I went into this clip fully prepared to hate it. A Mario-themed fight scene? Get ready for a bunch of silly Goomba stuff and an overuse of Mario’s trademark “Yahoo!” I just knew that it was going to be an excruciating four minutes of my life.
And then I ended up comparing it to John Hyam’s fucking excellent Universal Soldier: Regeneration by the end. Funny how that worked out.
Choreographed by the two actors in it, Matthew Sumner and Eris Jacobus (who played Stryker in the Mortal Kombat: Legacy series), and directed by Micah Moore, this is a really entertaining fight scene. The fact that they’re dressed up as Mario and Waluigi almost becomes a non-point by the middle of the fight, with the exception of a few sight gags. And the fight also includes a really cool, memorable trick, sort of played for laughs, involving Mario grabbing onto his opponents trench coat, a trick reminiscent of the choreography in Jackie Chan’s early ’90s work.
In short, I dug the hell out of this. The Stuntpeople YouTube channel has a bunch of videos on it, including another that I really, really liked the concept and execution of: the Groundhog Day Battle.
