Game on! How Chris Pratt, Seth Rogen and 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' freshen a Nintendo classic
We've spent countless hours with Mario over the last four decades, having him jump on turtle henchmen, go down teleportation tubes and save the day. After all this time, though, folks really don't know the video game plumber all that well.
Chris Pratt is here to fix that.
Voicing him in the animated adventure “The Super Mario Bros.” (in theaters Wednesday), Pratt felt he could “breathe a little bit of my own spirit" into the character, like “my brand of vulnerability and Mario's desire to never give up."
Pratt and his “Super Mario” co-stars break down how the film pulls from Mario’s history as an 8-bit icon while also mining fresh ground:
Chris Pratt weathered 'Super Mario Bros.' backlash about his voice
Mustached Brooklyn dude Mario runs a plumbing business with his bro Luigi (Charlie Day) – which isn’t going all that great – when they venture underground to look into a water main problem and end up transported to a fantasy world. Mario meets Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) of the Mushroom Kingdom, gets recruited to help fend off an attack from the mighty Bowser (Jack Black), and is indoctrinated into a world where eating fungi gives him superpowers.
At the beginning of the movie, Pratt and Day pay passing homage to the high-pitched faux Italian tones of their classic Nintendo characters before settling into less over-the-top accents, which spawned criticism from fans from the first trailer. "When I first heard people being passionate about our take on the voices, it never really bothered me," Pratt says, because there was that nod to the past. But Day argues, “I think 90 minutes of that over-the-top stereotypical accent would've been borderline unwatchable.”
Charlie Day found an immediate connection with Luigi as ‘a nervous, put-upon guy’
In the early ’80s games “Mario Bros.” and “Super Mario Bros,” Luigi was essentially a color-swapped Mario but over the years gained his own personality and had solo adventures in the “Luigi’s Mansion” series. The new movie nods to his terrifying predicaments in those games by sticking him in the Dark Lands, where he runs afoul of Bowser and his skeleton Koopa Troopas.
Luigi has “a personality type that I get cast in a lot, which is sort of a nervous, put-upon guy,” says Day, a star and writer on FX's “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” “It felt like a really nice fit (and) hopefully the audience is finding a new and more fleshed-out Luigi to fall in love with.”
Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong still harbors a Mario grudge
He’s still throwing barrels just like in his original game, but the Donkey Kong (voiced by Seth Rogen) in the “Super Mario” movie is a warrior from the Jungle Kingdom who’s roped into the battle against Bowser’s forces. Rogen appreciated how the film used the “Donkey Kong Country” video game “as inspiration and built out the family more and him wanting his father's attention.”
But the relationship between the big gorilla and Mario is as adversarial as ever. “Donkey Kong hates Mario and is not thrilled to be around him, inherently has a dislike for him and doesn't buy into the Mario fanfare,” Rogen adds. “And in movies, any scene where someone hates someone else is usually funny.”
Jack Black gives life to the antagonistic icon Bowser
Bowser, who debuted in the hugely popular 1985 video game “Super Mario Bros.,” has been Mario’s chief nemesis for 40 years, mainly grunting and snarling at his foes. Black says he adored giving a softer side to “arguably the most recognizable video game villain of all time.” (It might also involve a “fantastic song,” he teases.) “He’s evil but he's also sensitive. It's a smorgasbord for an actor.”
Whereas Black uses his own voice as Po in the “Kung Fu Panda” movies, he utilized a “darker, lower register” and “a little more gravel” when recording Bowser's lines. “I had to drink a lot of hot tea and shut down some of the sessions,” he recalls. “Sometimes after a couple hours, I’d go, ‘Guys, I'm roasted, my pipes are raw. I've left esophageal meat on a microphone.’ ”
‘Super Mario Bros.’ borrows from ‘Mario Kart’ and other favorite games
The movie contains Easter eggs referencing a number of beloved Nintendo games, from “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!” to “Duck Hunt.” Pratt loves a montage moment where fans will realize they’re watching a mix of levels from multiple “Super Mario” games, plus the way the film incorporates the well-known musical themes “that really are the soundtrack to so many people's lives, including my own.”
As a big “Mario Kart” fan, Rogen got a kick out of seeing Mario, Peach, Donkey Kong and crew drive their vehicles “Mad Max”-style down Rainbow Road, “which to me as a kid was always one of the coolest, most psychedelic levels in any of the games.”
Two plumbers, a princess and a great ape still rule the Nintendo landscape
Why do we care so much for Mario and Co. more than 40 years later? Black, who recalls playing the original arcade “Donkey Kong,” feels they’re “touchstones for our childhood” and “at some point, they create their own mythology when they're that ingrained in our culture. They become larger than just video game or cartoon characters.”
For Rogen, something objectively as good as the “Super Mario” galaxy is hard to define: “Why does the song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ still hold up after all this time? I think some things just work.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Super Mario Bros. Movie': Chris Pratt plumbs Nintendo's greatest hits
