Chris Pratt’s Mario movie voice revealed

Nintendo released its first trailer for the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Movie, featuring Chris Pratt as Mario and Jack Black as Bowser.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie finally got a trailer, and it revealed what everyone was waiting for — what Chris Pratt and Jack Black’s Mario and Bowser would sound like.

Some context: Mario has been voiced by one man for the entirety of his voice-acted existence: Charles Martinet. Martinet has been responsible for every single “Wahoo!” “Mamma mia!” and “Letsa go!” since Mario started having a voice in 1995. Most people’s first experience with Mario’s voice was in Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64.

While Martinet will be appearing in the movie as a cameo, the lead voice role for the movie Mario has instead been given to Chris Pratt. Many on the internet threw their hands up, upset at the fact that the voice of Mario for nearly 30 years wasn’t the star. Others were upset at Chris Pratt’s involvement at all, owing to the controversies surrounding his faith and where he worships (it has been alleged that Pratt worshipped at a church that was anti-LGBTQ, but Pratt denies this.)

Regardless, the trailer revealed what Mario sounds like now, and while he’s definitely not like Martinet’s Mario, Pratt’s voice isn’t awful, but it’s also nothing special. Twitter has mostly coalesced around the “he just sounds like Chris Pratt’s normal voice,” train of thought.

On the flip side, we got a few voice lines from Jack Black’s Bowser, and he sounds fantastic. We also heard a little bit of Keegan-Michael Key’s version of Toad, and he also sounds great. The environments shown off in the trailer also lend a lot of weight to the world Illumination and Nintendo are trying to craft.

Super Mario Bros Movie will launch in theatres worldwide April 28th, 2023 worldwide.

Nintendo’s new movie isn’t the only news coming from the family-friendly company. A recently fired Nintendo worker stepped forward to share their experience, after being fired over a unionisation question. Nintendo also recently held a games-focused Nintendo Direct, showing off the newest games coming to the Switch next year, including the new Legend of Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.