We’re days away from the arrival of the Super Mario Bros Movie, and there is plenty of discussion about how good or bad the movie may turn out. But without a doubt, the biggest discourse/controversy about the movie had to do with the casting of certain A-List actors in key roles. The biggest one is Chris Pratt as Mario. If you pay attention to the trailers, they don’t let Mario talk too much, and when they do let him chat, he sounds like Chris Pratt, which set many fans off because the voice of Mario from the games, Charles Martinet, was available to be had for the film.
While Martinet is in the film, it was in an “undisclosed role,” which made fans even angrier because he deserved more than a cameo in their eyes. It was even stated that Martinet wasn’t even approached to try for the role of Mario, and the film’s directors later said they cast Pratt because he could “perfectly portray an underdog blue-collar hero.” To which fans would happily reply, “so could Charles Martinet!”
Some have tried to defend the casting by saying that Martinet has never done the Mario voice long-term before, but that’s a lie. He’s done it for commercials in the past, including a “press conference” for one of the sports games Mario was in. Plus, Martinet is an accredited voice actor beyond Mario and knows how to hold a voice and change things for a role.
Getting back to the movie, a rumor is going around that indicates that Martinet will have two small roles in the film. This hasn’t been officially confirmed, but Ecartelera states that Martinet will play the role of Mario’s father and another character called Giuseppe.
It’s easy to see why Martinet might have been cast in that first role, as it’s become somewhat of a tradition for an OG voice of a character to play a father to the new voice and “pass the torch.” The other character is not one from the realm of Mario, so we may have to watch for that.
Does this solve the problem of the voice casting? Not at all. If anything, it will inflame it because many diehard fans don’t want Martinet to be the father of Mario. They want him to be Mario! There is even a rumor that fans will come together and get Cameo clips from Martinet of him doing all of Mario’s lines from the Super Mario Bros Movie and then dub them into a version so that he gets his time to shine.
