when I said the world wasn't ready for a mario movie I was being half-serious because what mario is... what it ACTUALLY is... is an extremely surreal story told mostly through game mechanics. a story where characters like "mario" and "baby mario" are treated as two different people. a story that is unabashedly abstract
mario's surrealism is not often commented on because, as it was one of the earliest video games, it codified a lot of (in themselves surreal) mechanics that would appaer in other video games, and this also lead to a lot of people outside games seeing all games as mario; to outsiders, all video games were about running and jumping and headbutting blocks and coins coming out. that wasn't "video games". that was just mario
pretty much everything in mario is some kind of shorthand; it was placed there not to make sense in a story, but to communicate its function as quickly and cleanly as possible
so mario wears overalls and a mustache because that's what looks good in a sideways 16x16 3-color character
and he's a plumber because the game has pipes, and the game has pipes because it's a useful place for enemies to come out of
and the powerup that makes you big is a mushroom because of alice in wonderland