Chris Pratt took some time to get his Mario voice right, even if that meant going through some bumps along the way.
Pratt voices the iconic character in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which just hit theaters last week. Alongside Pratt, Charlie Day voices the lovable Luigi. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the duo revealed that their first iterations of the Super Mario Brother’s accents veered a bit too close to Italian mobster territory.
“We tried different things, different voices,” Day said. “Every now and then they would say, ‘Charlie, maybe a little less Goodfellas in this one’ — I’m like, ‘Alright! I think you’re wrong, but fine!’ — until they landed on something they liked.”
Pratt, too, had similar feedback. “For a minute, I walked in and they were like, ‘That’s a little New Jersey. You’re doing a Tony Soprano thing,'” he said.
A huge release for Mari
Although Pratt’s voice in particular received a lot of online discussion, it doesn’t seem like it was enough to keep audiences away from the film. The movie brought in $368 million at the global box office, crowning it as the biggest worldwide opening ever for an animated film. Previously, Frozen 2 held the record with a $358 million opening.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie finds Mario and Luigi, two brothers trying to get their plumbing business of the ground in Brooklyn, sucked into a fantastical world filled with talking mushrooms, angry turtle monsters, and gorilla armies. Now, Mario has to team up with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) to stop Bowser (Jack Black) from taking over the world.
From Mushroom Kingdom to Bowser’s Castle, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a lovely ride for all ages. In IGN’s review, we said, “Illumination and Nintendo set out to deliver a Mario movie that anyone could enjoy, and that anyone with even a passing knowledge of the games could get lost in – they’ve undeniably succeeded on both fronts.”
To read more about The Super Mario Bros. Movie, check out who Jack Black would like to see play Wario in a sequel, why Chris Pratt sees unbounded potential in this franchise on the screen, and how Keegan-Michael Key perfected that Toad voice.
Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.
