Movie

Given Hollywood’s renewed interest in adapting video games into movies, it’s probably only a matter of time before someone decides to make a dark, gritty, violent car chase movie based on Nintendo’s long-running series of Mario Kart racing games. Luckily director George Miller, with a little help from visual effects artist Kris Sundberg, has saved them the trouble.

Mario Kart: Fury Road is a parody trailer created by Sundberg for IGN, which takes the jaw-dropping first trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road and puts a Mario spin on it, complete with Rainbow Road, mushrooms, a deadly Chain Chomp and a range of gloriously familiar Mario Kart sounds to accompany the high-octane madness.

The details are many and it might be necessary to watch the trailer several times in order to catch them all. In Sundberg’s reimagining, Max (Tom Hardy) is cast in the role of Mario, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) as Princess Peach, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) as Bowser and Nux (Nicholas Hoult) as Koopa Troopa. Oh, and Furiosa’s War Rig is Bullet Bill.

Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t about a political go-kart struggle featuring the key players of the Mushroom World, but like Mario Kart its plot does largely involve characters driving their vehicles very fast and occasionally crashing them into other vehicles. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where gasoline and water are rare resources, the film follows former cop Max Rockatansky and one-armed warrior Imperator Furiosa as they try to help a group of sex slaves escape from their former owner and get them safely to Furiosa’s homeland.

Mad Max: Fury Road actually is getting a video game tie-in, the latest trailer for which was released a few weeks ago. It’s a standalone story set in the same universe as the movies, with gameplay based around driving, shooting and brawling. It will allow players to customize their own post-apocalyptic vehicle, but unfortunately it won’t feature Wario. Unless Nintendo decides to release a Mad Max pack as DLC for Mario Kart 8, Mario Kart: Fury Road will remain nothing more than a beautiful dream.