We've finally had our first peek at The Super Mario Bros. Movie in the Nintendo Direct teaser trailer presentation, and we now know what the plumber and some familiar Mushroom Kingdom faces — namely Bowser, Kamek, Toad, and Luigi — look like in movie form.
We got a good look at Mario's rear in the recent teaser poster, and a leak earlier this week gave us a peek at his movie face. But now we've had the chance to see him in motion in this motion picture trailer and the real question is whether Nintendo fans think this new 'Movie Mario' look is a good one or not. After all, the initial reveal of Sonic the Hedgehog for his 2020 movie provoked such a fierce reaction that it sent the filmmakers back to the drawing board, reworking finished scenes at great expense to redesign Sonic and appease fans who were not impressed with the results of Sonic's Hollywood makeover.
Illumination (the Minions studio making the Mario movie in partnership with Nintendo) will have been paying very close attention to that costly debacle, and while we're certain nobody will have quite such a dramatic reaction to this slightly less chubby, slightly more realistically proportioned take on gaming's greatest hero...he's definitely looking slightly different from the Mario we know and love from the games!
Despite some initial tentativeness, the new look is currently winning us over and we're intrigued to see more of Mario (and much more of Luigi, who was glimpsed at the end of the trailer) in the upcoming movie.
Here's a quick comparison between Movie Mario and Game Mario:
But what do you think? A bit weird, but you'll get used to it? An improvement? 'Ugly Sonic' all over again? Let us know in the poll below and feel free to elaborate in the comments.
Comments 96
He looks good. Proportions are a bit altered, but this still looks like Mario.
Looks like a rejected mario plush, but still good.
10/10 ...fantastic!
I feel they tried to Pratt-ify his face a little bit, but not too much, so it looks nice.
Its nowhere near as bad I feared it could have been, thats a strong plus.
I'm definitely used to how he looks, after seeing the leaks it prepared me. I think he fits into the world well. His design kinda gives me "Wreck-it-Ralph" vibes
I'm happy about this cinematic Mario.
Im not really blown away... its my opinion. But hey, maby future trailers might change my opinion. Luigi was more interesting for me
It's just weird because Bowser doesn't really look that different. Toad, the koopas, everyone else still look essentially like they always have. Mario looks like that uncanny realistic Mario image that I used to see floating around...yet at the same time he looks like a bobblehead figure. I'm so confused.
I think it looks great so far, the voices, the animation. I feel like I need to hear Mario’s voice more, he sounded different at the end compared to when he said “What is this place” . I can’t wait, and I need a full trailer soon!
The hairy hair is creepy. The sort of hair I’d like to say his moustache looks like would probably result in the comment being removed but let’s just say ‘happy trail’ and leave it at that.
@nessisonett yeah, that's what realistic follicles can do to a guy
He looks like Mario. Just... pudgier.
He sounds fine.
Looks exactly as I expected honestly. Definitely has that "illumination" look.
I wish they went with a more cartoony look. Everything looks like a toy.
He looks kind of off. Not terrible but there's definitely a "somethings not right here" vibe to it.
Don't ask us. Ask our kids. I'll let you know as soon as I show my 11-year old.
Looks fine , the voice is crap
Looks good. Optimistic for a good movie here.
We can be thankful this isn’t Sonic 2.0.
Mario looks different but still the same guy we all love.
It’s like seeing an old friend who we haven’t seen for years. They look a little different but still the same person.
Looks like it would make a great video game
It’s fine, I doubt the animation will be this film’s biggest issue
@nessisonett Haaaaave you seen long facial hair before? Hate to say it, given my status as a bearded man, but most men's facial hair is dark and coarse and somewhat crinkly and a cynical person could say that for a lot of men it's similar to that hair of which you speak.
Looks like an amalgamation of Felix from Wreck-It Ralph and a bit of a 3D render of Mario from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.
Upon giving it a closer look, he looks like how Felix would look if he aged.
Not bad for a first look. Thankfully/Hopefully, this is not another Ugly Sonic situation.
Not as bad as the Pokémon movie designs, a solid 8/10.
Only problem for me is the voice acting for Mario, not even a hint of italian.
As much as I love the way the animation is looking, Chris Pratt needs to voice act rather than just say lines! At least Jack Black and Keegan-Michael Key are putting their best into this movie!
Just hope that the Charlie Day Luigi isn't just Charlie Day reading lines!
@Member_the_game only if it was on ps5/SX, will take Nintendo 20+ years to reach that level of game design but the wait will be worth it.
Raf Grasseti's lawyers are on the move.
In all seriousness, despite being a little bit jank with stuff like the face, I think it's all in all a perfectly grand Mario design that works well as a design specifically made for a movie (his clothing especially is wonderfully detailed). Overall, a few little niggles here and there but overall fine.
