So Mario isn't in Wreck-It Ralph, the upcoming Disney film starring an arcade villain who decides that he doesn't want to be the bad guy anymore. Characters like Sonic and Bowser are though. What gives? It's actually not an oversight, Disney did try to get Mario in the movie. Here's what happened according to Disney producer Clark Spencer in an interview over at Total Film:
"The hard thing was, we were trying to work out the right way to use a character like Mario.
It had to be organic to the film, we didn't want to just paste him in there.
For Bowser, it made perfect sense for him to be a member of the Bad Anon group.
For Mario himself we couldn't think of the right way to incorporate him into the film, and so we didn't do it.
He goes on to describe how particular companies were about who was depicted and how:
The games companies were very specific – there's a scene in which Bowser drinks a cup of coffee, and they were very specific about how Bowser would drink coffee.
The other thing that was fascinating to me was that all of the companies know how tall their characters are.
There was lots of conversation about which character would be the biggest character in that Bad Anon scene. Even to the specifics of centimeters.
But that was helpful, because we wanted it to be authentic.
We had a scene where we wanted the rings to come out of Sonic, and SEGA said the only way that happens is if he falls over, and we didn't have him fall over in the scene, so we actually went back and re-animated it."
When it comes to video game characters, even the way they drink coffee is important to define. Don't want anyone to dilute the Brand™!
Seems kind of ridiculous, doesn't it? Hopefully this all comes together to create a worthwhile movie….else being so anal about such details won't have mattered!
