What if every game got a gritty HBO re-imagining? That's the question asked by Saturday Night Live when host Pedro Pascal came to take over. Pascal is currently playing Joel Miller in The Last of Us on HBO, and the series is being praised for being one of the best adaptations of a video game to date. And so what if HBO just keeps doing its own spin on video games in the wake of the show's success? In comes our pick for live-action Super Mario.
The sketch takes on the beloved world of Mario Kart and brings us the idea of a gritty post-apocalyptic world where Bowser (Kenan Thompson) rules. And it's up to Mario (Pascal) to change things. He must get the cargo, aka Princess Peach (Chloe Fineman) to Rainbow Road while running from red shells, goombas, and even Bowser himself.
It's obviously a bad idea. Right? No one would actually watch this show—just kidding, we absolutely would if HBO wanted to make it. But it's great because it ties in Pascal's own game adaptation mixed with a topical story about the world of the Mario brothers.
It's such an outrageous concept you can't help but love it. With The Super Mario Bros. Movie coming out and many people not really that interested in the idea of Chris Pratt as Mario seeing Pascal's gritty yet hilarious take on the character somehow felt like a breath of fresh air for the Mushroom Kingdom. Not that we should have an apocalyptic Mario brothers adaptation, but oddly enough it was intriguing to see what Rainbow Road would look like if Bowser destroyed the world as we know it.
Overall, it was funny to have an HBO-style take on these characters with Bowen Yang's Yoshi saying he was bisexual and then Marcello Hernández's Toad saying the same thing. While this movie is far from reality, we certainly wouldn't say no to seeing more of Pascal taking on the iconic character. It's such an unlikely and unnecessary concept, but it somehow already has the energy of a cult classic—who's to say we wouldn't come to love it like the Mario Bros movie of the 90s?
Behind the scenes, the editors at SNL are striking for fair contracts with NBC, if you'd like to support the hardworking team behind the sketch comedy series you can add your name to their call to action. You can watch Pascal's Mario Kart sketch down below.