I don’t know if I’m really surprised about that. Nintendo has an iron grip on their franchise quality control, so from the start I wasn’t worried it was going to be an un-faithful adaptation.
Really the only truly worrying things were the studio (Illumination) and Chris Pratt as Mario.
And having now seen the teaser trailer, while the cast choice reveal was hilarious, I now have the utmost confidence in pretty much every voice actor. Especially Jack Black’s Bowser.
Buuuut, not so much for Mario. To be honest, he really does just sound like Chris Pratt doing his normal voice. He has the slightest of accents, but it’s still 90% him, whereas Jack Black has seemed to pull back his usual tone for Bowser. Same for Keegan Michael Key’s Toad. You can still tell it’s Jack Black or Key, but it works better for the character. Every other actor seems to fit their role better, so no worries there.
But I need to hear more to really make a true judgement.
All in all, though, I was massively impressed, and I’ll admit I am now hype for it. While I kind of wish it was in the hands of a more stylish studio (Dreamworks or Sony, for instance), I cannot deny that the realistic “Pixar” look does look really good on the Mario characters.
And the trailer got a few laughs out of me, so I’m not too worried about the typical Illumination writing either. I think we have a movie that will be at absolute worst “good” and at best one of the best video game movies, up there with Sonic 2 for me.
I actually think Metroid would lend itself better to an animated series, and if they don’t want to risk completely fricking up her character they could really just adapt the prequel manga. A Metroid series would also prolly be the only time I wouldn’t be opposed to something Being more episodic in nature.
Honestly i would love to see a The Legend of Zelda movie that is an adaptation of Majora’s Mask, OOT or TP (One of the first three intsallments in the Child Timeline) and is animated in a style that is like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbMQfaG6lo8 ,
or like the Final Fantasy/Square Enix/KH Cinematic thingamajings.
But yeah a potentially better Mario movie (aside from the anime one) is lovely. Yeah Chris Pratt could put more of that Brooklyn voice in more lines.
Still i do not think Chris Pratt is that bad per say. I mean, yeah it is not the same high pitched Italian voice from Charles but Pratt does at one point give this Italian-American Brooklyn voice like those cheesy 1980s-1990s Super Show and honestly that is good enough, i would just would love to hear more of that accent in more lines.
I think my tolerance of Chris Prat’s Mario has improved over time, but its still easily the weakest voice in the film. 'Course, we haven’t heard Donkey Kong yet, so that may change.
Edit: thanks ghiddy, hadn’t thought about it being spoilers. Read at your peril folks
I found myself grinning from ear-to-ear throughout the film, little things like the DK Rap just plain caught me off guard. For me I’m most nostalgic for the og Wii Mario Kart, so I liked those bits the most. Did feel like the pacing was a bit weird in places, i didn’t rrally like the finale returning to Brooklyn, it just didn’t feel very “big” if that makes sense? And it kinda raises the question of why they are living in the Mushroom Kingdom, instead of the real world, them being stranded could have been an idea that made sense if they hadn’t elaborated on the real world in the intro.
Mario and Luigi have been living at their mom’s house in brooklyn well into adulthood and you wonder why they immediately moved into free real estate?
I mean, Mario’s basically a mushroom kingdom celebrity now, and the conveniently constructed brooklyn warp pipe is twenty feet from his front door, so it’s not like he’s stranded anymore. Honestly I wouldn’t be too surprised to see some toads renting out some apartments in the inevitable sequel, although considering their economy revolves around massive golden coins I doubt they’d stay for too long.
