‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Gets the Mario Kart Treatment in This Surprisingly Great Mash-Up

You can tell when a film has really struck a cultural nerve when the fan art and video mash-ups start arriving. Mad Max: Fury Road did decent business at the box office, but it’s making its real impact among the fervent fans it has inspired. Seriously, has there been an artist who has watched the film not immediately sketched Furiosa? Anyway, the latest crazy example of “excited fan with waaay too much time on his/her hands” is this video, which tweaks Fury Road so it’s actually a Mario Kart movie. Really.

The humor will probably be lost on the handful of people who have never played a Mario Kart game before, but even the most casual video game fan will find much to appreciate here. What really makes this whole thing work is how subtle most of it is. Most mash-ups are obvious and ugly, jamming effects and references into every frame. This one works hard to seamlessly integrate various Mario Kart effects into the Fury Road footage. It may take you more than one viewing to find and appreciate them all.

Some of the gags are fairly obvious, like Max’s coat being color-corrected so he more closely resembles a certain red-suited plumber or Immortan Joe laughing the iconic Bowser laugh. Others fly by quickly, like Warboys dragging green Koopa shells and a ramping biker collecting a mid-air power-up. If you don’t get a chuckle out of the final gag involving a certain overpowered collectible and that post-apocalyptic sandstorm, then you ... well, you just don’t like funny things.