Theme parks have trailers now?

"Remember, this wand chose you...just
like it chose all the other three hundred kids
today. Go on, give it a swish or whatever."

-Some wand seller

Look, I'm not a theme park person. I just...it seems like walking around in a Truman Show based on Star Wars or Harry Potter or whatever-and I can't stand this word- franchise, seems kind of commercial. Overpriced food, screaming children whose parents treat the staff like unpaid babysitters and costumed actors who probably wish they were, you know, acting and not posing for selfies with fans. It all kind of sounds like where terrible people go when they die. I'm not yum yucking, at least I'm not trying to, but yuck. It don't know, i's just not for me and that's fine.

"Hey! I'm right here..."

-Thwomp

But there's one opening later this year in Japan that almost comes close to being in range of the possibly of maybe being something I wouldn't flat out refuse immediately if someone absolutely forced me to go. It's based on Super Mario Bros. and is part of Universal Studios in Osaka. It's the result of two corporations leveraging and synergizing  their IP's. Or in layman's terms, business sex. Anyway, I'm not going to it. It's just that I could see myself being talked into it even though I have no delusions about it it being little more than a cynical cash grab. Does that make me a big hypocrite? Sure, but look, I grew up with video games and they're going to have live action Mario Kart and c'mon, I mean, I'm not made of stone, ok?

Pictured: an office worker leaping over
a railing and into a magic pipe only she
can see...holy shit, this just got dark.

That said, did you see the trailer for this place? Yeah, amusement parks have trailers now. Everything has trailers now. It's a bleak world in which we live. Anyway, it starts out kind of obvious, regular people from all over the globe are sitting around in public playing on their handhelds instead of, you know, talking and storming healthy human relationships when suddenly green warp pipes from the Mario games start to crop up all over the place. And in typical commercial logic, everyone just dives in instead of assuming, as you or I would, that they're having a psychotic episode.

"Sure, climb in kids! It's probably safe."

-Some terrible parents

Like, say you're a parent and enjoying some quality quiet time while your kids stare at a video game for a few hours. Sounds harsh, but at least it shuts them up for a while, right? But then out of nowhere a gigantic pipe materializes in the middle of your living room. Now, is your first instinct to let the kids explore what's down there? When I see pipes, I think sewage, not adventure. A wise parent gather up the kids, put them in the car and call the city to send someone to come take a look at it.

Ok, but this is an advertisement, so the warp pipes just Malcovich them out in Nintendo World and family fun ensues. But the one person I'd really like to have a chat with is the astronaut who's playing his goddamn Switch on the space station.

Where...where is he going? Doesn't someone
have to keep this thing in orbit? I mean, is he
 the one in charge of the air? We don't know!

"Hey, is that flaming debris re-
entering the atmosphere?"

This astronaut has been to space. Space! Yet somehow the magic of Nintendo's IP's have coaxed him away from the peerless experience of seeing the entire planet from the Himalayas to the coast of South America all at once and down to Earth for some rides and, one assumes ice cream shaped like Mario's face. He just hops down a magic pipe and back into the surly bonds faster than you can say "dereliction of duty," that's how amazing this place must be, right? Well that's hard to say. Most of the trailer is CG.

Unless Nintendo has perfected holograms or Westworld-style androids, I suspect that what we're seeing here is an "interpretation" of the kind of experience fans can expect. Which is probably for the best given that so much of the game involves smashing bricks with your hands and stomping on living creatures and surely that's not going to make it into a park aimed at family entertainm-oh...oh, no...

Pictured: park guests slaughtering the defenseless Goombas which, yikes.