These next holidays should mark an important chapter in Nintendo’s history, not because of a new game or console but instead due to the expected premiere of the new Super Mario Bros. movie. However, expectations over how Chris Pratt will sound as Mario have fans coming up with ingenious ways to make it easier to imagine.
The revelation of Pratt’s casting came during Nintendo’s last Direct event, which also announced the Guardians of the Galaxy star would be joined by Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and Fred Armisen, plus long time Mario voice actor Charles Martinet in a mystery role. Among these names, Pratt’s instantly stood out the most, despite the Mario movie’s producers backing up the actor's skills for the job.
Regardless of that, artists of every kind throughout the internet have taken to creating mashups of every kind featuring Pratt’s past voiceover work, such as Kevin Temmer Tunes whose fully animated Mario won't necessarily quell fans’ fears. In this case, the artist achieved this result by using “Mario Bros Rig”, a tool created for animation 3D software Autodesk Maya, to blend one of Pratt’s more touching lines from The Lego Movie for sheer comedic purposes.
While the result should not be taken as anything more than a fun experiment, it’s obvious Emmet’s voice from The Lego Movie is far from being suitable for Mario, though the lip-sync and animation work does look on point. As if that wasn’t enough, the artist went the extra mile to pay respects to Mario’s brother, using the exact same tools to tease an unsettling version of Day as Luigi, using some lines from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It’s probably safe to say these are nowhere near close to what Nintendo fans will be getting when the first trailer or teaser for the Mario movie comes out, whenever that happens since Luigi’s Mansion 3 would have been scarier and a wholly different game with this version of Luigi. All this is fairly understandable, as Martinet’s Mario voice is so iconic that it makes it quite hard to imagine anyone else stepping up for the task.
The still-untitled Super Mario movie will be one of many exciting projects for Nintendo in 2022, especially now that rumors about a potential Mario Kart announcement are coming in faster than ever, plus games like Splatoon 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 also on the horizon.
Source: Kevin Temmer Tunes|YouTube