After the Sonic the Hedgehog movie made its debut a few years back and somehow, against all odds, wound up a success—after the internet cyberbullied the studio into fixing its godawful Sonic design—it was kind of inevitable that Mario would finally make his way back into theaters. Then, that inevitability was confirmed, and everyone lost their minds—though not necessarily for the best reasons. Now, the Mario Bros. movie trailer has finally been revealed in today’s Nintendo Direct.
(Skip to about the 39-minute mark for the trailer.)
When the movie’s voice cast was revealed—since this will be an animated movie, which seems wise after the absolute infamy of the ’90s live-action Mario Bros. movie—the thing that got the biggest reaction was the absence of storied voice of Mario Charles Martinet, who has been voicing the character in games for decades. Instead, we learned that we’d be treated to the vocal stylings of none other than … Chris Pratt. Cue the sad trombone—and everyone forever making jokes about whether or not Chris Pratt would be cast as the voice of other iconic characters.
Sure, Pratt voiced the lead in the LEGO Movie, which was an undeniable hit among animated films, but people have soured on him since then for a variety of reasons, not to mention … Mario has a voice, and it’s an incredibly iconic one, at that. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Martinet in the role at this point. If you’ve played a Mario game since Mario 64, it’s likely you can hear his voice in your head right now. So if they’re going with someone else, that raises the question of … why?
What are they doing with this movie that’s so different that it requires Mario to have a new voice? Did they decide that the voice that works for a few lines, grunts, and wahoos in a game isn’t necessarily as great to listen to for the entire run of a feature-length movie? Are they drastically changing something about the character? Is this going to wind up the auditory version of Ugly Sonic?
Well, now that we’ve seen the trailer … he uh, sounds kinda like Chris Pratt. Doing maybe a slight accent? It’s hard to tell in the trailer, because he doesn’t really say a whole lot, but I do enjoy Jack Black’s Bowser, though my favorite part is probably Keegan-Michael Key’s Toad! The internet, however, is already abuzz with everyone’s hot takes on the subject—mainly, though, that it does indeed seem like we’re getting a Mario with Chris Pratt’s voice, rather than Chris Pratt trying to come anywhere close to the Mario voice we’re all used to.
