Super Mario Bros./Regarding Henry/Shadowrun SNES . . .

. . . is a deep fake mash-up of the Super Mario Bros movie, the SNES game Shadowrun, and Regarding Henry, wherein Mario and Luigi are NYC plumbers struggling to make ends meet during an economic downturn. 

Luigi tries to keep the business on track, but big brother Mario keeps wasting money on expeditions deep into the subway system to discover a secret underground kingdom ruled by totalitarian, intelligent dinosaurs. These dino-men are clearly fascists, but they prefer to be called 'paleoconservatives.' Mario's girlfriend disappeared without a trace three years ago leaving him with nothing but a fantasy that she was kidnapped by evil dino-men and only Mario can rescue her.

Mario blows the company budget on nonsensical 'side scroller' devices that he claims will allow him and Luigi to project themselves into elaborate graffiti art pieces that contain extradimensional warp routes that'll plug them straight into dino-fascist HQ. Mario describes an elaborate vision of a fortress filled with fire deep underground where he believes his 'precious peach' is held captive. 

Meanwhile, Luigi starts pulling debt collection jobs for a local mob kingpin known only as 'Mr. Drake,' which results in Luigi having to brutalize innocent people. Luigi starts to hate himself, but can't tell anyone about his criminal 'extra life.'

One evening, Luigi is leaning on a corner store proprietor for protection money when an obnoxious asshole lawyer named Henry Jake Armitage blusters into the store for a pack of cigarettes and verbally abuses Luigi as a target of convenience. Luigi snaps and shoots Armitage in the head and bolts, leaving the lawyer for dead.

The rest of the movie crosscuts between two parallel stories:

Armitage recovering from being shot in the head, and struggling to regain the use of his body via physical therapy and psychological counseling;

and an increasingly desperate and unhinged Luigi pulling ever-riskier bank jobs while using his ill-gotten funds to construct an ever-expanding underground fantasy playground for Mario to roleplay his scenarios of defeating the dino-fascists and rescuing his 'precious peach.'

Armitage-who was a hard-driving mercenary lawyer working in the shadows of the legal system to benefit greedy mega-corporations-finds a new life of love and gentleness and contemplation. Luigi's bullet robbed him of his old asshole self and ironically gave him the opportunity to rebuild himself from scratch as a kinder soul.

Luigi and Mario both perish in an accidental explosion that occurs when they try to contrive a 'fire and lava castle' as per Mario's delusions.

Final scene: Armitage in a tiny apartment-he started the film with a big-ass luxury suite-painting a 'fire flower' in gentle watercolors as a television set plays an old episode of The Naked City . . .

"There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them . . ."

Roll credits over a soothing Philip Glass score.

Waste not . . .

  . . . fun not!

For wretched excess is the only path to happiness!

Casts Las Vegas spell. All are engorged by all-night buffets, slots, poker, keno, and blackjack. Hordes of leisure-suited cowboys amble to and fro, slack jawed, eyes unblinking, tears streaming down their cheeks.

“LOOK AT ALL THE FUN WE CAN’T STOP HAVING.”

Scene cuts to an open mic comedy night where eight million stand-ups have signed their name to an endless sheet of yellow legal pad paper.

“LOOK AT ALL THE FUN WE CAN’T STOP HAVING.”

Beelzebub takes the mic. Infernal vistas burn into the mundane hotel basement barroom setting. Beelzebub asks the barbed wire-bound crowd for a common household object and a verb.

“LOOK AT ALL THE FUN WE CAN’T STOP HAVING.”

And so we arrive at an exterior view of Planet Earth hanging in the sublime dark of outer space. Many hydrogen bomb explosions flower all across the surface of Gaia. Headsplitting animal wail of pain. Planet Earth flashes crimson.

“LOOK AT ALL THE FUN WE CAN’T STOP HAVING.”

Screen glitches. Scrolling error messages in no known human languages. Machines speak for us, now. Jump cut to a strong, succulent bowl of macaroni and cheese with ham cubes. A fried chicken breast scoots and grunts toward the bowl. It moans, and uses a flap of fried skin to claim the mac’n’cheese. Other fried chicken breasts join in the fray, and they lash each other with their skins, thereby contesting ownership of the savory treasure.

“LOOK AT ALL THE FUN WE CAN’T STOP HAVING.”

Roll credits. Comically protracted reel of antipiracy warnings in numerous languages before you are kicked back to the main menu. Like . . . NOW they tell you not to copy shit? You already sat through the ludicrous FBI Warning pre-movie-and this is plastic you PAID for-you spent your fuckin’ money and time and energy on this piece of shit and they’re still throwing scare tactics at your ass-like, Jesus Christ!

“IT’S OFFICIAL. ALL THE FUN . . . HAS BEEN HAD.”

POSTSCRIPT: Audiences have long known better than to attend these miserable, interminable open mic nights, and so a permanent audience has been installed consisting of crudely carved statues resembling freaky extraterrestrial interpretations of human beings complete with stern, unsmiling faces, and unblinking, hostile eyes. It goes without saying that actual laughter  was banned by the Comedian’s Guild some time ago, but this was widely seen as a face-saving measure as no naturally occurring laughter had been recorded or recounted anecdotally within the Open Mic ecosystem in seventy or so years.

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEWS #13: CYBERPUNK 2077 (2020)

 . . . I fall out of the world . . .

A questline does not trigger despite all conditions being met.

I am driving a sports car when my avatar floats to the top of the vehicle and assumes a T-pose. I am still driving a sports car.

Heads of NPCs float off into the air like the Woodsman from the third season of Twin Peaks.

My hands clutch an invisible sidearm.

Now the firearm is visible.

My avatar assumes a T-pose.

I fall out of the world.

I paid for the game. 

I do livestream.

I get taken down for uploading footage with licensed music.

I switch off the licensed music.

I do livestream.

There’s still licensed music.

I get taken down for uploading footage with licensed music.

I paid for the game.

Livestreams are great, free advertising for video game products.

Why does video game company insist on fucking me?

I do livestream of different game.

I climb building.

I jump back.

I keep going one hundred or so feet.

This was not supposed to happen.

I fall into body of water.

I sink.

My avatar assumes T-pose.

I fall out of the world. 

NPCs lack animations.

Characters do not respond to the right in-game switches.

The ending I was working toward as per the strategy guide is no longer accessible.

You follow the official steps and you still get fucked.

Is that something to do with the ‘punk’ ethos at work here?

I uninstall software.

I smash disc.

I wipe my ass with pages from the strategy guide.

But the pages are printed on paper that’s too slick-they got no ‘shitgrip’ as it were.

I eat a large amount of Taco Bell.

I clench pages of the strategy guide between my booty cheeks.

I assume-voluntarily, this time-a strong T-pose.

I blow a chunky, wet fart that ignites due to the impressive quantity of Rectal Napalm hot sauce with which I adorned my quadruple pork-steak quesadillas.

The strategy guide pages burn up with a flourish, 

crackling gold motes in the air.

Still in my strong T-pose

. . . I fall through the earth . . .

. . . and out of the world . . .

-April 2021