In “Super Mario Movie,” Cory Arcange tries to paint a picture of our childhood and how it is impossible to go back to. Video games are a large part of many people’s childhoods and for an adult/young adult in 2005, the original Mario bros. would be the most popular childhood game at the time. The idea of going back to a game you used to love is the same concept as trying to go back and try to relive the innocence of childhood. The fact that this game cartridge of Mario is corrupting shows to us that returning to that innocence is impossible now that we have aged and gained the knowledge and weight of adulthood.
The monotony of the prolonged repeated segments in this video reflect how live changes as you get older. In your youth, everything is fast paced and you are always playing, having something stimulating to do – like playing a video game. Once you age, everything becomes more regular and slow. The “rave” that the player goes to with the goomba is just an extremely slow game of pong. A rave is supposed to be one of the most exciting and high energy events that you can go to, but it is just minimized to something barely enjoyable.
You could also look at this video as a psychedelic trip and that everything that’s happening is in this trip. It could be trying to look back into your past, but instead being messed up and mixing it with the present – having an element from the past (Mario) and an element from the present (monotonous life).
Either way you look at this, I believe that this video highlights the change that we go through as we age and how it is not possible to go back to how things were in the past.
