There’s plenty of anticipation and mixed emotions going on with the Super Mario Bros Movie. We’re less than a month away from its release, and many expect different things from it. Some feel it should be an accurate yet movie-style adaptation of the games. Some want it to be the quality of other video game adaptations of late that were incredible and made fans happy. Oh, and many people don’t want Chris Pratt to voice Mario, but that ship has sadly sailed. The point is that there’s pressure on this film, and if it doesn’t get received well, you can very easily point to the directors for the botch.
Those directors would be Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, who have a long and storied history in the animation business. They’ve either led or show-run some beloved cartoons in the past, and many hope that trend will continue here. One of the more famous recent projects was the Teen Titans Go! franchise, and the movie that came to the big screens. The show is divisive amongst fans due to its focus on comedy and lack of connections to the original animation that is still treasured to this day.
However, when talking with Animation Magazine, Jelenic noted that they took a different approach from the previous project to the next:
“With Teen Titans we were tasked with making a show that was very irreverent and funny and really broad for a new audience. We were able to do that because there was already a reverent series delivered for a lot of people. But there had never been a really authentic Super Mario movie or TV show that was satisfying. So, in a way it was the opposite of what we did on Teen Titans: Let’s deliver the Mario experience that we haven’t had yet.”
To an extent, he’s right about the adaptations of Mario that we’ve gotten so far. The live-action adaptation is considered the worst video game movie of all time, and the cartoon featuring Captain Lou Albano shows its age.
However, where fans would disagree with Jelenic is the notion of making a “Mario experience that we haven’t had yet.” The trailers for the film show Mario and Luigi as literal plumbers who get warped into the Mushroom Kingdom, and now Mario has to save the day by going “zero to hero.” Many aren’t happy with that, nor are they happy with some of the directors’ decisions voice-casting-wise.
We’ll see who comes out on top when the Super Mario Bros Movie arrives on April 5th.
