Whether you liked it or not, Chris Pratt is the new voice of Mario, as proven by the Super Mario Bros Movie. It is a movie that continues to break box office records even outside of its first weekend in theaters worldwide. One of the reasons many people weren’t a fan of Pratt as Mario was that the “classic voice of Mario” in Charles Martinet was available, and he even made a cameo in the movie but wasn’t considered for the main voice. Furthermore, when the trailers for the movie came out, Pratt sound like himself with only a slight accent attached.
So yeah, that happened. However, even with the movie out and doing well, most agree that Pratt wasn’t exactly the true “star of the show.” That would be Jack Black for his interpretation of Bowser. But that’s another story. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Chris Pratt and Charlie Day talked about how they came up with their voices for Mario and Luigi, and they both had quite the process to work through:
“We tried different things, different voices,” Day said. “Every now and then they would say, ‘Charlie, maybe a little less Goodfellas in this one’ — I’m like, ‘Alright! I think you’re wrong, but fine!’ — until they landed on something they liked.”
As for Pratt, he went to another show for his Mario voice at one point:
“For a minute, I walked in and they were like, ‘That’s a little New Jersey. You’re doing a Tony Soprano thing,'” Pratt said.
That would be a very different-sounding Mario in another way, so we might have dodged a bullet on that one.
No matter what side you’re on in this debate, the results do speak for themselves. Or, at least, they speak to how the movie has won over people and that they liked the overall, even if they didn’t like Pratt’s voice as Mario.
With things now “locked in” on a certain level, many fans expect Nintendo and Illumination to make more films based on the beloved IPs of the Big N. There’s even talk of a Luigi’s Mansion movie with Charlie Day taking more of a lead role.
That’s not to say IPs outside the Mushroom Kingdom couldn’t be explored. Nintendo has spent decades cultivating its roster, which makes fans so excited. Because if this movie could make such a killing at the box office, what’s to say that others could do decent numbers as well?
