We all know that movies based on games are tricky endeavours, but the Super Mario Bros movie could be a home run for Nintendo fans. Animated by Despicable Me creators Illumination, the Super Mario Bros movie is set to delve into Mario’s past. Yes, Chris Pratt is going all in on the fan-favourite plumber to ensure this expansion to the Mario lore is more than a pipe dream.
We know you’re gearing up for the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC release date. The thought of new tracks is thrilling, but until then, Chris Pratt is shelling out new details ahead of the Super Mario Bros movie release date. Appearing with his Super Mario Bros movie cast members on the Kelly Clarkson Show, Pratt explains in the past “the character of Mario is kinda whoever is playing the game […] so when they wrote the script […] it was really kinda like ‘how are we going to flesh out this character?’ and ‘what world does he live in?’.
“How can we tell a 90-minute long story about a character everybody knows, but they don’t really know his story other than he’s on a mission to go save this Princess,” Pratt elaborates. Getting to this point was part of Pratt’s process for concocting what is perhaps the movie’s most controversial element: Pratt’s Mario voice.
“Mario’s voice[…] is super iconic and he doesn’t say a whole lot […] fleshing out the voice was part of that and finding the voice that would suit a 90-minute long narrative,” the Guardians of the Galaxy star adds.
Pratt doesn’t specify what Mario’s origin story will entail, but many Nintendo fans will know that Mario first appeared as a playable character in the 1981 hit, Donkey Kong. Since then, we’ve seen Mario spawn multitudes of games, from Super Mario World to Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. Named after real estate developer Mario Segale, Nintendo general manager Shigeru Miyamoto was an instrumental figure in deciding that Mario should be of Italian-American descent, with a profession in the plumbing industry.
But why a plumber you might ask? Well, Miyamoto supposedly thought this was appropriate as Mario spends a lot of time underground in his adventures. However, since 2017, Polygon points out that Mario hung up his tools for good.
Mario’s background was explored briefly in the titular 1993 movie, which featured the late Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Wick star, John Leguizamo as Luigi. In the meantime, before the Super Mario Bros movie arrives, check out the best Nintendo Switch games for March 2023.