Chris Pratt and Charlie Day Explain Why Mario's Voice Didn't Work for THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE
Chris Pratt has gotten a lot of crap since the first trailer was released for The Super Mario Bros. Movie and everyone heard his voice for Mario. I think fans were expecting a more Italian-sounding voice, similar to the character in the Super Mario Bros. game franchise, but instead we got a voice that just pretty much sounded like Chris Pratt.
In a recent interview with The BBC One Show, which you can check out below, Pratt and his co-star Charlie Day, who voices Luigi in the film, were asked about the voice situation, and Pratt explained:
“There are only a handful of things we’ve ever really heard Mario say, like ‘Wahoo!’ and those types of things. ‘It’s-a-me! Let’s a-go!’ So we were trying to find a way to put that into the movie but in away that would be congruent with a storyline of these working class American guys from Brooklyn.”
Day agreed, telling Pratt, “Yeah, you can’t say ‘It’s-a-me!’ for 90 minutes” because “10 minutes in, we know it’s you.”
I guess it makes sense that a voice that just does catchphrases might be hard to translate into a conversational everyday voice. It’s funny because you can hear Pratt doing the impersonation, and it seems like he would have been able to make the transition as he does the voice pretty well, but maybe it sounded weird. I guess we just have to take what we can get and enjoy the movie for what it is. It still looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, even if Mario sounds a little less like game Mario, and a little more like Chris Pratt.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is set to hit theaters on April 5th.