Super Mario Bros. Movie: Why Chris Pratt's First Voice Was Rejected
In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Chris Pratt provides the voice for Mario. The mustachioed mascot has been voiced by Charles Martinet in Nintendo's video games since the '90s, but Mario's actual speaking lines in them tend to be minimal. As such, Illumination Entertainment and Universal had to develop a voice for the character that would work in a 90-minute movie. That task seems to have been more difficult than expected; in an interview with Variety, Pratt revealed that his first attempt at a Mario voice was deemed too "New Jersey" for the character, drawing comparisons to Tony Soprano.
"For a minute, I walked in and they were like, 'That's a little New Jersey. You're doing a Tony Soprano thing.' [The voice] was a really exciting and daunting challenge. Talking to these guys, they say, 'You wanna do the Mario movie?' I think both [Charlie Day and I] said yes. Didn't even ask, 'What's the deal? What's the story?' 'Yes, I'm in.' And then we had to really dig in and figure out… are they Italian? Are they American?"
Eventually, the voice Pratt and the team settled on embraced the plumber's Brooklyn roots. Since the early days, Mario has been depicted as an Italian-American, and the movie actually leans into his home and family life in a way that's never quite been seen. The character's strained relationship with his father is at the forefront of the film, and we even get to see extended family members like Mario and Luigi's Uncle Tony.
Fittingly enough, while Martinet does not voice Mario in the film, he does voice the character's father. In addition to that role, Martinet also plays a minor character named Giuseppe, who only makes one brief appearance in the movie while playing an arcade game called "Jumpman." Jumpman is one of several in-jokes in the movie, as it happens to be the name Mario originally went by when he first appeared in the original Donkey Kong arcade game.
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