When the voice cast of the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie was recently announced, there was one name that stood out from the rest. Chris Pratt was by far the biggest “movie star” name in the bunch, but he also struck a lot of people as an odd choice to play video game icon Mario. Mario has been many things, but a Chris Pratt-like action hero has not been one of them. And perhaps Chris Pratt understands that.
Recently, the man who will be Mario posted a video to his Instagram which jokingly shows the “first look” at the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie. It’s really just a scene from the big finish of the first Guardians of the Galaxy with a big red hat on Pratt’s head and the appropriate video game sound effects. Check it out.
It’s pretty funny honestly. The sequence replaces the Power Stone with a Superstar, which grants Mario invincibility in the video games, which is basically what the Power Stone does too, so it works. The music that plays once Pratt/Mario grabs the star is exactly what you’d here while playing a Mario Bros. game.
I especially like how Gamora here is also Toad, which at first doesn’t make sense, until you realize the creator of the video has turned Peter Quill’s mother into Princess Peach. Mario’s “Mama mia” line, one of the few phrases the character has actually said in games, gets truncated to just say Mama, which is all the more perfect.
And as funny as this is, it also actually does highlight exactly the cognitive dissonance that Super Mario Bros. fans are having after Chris Pratt was revealed as Mario. The way this video looks is how we think of Chris Pratt, but the way it sounds is the way we think of Mario, and the two don’t actually fit very well together.
Of course, Mario will still look like Mario, he won’t look like Chris Pratt, but how Chris Pratt will make the character sound is part of the issue. Is Pratt going to go for a comically over the top Italian accent as Mario tends to have in the games, or perhaps a more traditional New York accent as Mario has had in previous live-action and animated adaptations? Will Chris Pratt work for either one?
At least Chris Pratt is getting in on the joke here. He’s having fun with the whole situation, and since he certainly knows what sort of Mario he will be, he can laugh at this sort of joke, while, hopefully, knowing fans are going to be happy with what they get once the new movie drops at the end of 2022. We likely won’t get a taste until the first trailer drops sometime next year.
