”
The whole process soured Nintendo on the moviemaking business and, aside from an aborted deal to team up with John Woo on a Metroid movie, they’ve never attempted to create another movie around a Nintendo character. Screenwriters and directors that wanted to stray a bit too far into uncharted territory doomed both films. By making the Super Mario Bros. movie more adult, the filmmakers stepped away from the all-ages wonder that has become the hallmark of a great Mario game. The jaunty technicolor world is a feature, not a bug. And according to an IGN report from few years ago, the Metroid movie fell apart because the filmmakers wanted to tell Samus Aran’s origin story, a piece of fiction that Nintendo wasn’t ready to share with collaborators just yet. Though, to be fair, when the consolemaker partnered with Tecmo to tell this story in 2010’s Metroid: Other M, it was a disaster.
But that’s just one more check in the “Nintendo should do it themselves” column, as they’re preternaturally in tune with what makes their characters tick. Link’s quiet stoicism has never felt like a false move even as the characters around him have started to chatter incessantly (insert your own “Hey! Listen!” joke here). Mario and Luigi can jump from game to game and genre to genre because Shigeru Miyamoto treats them as actors putting on a play instead of characters that require a consistent backstory. Star Fox is a Star Wars-y romp through a galaxy filled with anthropomorphic animals and talking dinosaurs. Not even Disney could pull that one off.
It’s not a coincidence that Marvel’s movies are heavily populated by Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning actors. Even before they were bought out by Disney, the comics company sought out the best actors and directors it could to bring their characters to life. Using the same preternatural knowledge of their characters that Nintendo possesses, they signed actors both well-known (Robert Downey Jr.) and undiscovered (Tom Hiddleston). Six years after Iron Man and four after Thor, can you think of any actor that would have more perfectly embodied Tony Stark or Loki?
By retaining control the way Marvel did with their “Cinematic Universe,” Nintendo can make the movies they want to make. Sure, there’s a possibility that a Nintendo-produced Mario movie could bomb as badly as the original film did, but there’s no way it would be, as Dennis Hopper said, such a nightmare. Nintendo’s instincts wouldn’t allow it. In a lot of ways, Nintendo and Marvel are very similar, as both believe they have a responsibility to be true to their characters. But to borrow a phrase, with greater responsibility comes greater profits.
With more than $10 billion burning a hole in their pocket, Nintendo could make the movies they want to make, hire the actors they want to hire, and reap all the rewards for themselves. The company could even compete with Marvel for the services of the best writers and directors working today. Who knows, maybe they could even get Tom Hanks to finally don Mario’s red overalls.
While I think moviemaking would be a great move for Nintendo, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. But I am not worried about the company’s financial future and their ability to try new things. After all, this is the same company that purchased a Major League Baseball team just to say thanks to the city that their American outlet calls home. Nintendo may not be Marvel, but they’re a marvel and they’ll work through their financial difficulties just like they always do… with innovation and a few big surprises.
