Who came up with The Wizard?

[speedy fast]

There's something I've been wondering for awhile, and there may not be a sourced answer (I'm not sure if the DVD has any features or not), but it's worth a shot.

People refer to The Wizard as a 90-minute commercial for Nintendo since it involves video game playing and all the games in the movie are Nintendo games. But I wonder whose idea the movie was: somebody at Nintendo, somebody at Universal, or one of the movie's writers.

Anybody know?

[Knightmare]

I'm going off memory here, but I think the movie was written first and multiple games from different companies were supposed to be use. And then Universal went to Nintendo during pre-production and struck a deal to use only Nintendo games and products like the Power Glove. For Nintendo it was as easy way to advertise their product and they gave Universal a big hand in promotion by having Super Mario Bros. 3 in the movie months before it was due for release.

Like I said, I'm just going off of memory and there might be someone here at Toonzone that is more knowledgable on the subject, but I hope I helped out some.

[Shawn Hopkins]

There's something I've been wondering for awhile, and there may not be a sourced answer (I'm not sure if the DVD has any features or not), but it's worth a shot.

People refer to The Wizard as a 90-minute commercial for Nintendo since it involves video game playing and all the games in the movie are Nintendo games. But I wonder whose idea the movie was: somebody at Nintendo, somebody at Universal, or one of the movie's writers.

Anybody know?

You have to understand, The Wizard is not an original idea. It's basically a feature length ripoff of the Pinball Wizard from The Who's Tommy. That deaf and dumb and blind kid/autistic kid sure plays a mean pinball/Nintendo. It steals the disease and the way it's portrayed, autistic savant, from Rain Man. Throw in some promotional "synergy" with Nintendo and Universal's own theme parks and a paper-thin, shopworn "Road" plot and you've got a movie-like substance.

I might be wrong, but the cobbled together nature of it makes me think that the creation process started with some executive somewhere thinking about how he could exploit the video game trend and then smiling a greedy smile a nanosecond later when he realized the depth of the product placement opportunities.

I was looking for contemporary sources to help you out and all I could really find was Roger Ebert's review. He seems to see it the same way I do, as a cynical, cobbled together exploitation movie, but he doesn't list concrete proof. Still, fun to read.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19891215/REVIEWS/912150304/1023

[Storm Eagle]

There's something I've been wondering for awhile, and there may not be a sourced answer (I'm not sure if the DVD has any features or not), but it's worth a shot.


To answer your question about that, it doesn't. Its main menu only has the options "languages" (yet the only language it's in is English) and "play". There's not even a chapter select feature, although there are just eight chapter stops.

[TMC1982]

Somehow, I in latter years, came to believe that The Wizard was a kiddie variation on Rain Man.