Nintendo and Illumination just dropped the trailer for their new Mario movie on Nintendo Direct and New York ComicCon simultaneously. It will be called The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and thank RNGesus that it doesn’t look as bad as the one which shall not be named from the 90s! I shudder to think of that one.
Before the trailer, we got some introductions and brief discussions from Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, Illumination’s Chris Meledandri, Chris Pratt (Voice of Mario), and Jack Black (Voice of Bowser). The intros from Miyamoto and Meledandri were the classic bland promotions of the movie, but the brief intros from Pratt and Black were cringeworthy and felt weird.
Then we got to the important part the trailer. Oh my gosh does the animation look amazing! We got to see some of the incredible physics simulations at work when Bowser melted down the penguin king's castle. We then see Bowser become elated at obtaining an invincibility star from destroying the castle. Presumably, we can assume from this that the invincibility stars will be the McGuffins of the movie and that our hero has to stop Bowser from collecting them all somehow.
After that, we get an image of Mario finding himself in a field of large mushrooms that seem to amaze him before he meets Toad and they jump off to the Mushroom Kindom. Finally, in a quick after-credits scene we see Luigi running from a horde of dry bones near a castle surrounded by lava. Throughout all of this, the animation looks frankly amazing, especially the environmental animation. The weird thing for me is that Mario looks a bit off… Does anybody else think the way they animated him makes him look like Fix-it Felix Jr. from Wreck-It Ralph?
Onto the negatives, as many people have said before, why on earth is Pratt the voice of Mario? Now that we’ve actually got a chance to hear some of his lines I can definitely say the accent is cringeworthy and doesn’t even sound like Mario in any way. Whether or not that's the nostalgic purist in me talking we can wait and see till the movie comes out. I will say the target audience of kids definitely won't care though. Same with Black, when I think of Bowser talking I imagine this deep gravelly voice, and whenever Black’s Bowser talks I can’t help but think why is Po wearing a bowser suit? Hopefully, his comedic lines and deliveries will be funny and not cringe.
Overall I look forward to seeing if we get a good video game movie when it comes out on April 7th, 2023. You can check out the entire Nintendo Direct below.