...Something about his face in general just looks...off. The eyes?...Mouth?...I don't know.
eh...could have been worse. i'll leave it at that.
Looks good in my opinion and I loved the teaser.
Brooklyn Mario is BACK! Best choice for the movie, very happy about this!
I'm glad the new Mario voice didn't have high pitched voice like in the game.
The design took me a bit to get used to, but when it did...yeah, not bad! The voice could use some work but at least it's not atrociously bad.
He looks okay.
The voice on the other hand...
@Anti-Matter ...so his normal voice then? Not sure what you mean.
There should be a choice between fantastic and weird at first. I thought he looked good.
Wow! So much better than I was expecting. Even the voices seemed natural.
The voice work for everyone except Mario seems really great honestly. Jack Black as Bowser is just a treat, the penguins were fun and silly, Toad and Kamek both fit very well. Chris Pratt as Mario just isn't bringing anything to the character and seems to be phoning it in. Can't wait for a patented Seth Rogan laugh to come out of Donkey Kong 😂
@N00BiSH
The old Mario voice by Charles Martinet was kinda started to feel odd for me as Mario have high pitched voice.
In the movie, Mario have natural masculine voice by Chris Pratt, for me sounds more suitable in my opinion.
I love the look. Realistic, but still mostly cartoonish.
It looked fine to me. Better than the original Sonic the Hedgehog movie design
I dont hate it, but the initial look does feel a few degrees off. But that's because Nintendo doesnt mess with Mario's 3D model too drastically aside from a new coat of paint every few years.
I'm just relieved Chris Pratt's voice "works", if they really had to rob Charles Martinet of his rightful role (not trying to rag on Chris, obviously).
Had to get used to it but now I do quite like how he looks.
Still not the biggest fan of the jumpy cartoony animation style though, I always vastly preferred the bit more realistic animation style they used in the GameCube Mario sports games intro movies. Still cartoony, but not as exaggerated.
I'm still gonna watch this movie in the theater when it comes though. Can't wait!
Some don't seem to realize the Mario we know and love would look pretty unnatural in a fully animated movie.
As far as visuals go it looks excellent! No complaints honestly there. I also though Jack and Keegan sounded great as Bowser and Toad. My only holdup is Chris's Mario though...not the best first impression but we only got a small sample size so maybe it will grow on me.
Overall, a solid first look I'd say.
Just as I thought, they’re dropping the Italian accent. A lot of people will complain about that, but remember that you’ll hear him talk a lot more in the movie and that could quickly become annoying and very limiting for the character development.
For me it's close enough. There is no point to compare to "Ugly Sonic", which was a veeeery different situation, very different from the source
They designed 3D Mario for playability. I'm more than ok with the cinematic one having different proportions. But if they do make a game tie in, then yeah, they would have to go back to the videogame model as that's perfect. As for the voice. It's not going to start annoying or anything after 30 mins but it might be a little too...dunno...regular. For a movie, I think it looks and sounds fantastic. (Loved the King Penguin declaring 'that was but a taste of our fury.' Bless them.)
I think he resembles Chris Pratt ever so slightly.....if you squint!
It’s looking good
This does nothing for me unlike Sonic when they redesigned him which had me screaming in delight. Sorry but it just doesn't. I'll stick to the games I think.
He reminds me of the '90s TV Show, both visually and the voice
@StarPoint Yeah, I immediately thought of Wreck-It-Ralph when i saw him
To me it looks like Mario+Illumination style. Probably done by the animators due to being more comfortable animating him. It looks slightly off but I can live with it.
He looks fantastic!
@FixMadden22 How does he look like a rejected plush?
@BlackenedHalo Totally agree!
@Jiggies How so?
I just thought the leaked McDonald’s art seemed a little off, but Mario himself looked fine, not weird. The more I looked at the art, the more I liked it, and after seeing the trailer, I’m fully onboard. Overall, Movie Mario reminds me of the Mario in the old TV cartoons both in his face and voice, which is making me pretty nostalgic. I like that his shirt has a collar! Luigi also looks good from what little we can see of him.
He looks like Bob hoskins!
is it wrong that Fix-it Felix came to mind when he was shown? even worse is with Jack's Bowser, a Fix-it Felix vs. Po the panda face off popped in my mind.😂
Looks great, but there's a visible dash of realism that it could have done without.
@StarPoint I thought so too, he looks like Felix or Tapper.
I think the characters look really good. It’s obviously not exactly what we’ve seen in the games, but it has enough of its own identity and the style lends itself to great levels of facial expression while maintaining familiarity. I think they struck a very good balance.
Not as good as Bob Hoskins
Looks great, sounds awful, pls recast Pratt
Even if you don’t compare this to the first Sonic reveal, Mario looks great! And I think they’ve nailed Bowser and Kamek voices, I sit in judgment of Mario’s for the time being, but I’m generally in favour of Chris Pratt’s work.
