There’s a tweet out right now claiming to have leaked how Mario is going to look in the upcoming Mario movie.
Streamer ConnorEatsPlants tweeted out the picture, claiming it was then shared to him by a fan on his discord. This fan also happens to be a McDonald’s employee, and subsequently the image was part of the promotional materials for the Mario movie, as they have a tie in with the fastfood restaurant for Happy Meal toys.
Other fans have pointed out that the model Illumination have chosen is slightly off kilter, and so it can be confusing to look at, even unnerving.
As GAMEandRODO64 argues here, the main visual elements that describe Mario are there. He has his cap, his mustache, the brown hair on the sides, an ovoid nose, but the shapes are different. If you told someone this was a bootleg Mario image, they might actually believe it.
Does this mean the Mario movie will be bad? Not necessarily. We need to understand how Mario’s look was originally decided upon.
Kotabe was initially hired to do the cover art for the Super Mario games on the Famicom, but his art would also be used in promotional materials for these games in Japan and the West. While the sprite graphics of Mario and his friends would change with each game, Kotabe’s art would still define how Mario would be recognized by fans all around the world. His designs would also be used on the Super Mario Bros cartoons that would make their way in the West.
For Super Mario 64, Kotabe made turnarounds of Mario and other characters, that would become the definitive character models for how Mario would look like moving forward. Other characters like Luigi, Daisy, Yoshi, all the way to Waluigi, would then get their character models decided upon when Nintendo designed them for Mario Tennis. Today, Kotabe is retired from Nintendo, but Nintendo still commissions art in his style, now from Shigehisa Nakaue.
Mario doesn’t really have one set character design that stayed that way forever. The way Kotabe drew Mario is different from how he looks in the first Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 2, Mario 64, and so on. Nintendo has creative freedom to commission different visuals for Mario as they wish, and in this case, they have Miyamoto working with Illumination for their movie. We shouldn’t think of this movie as THE Super Mario movie, as much as Illumination’s Super Mario movie. Illumination may be best known for their Despicable Me/Minions franchise, but they also made the recent 3D Dr Seuss movies, which can both be said to be loyal to the vision of Dr Seuss and also reflecting Illumination’s own ideas.
A similar situation came for the Pokemon Sun & Moon anime. Fans did not like the visuals made by director Daiki Tomiyasu, but when it came time for the show to debut, it won those same fans over. That was because Daiki proved to be quite proficient in making expressive faces and highly dynamic motions, making Pokemon a considerably more enjoyable show to watch.
It’s true that the Sonic movie reveal and redesign is looming large over this movie. With that said, I would argue we need to see how Illumination’s Mario looks in motion, and how he and the other characters sound, before we can put judgement on it.
The Mario movie trailer and its Nintendo Direct will debut this October 6, 2022.
Source: Twitter
