The Super Mario Bros. Moviewas always bound to be divisive as soon as it was announced. Some loved the idea of getting to see a childhood favorite video game character on the big screen. Meanwhile, others were skeptical that the whole thing was just a cash grab and that Illumination wouldn’t be able to pull off any sort of compelling story. While Mario has a long and storied history, the actual plot lines of his video games have been fairly repetitive and simple — not exactly great content for a screen adaptation.
More than anything, the problem plaguing this movie is that they suddenly have to make something interesting out of a main character who never speaks. While Mario is known for somekey catchphrases(“It’s-a me!"), he never really has much of a voice in the story. The games usually rely on dialogue from other characters to move things along — when there’s even dialogue at all. In order for the audience to care about Mario as a protagonist in the movie, he has to have a personality, but giving a personality to one of the most well-known video game characters of all time presents its own challenges.
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Nintendo is no stranger to silent protagonists. In fact, much of the gaming industry employs this technique as a way to let the player project their own personality onto the character that they play as. Now, most people probably aren’t projecting much onto Mario, but there’s something about his blank space of a character that’s intrinsic to theMariogames. It’s not as though he doesn’t have a voice at all; the noises and catchphrases that come from the character are incredibly iconic. But he doesn’t have much personality to speak of, and that’s by design.
This, of course, presents a problem for an adaptation, as the filmmakers now have to create a personality for a character known worldwide. They have to craft his character basically from scratch and hope that the choices they make will appease both long-time fans and the general public.Mario has to be interestingenough to justify having a whole movie about him, but he can’t have too loud of a personality, or might contrast the way he’s presented in the games. The writers will have to walk a very fine line with the character in order to make him the right amount of interesting.
It also doesn’t help that Mario’s voice in the movie is going to be under intense scrutiny the entire time, as many fans didn’t react positively to the news thatChris Pratt will be voicing the character. Many thought that his voice is just too recognizable in its Chris Pratt-ness to properly translate to Mario, and the small moments shown in the trailer of him speaking seem to prove that theory correct. Charles Martinet has given an iconic performance as Mario over the years, so hearing literally any other voice come out of the character’s mouth is jarring. It may be too early to judge the voice after just one trailer, but this small amount of evidence isn’t inspiring a lot of confidence in fans.
The combination of the voice itself as well as the writing around the character is going to be what saves it or kills it in the end. PerhapsPratt’s performancewill actually surprise everyone and be much more dynamic than anyone was expecting, but that outcome doesn’t seem likely at the moment. Because of this, Mario’s character is going to have to rely heavily on the writing quality. If they’re not able to create a believable personality for him, it’s going to take the audience out of the movie incredibly quickly. Mario has to be the emotional heart of the movie, and the writing can’t just rely on nostalgia from fans in order to endear Mario to the audience.
The problem with a silent protagonist is that the whole idea around them in a video game is that the player has full control, and that character becomes an avatar for the player’s emotions and choices. That kind of agency and control isn’t going to be present in a movie. The audience will have no say over the events, and will instead be watchingMario become his own character. It’s incredibly tricky to pull off, and nothing is going to please everyone. However, as long as they’re able to create a character in Mario that has enough personality to keep the movie interesting, but not so much as to overwhelm it to the point where it doesn’t feel like Mario anymore, they just might be able to pull it off.
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