Screenwriter Max Landis Posts Sprawling 436-Page Super Mario Script Online
“I can’t imagine, literally cannot imagine that any of you who so ambitiously venture into this script will actually be able to finish it,” reads the foreword preceding a literal tome that re-imagines the famed video game plumber’s universe.
The four-hundred-and-thirty-six-fucking-page odyssey, named Super Mario World, plays out more as an amalgamation of the entire Nintendo verse instead of an adaptation of the 1990 SNES game it takes its title from.
The script’s pages are loaded to capacity with Nintendo characters from Funky Kong (whom, inexplicably even to the writer, plays a major role in the plot) to severely fringe personalities like Chet Rippo (?!). Everyone seems to get their dues and, bizarrely, their own character arcs replete with emotional pay-off’s throughout the narrative.
But Max Landis, the party responsible for this Mushroom Kingdom Manifesto, doesn’t want you to believe anything beyond this: “This. Script. Sucks.“ Landis, having exorcised these demons onto page at the age of 19, admits that, despite some bright patches and pithy dialogue, the script is ultimately a failure to the medium and is unproducable.
Still, you know you want to at least skim the bastard, don’t you? It’s all here for your eyes up until they melt out of their sockets as if you just cracked open the Arc of the Covenant.
Funny thing is, I knew Max in his younger years… I guess right around when this madness was being still-birthed into the world. Though eccentric, the dude loved the craft and absolutely worshiped film. His claim to fame, Chronicle, is a brilliant little testimony on how superpowers can easily lead to horror rather than heroics. He’s probably the only screenwriter whose bare ass I’ve been witness to (please, don’t ask), but goddamn can he write a mean story.
Here’s hoping he tackles a thousand-page Legend of Zelda next.
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