All Sections

What the Tech: The Super Mario Movie cast is absurd – but it might just work

Nintendo surprised everyone yesterday with a randomly announced Direct event, but the company shocked fans once again by unveiling the English cast for the upcoming Super Mario Bros Movie – and the internet is having a meltdown.

Before we get into it, let’s run through the whole line-up: Chris Pratt will voice Mario himself, Charlie Day for Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy steps into Princess Peach’s shoes, while Jack Black will cause chaos as big bad Bowser. If your head is already rolling across the floor, just wait – there’s more.

Keegan-Michael Key will embody the Mushroom Kingdom icon that is Toad, while Seth Rogen’s ready to throw some barrels around as none other than Donkey Kong. Yes, we now live in a world where Seth Rogen voices Donkey Kong. It’s canon and you can’t take it back.

The whole cast is a bit of an eclectic mess, but as you can imagine it’s Chris Pratt jumping into the role of Nintendo’s pesky plumber that has everyone’s eyebrows touching the ceiling. This makes sense, after all it is Charles Martinet who has come to define Mario’s voice as we all recognise it – a voice that sounds nothing like the fun-loving bro-style inflection of Chris Pratt.

Strangely enough, one Twitter user managed to guess this casting correctly way back in 2020. In hindsight, they probably should’ve used that foresight on the lottery instead.

Then of course you’ve got Charlie Day who, despite being a modern hero for his role in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is a tricky one to imagine as Luigi particularly for the absolute smut-laden plotlines of Sunny. My brain is having to do some serious mental gymnastics to imagine Charlie Day’s voice in a kid’s film.

In spite of all this, I’m still optimistic about the Super Mario Bros Movie. For starters, the film is being made by Illumination Entertainment – a company that has already surprised me once before by making the fairly brilliant Minions movie.

Plus, remember how we were all convinced that The Lego Movie was going to be a train wreck? That take fizzled out almost immediately once people actually saw the film, showing that there is the potential to take a seemingly unadaptable premise and make something great from it. Maybe there’s something about these voice actors that the Directors know that we don’t.

There are, however, some people who just won’t be able to let it slide, like this one particular person who laments for a simpler time when Bob Hoskins donned Mario’s dungarees.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *