Seth Rogen reveals Russell Crowe inspo in Super Mario Bros do-over

Seth Rogen reveals what enticed him back for the new animated do-over and how a Russell Crowe classic provided inspo.

Seth Rogen and Charlie Day at a Special Screening The Super Mario Bros. in Los Angeles, California. Picture: Getty Images

Despite recent successes including The Last Of Us and Sonic the Hedgehog, Hollywood has long struggled to make good screen versions of beloved video games.

One of the first, and still one of the worst, was the 1993 live-action stinker Super Mario Bros, starring Brit Bob Hoskins and Colombian-American John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi, the two New York plumbers who travel through a dimensional portal to do battle with Dennis Hopper’s lizard-headed villain.

Even three decades on, the stench of its awfulness lingers as it became a cautionary tale for the dangers awaiting any would-be filmmaker who dared venture into the video game realm.

One of the few people who bothered to turn up to see the Nintendo game he loved so much brought to life on the big screen was a pre-teen Seth Rogen, and the Canadian-born comedian is still slightly scarred by the experience, describing it one of the worst movies ever made.

“I was one of the poor sons of bitches who went and saw the original in the theatre in 1993 and 11-year-old Seth was really disappointed by that experience,” Rogen recalls, punctuating the point with his distinctive honking laugh.

Seth Rogen at a Special Screening of The Super Mario Bros. in Los Angeles, California. Picture: Getty Images

So, when the opportunity came for do-over in the form of the animated The Super Mario Bros, this time with Chris Pratt and Charlie Day as the supercharged siblings, Rogen was determined to correct the record.

“The idea that potentially an 11-year-old could go to theatres and actually see a good Mario Brothers movie that wasn’t terribly disappointing was really exciting,” he says.

“I was excited to vindicate that experience that I had when I was young.”

Rogen provides the voice of the Mario-adjacent Donkey Kong in the new film, which comes from the same animation studio behind the Despicable Me and Minions movies.

He plays the beloved, barrel-throwing primate as an egotistical blowhard and was straight up with the producers that Kong would sound exactly like Seth Rogen – he doesn’t do voices.

He does, however, admit to channelling a bit of Russell Crowe’s Gladiator in his opening scene, as he faces off against Mario in a booby-trapped stadium.

“There’s a little bit of that, yeah,” he says.

“I think anytime you’re entering an arena full of people to fight someone else to the death, you have to look to the classics.”

Rogen is no stranger to voice work, having also breathed life into animated characters in three Kung Fu Panda movies, Monsters Vs Aliens, Shrek, The Lion King – as well as the extremely adult Sausage Party.

And whether he’s playing a foul-mouthed hot-dog or martial arts praying mantis, he says it’s pretty much the same job – satisfying but solitary.

Seth Rogen says his arena-fighting, barrel-throwing Donkey Kong is partly inspired by Gladiator.

For Super Mario Bros, he never even met the directors face-to-face, instead recording all of his lines in a small recording booth in West Hollywood “standing alone in a room with a microphone, trying to make myself laugh”.

“It’s pretty similar,” he says of the comparison between Super Maris Bros and his 2016 hit Sausage Party, which he co-wrote and went on to break the box office record for an R-rated animated film, with more than $200 million from a $28 million budget.

“I’d say when you’re going for like hard, edgy comedy, it’s a slightly different process and you’re looking through all of it through a slightly different lens and your standard is maybe a little different. Procedurally you’re trying to hit a different bullseye with something like Sausage Party than you are with this. But in a moment to moment basis, it doesn’t feel that different honestly.”

Rogen says that despite being a video game enthusiast as a kid – “we had a Commodore growing up where we had Donkey Kong” – his skills have declined with age.

Finding time to play is also an issue for the multi-talented actor-writer-director-producer-entrepreneur, who despite his reputation as an enthusiastic evangelist for recreational cannabis (he has his own business and brand), is one of the busiest players in Hollywood.

Seth Rogen thinks the 1993 Super Mario Brothers with John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins is on of the worst movies ever made.

When he’s not acting movies such as Long Shot, American Pickle, Bad Neighbours and Steve Jobs, he’s producing hits for the big and small screen including The Disaster Artist, Preacher, The Boys and the eagerly anticipated Asian female driven adult comedy, Joy Ride.

In the last 12 months alone he’s starred in and executive produced Pam and Tommy, provided the voice for Allen the Alien in the animated series Invincible and shone in a dramatic role in Stephen Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated, semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans.

He also creates high-end ceramics and even found time last month to rent out his “high-ly creative retreat” on Airbnb, giving pottery classes to the select few who snapped up the offer.

Now 40, he’s been in the business for more than two and a half decades since starting his stand-up comedy career doing bar mitzvahs at the tender age of 12.

Although he has said he never wanted any other career other than comedy – and famously was supporting his family at the age of 16 after the family relocated from his native Canada to Los Angeles so he could work for Judd Apatow – he maintains he never had any grand plan beyond that.

Seth Rogen as Bennie Loewy in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg.

“There was no Seth Rogen plan I can tell you that,” he says with a laugh.

“So all of this is far beyond the original Seth Rogen plan. It’s really exciting. It’s not lost on me that I get to work with the very people that inspired me to work in the first place and that made me fall in love with movies. It’s happened my whole career and I really always tried to be appreciative of it.

“When I was 18, I got to work with Adam Sandler and he was one of the guys who made me want to do comedy in the first place. Then I got to write jokes for Garry Shandling, so I really got to interact and collaborate at times with the people that made me want to do this.

“The fact that I’ve been able to continue doing that and that it’s reached the heights of people like Steven Spielberg is truly bizarre and surreal and something I tried to really appreciate.”

Super Mario Bros is in cinemas now.

Originally published as Seth Rogen reveals Russell Crowe inspo in Super Mario Bros do-over