Fans React to Mario’s Voice in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” Trailer
by Emily Nagle
This afternoon, the long-awaited teaser trailer for “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” made its world premiere at New York Comic Con, as well as on a special Nintendo Direct livestream. It’s only been a few hours, but viewers already have strong feelings about the upcoming film, creating memes and sharing their first impressions of the film on social media, particularly the portrayal of mustachioed plumber Mario.
When the all-star cast list for the Illumination and Nintendo co-production first got announced online, the name that drew the most attention was Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy), who will be voicing Mario. Especially when it was revealed that he wouldn’t be using an over-the-top Italian accent like the overall-sporting plumber speaks with in the games. In other words, Mario would just sound like a regular dude.
Of course, with the trailer only being a teaser, Mario got the least screen time compared to other characters. We open to a scene featuring Bowser (Jack Black), Kamek (Kevin Michael Richardson), and an army of Koopas facing off against a team of fuzzy blue penguins. Long-time Nintendo fans enjoyed this reference to Super Mario 64, a classic Mario game that has a level challenging the player to race a penguin down a snowy mountain. And Jack Black is phenomenal as Bowser, sounding super badass and menacing as we watch the Koopa king steal a shiny star.
As for how Mario sounds: it’s hard to say, because the only lines we hear him say are “What is this place?” and “Mushroom Kingdom, here we come!”. Pratt seems to give the character a bit of a New York accent, reminiscent of television depictions of Mario, namely The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. Pratt was right, though; based on what we’ve seen, Mario’s voice is more or less Chris Pratt’s regular voice. Which, if you think about it, is kind of hilarious.
The rest of the Internet, however, has mixed feelings on Pratt’s performance. Many users criticized Hollywood’s tendency to use big-name celebrities as voice actors, rather than actors who are particularly well-known for their voice work – before portraying Star-Lord in the Marvel films, Chris Pratt was best known for playing Andy in Parks and Recreation. While it marked a turning point in his career, Pratt’s starring voice role as Emmet Brickowski in The Lego Movie in 2014 isn’t the first credit of his that comes to mind.
This gave us only a small preview of what to expect next spring in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”, so only time will tell how Pratt does with voicing Mario. One can only hope he doesn’t pull what Tom Hanks did in his role as Geppetto in Pinocchio last month, where he half-assed a vaguely Italian accent for the first 20 minutes before giving up completely.