Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the Mushroom Kingdom, you can’t have failed to miss the biggest controversy surrounding the otherwise harmless The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Making an animated film based on the legendary video game franchise with Marvel and Jurassic World star Chris Pratt in the lead must’ve seemed like a win-win for Universal and Illumination, but they likely didn’t count on the entire internet being so offended by Pratt’s unique take on the popular plumber protagonist.
Although long-term Mario voice actor Charles Martinet is on board the production, voicing the title character’s father instead, it’s the Guardians of the Galaxy actor who’s providing Mario’s vocals for his second big-screen outing (Bob Hoskins played him in the infamous 1993 live-action flick). Exactly what Pratt is going for with his Mario voice has left fans scratching their heads ever since the first teaser trailers arrived, but thankfully now that the movie’s here, we have a better idea of his creative process.
Chris Pratt has explained the thinking behind his Mario voice
Yahoo Entertainment spoke to both Pratt and co-star Charlie Day, the Luigi to his Mario, and got the pair talking about how they devised their voices for their iconic characters. First of all, Pratt admitted he’s well aware of social media’s feelings toward his Mario voice, but stressed that creating the movie Mario was a team effort between himself and directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and he’s “really happy” with what he ended up doing.
“There were certainly discussions of how best to voice the character. We tried a lot of different things and ultimately settled on the voice that you hear when you watch the movie. I’m really happy with it, and I think people are gonna really enjoy it.”
Day, meanwhile, explained that his take on Luigi was inspired by his own upbringing in both New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, and he blended together those accents based on guidance from the directors. The Minnesota-born Pratt, meanwhile, revealed in the same interview that, as he’s not a native New Yorker himself, he instead turned to certain actors to influence him, although he refuses to say who.
“I had a few [actors] I was aiming at, but if I say them out loud, it could potentially affect people’s ability to watch the performance. So I won’t say it, but I had a signpost.”
As depicted in the movie itself, Mario and Luigi come from Brooklyn, so it’s safe to say that Chris Pratt broadly modeled his voice for the character on the Brooklyn accent. It’s up to fans to judge if they, as the actor predicts, “really enjoy” it, but it seems that critics aren’t much enjoying the film as a whole, although it certainly has its charms.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is out in theaters now.
Published: Apr 5, 2023 09:55 am