The Super Mario Bros. Movie Directors Say Chris Pratt "Makes Total Sense" As Mario

We're just over a month away from Mario's arrival on the big screen (for the second time), and I think it's safe to say that most of us still aren't sold on Chris Pratt as the voice of the Goomba-stomping plumber. Fans overwhelmingly preferred original Mario voice actor Charles Martinet when the first movie trailer arrived, and when the second trailer arrived, Nintendo had to replace Pratt's first anemic "wahoo" with a better one. Presumably still from Pratt, but it could just as easily have been produced by AI. There’s really no way to tell.

The film's directors, however, were apparently sold on Pratt from the beginning. In an interview with Total Film magazine (via Games Radar), Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath said that casting Chris Pratt in the Super Mario Bros. movie was the "perfect" call.

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"For us, it made total sense," Horvath told the magazine. "He's really good at playing a blue-collar hero with a ton of heart. For the way that Mario is characterized in our film, he’s perfect for it."

As for how Mario is portrayed, Horvath gave us a few hints there too. He said that the movie will be "an origin tale" telling the story of Mario becoming Super Mario." The movie won't follow the plot of any particular Game with a script that instead amalgamates 40 years of Mario into a new yet familiar narrative.

"When you play the Game, if you don’t give up, Mario will succeed," Horvath said. "So we transferred that player experience from the Game to a characteristic that [movie] Mario would have. We wanted to make this movie a very authentic Nintendo Super Mario experience, and be that everyman."

But Pratt as the everyman? Sure, he certainly played that role in Parks and Recreation, but ever since he moved into the role of Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, he's basically only been cast as an action hero barring the odd animated feature.

We'll get to see Pratt as Mario a little earlier than expected. The Super Mario Bros. US theatrical release date has been moved up two days to April 5.

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