At least he looks better than in the original Mario Bros movie.
Wow, a Mario with a collared shirt! Thank goodness they did not go full on turtleneck.
It looks! It sure does.
Creepy hands
Didn't look as bad as I feared, but the voice was pretty lame, doesn't sound anything like Mario.
I was way more impressed by Bowser, he both looks and sounds like the games while coming across as more menacing. I was worried Jack Black would just use his normal voice like Kung Fu Panda, but I didn't even notice it was him anymore in the trailer.
Meh, I can tell it’s Mario but like why not just…ya know….use his game design? Why not use the game design for all the characters??? Whatever. Everything look surprisingly decent except for Mario. I think he’s going to be the worst part about this movie. I know it was a short clip but Pratt’s performance was 0% effort to sound like Mario.
For me, it's just the positioning and size of his eyes that throws me off. Still, it is leagues better than the original model for Sonic. That model was so cursed, it was an abomination that needs to be consigned back to the depths of Hell from whence it came. I can get behind this, even if it doesn't look exactly like Mario from the games.
The design itself does not look terrible, but feels kinda out of place. Kinda wish he just looked less textured and more plastic-y, like in the games. I might mind less, if every other character looked just as textured, but it just feels like Mario is unnecessarily way more detailed than all the other characters. Especially if he's side to side with a toad. Every surface of Toad just looks flat and shiney. The penguins and Bowser also have SOME normal texture to them, but none of them look quite as "rough" (in terms of ACTUAL roughness), as Mario.
It's a good solid design. Not fantastic but more than okay, looks like Mario's main appearance without re-inventing the wheel in the Illumination style. The voice has potential but I need to hear more to re-evaluate (same with Luigi). Bowser, Toad, and Kamek are on point though!
It’s not that different from the normal. Just slightly less cartoony. The voice though isn’t doing much at all. I will need to hear more Mario lines. Toad is hilarious though. Bowser sounds too high pitched as well.
Mario finally has a neck! His head doesn't sit awkwardly between his shoulders like the games. I think they did a great job with the redesign without "seemingly" altering him too much. Looking forward!
He looks fine, but too bad the voice kills it
Omg you guys are totally using the pic lmao I look forward to having it grace the header for every Nintendo bad news article.
I’m just glad he doesn’t look like Bob Hoskins.
Keep in mind: when ubisoft made a mario game a first ever outsorced studio since zelda cdi nobody gave a shi.t how terrible marios design looked like
I don't know why they didn't keep with the game design. He's not a pixelated sprite in the games anymore. It's pretty much the same medium. He could look exactly the same with maybe some added textures. He's still a cartoon character. He's not more realistic looking. It's the same look but slightly different. Why?
A major selling point is that he's recognizable. It's easy cross promotion between the movies and the games. I don't want to denounce it like some hysterical internet freak but he does look like a knock off. He just does. I don't really mind. Ultimately he looks fine but it's an odd direction and I don't understand why they did it.
@Chips07 Did Ubisoft change Mario's design at all in the Rabbids games? He looks the same as any other game to my eyes.
You're also comparing a 3rd party developed spin-off video game to a full production film based on the main series, which are very different.
@Purgatorium It is a bit silly they're taking so many unnecessary risks with the biggest IP they own. I realize it's just a movie and not a new game, but still - why change so much?
Why take an iconic character voiced by Charles Martinet since 1992 and suddenly replace his voice with a movie actor who just ends up talking and acting like his normal self?
I have to assume it's just to draw attention to the film. We've already seen so many articles about Chris Pratt alone, but it's still pretty risky I think.
It would be like if Mickey Mouse suddenly started talking just like Tom Cruise. I would only hear Tom Cruise, not Mickey.
In the same way here, I only hear Chris Pratt talking, not Mario.
Honestly I much prefer the game version but it's inoffensive.
They need fix mario face. This will appear the most of the movie.
@PinkScepter98 Sorry for the late reply, I think he looks like a little furry muppet. he's been iluminationized. All of the characters in the movie look a little like little furry muppets imo. I think it looks cute.
Just needed a few seconds to adjust to Mario's Illumination look, but afterwards all was right with the world.
Ok I'm back with my 11-year-old daughter's reaction:
I called her into the living room saying I wanted to show her something, then played the trailer without telling her what she was about to see. She initially thought it was a new game and, as she's pretty opinionated about game trailers that don't show gameplay, started doing her flat "this is a movie" routine, balked HARD at Magikoopa speaking English, so you can imagine how she felt about Bowser speaking too. By the time Mario showed up, she fully realized this was indeed a movie and couldn't accept that he didn't sound or look like he does in the games. She really hated Toad, who's game voice she loves because it's do obnoxious. As the title screen showed up, she got up and said, "This is a disgrace to all Mario-kind!" She then left the room, missing the Luigi interjection. I was laughing the whole time and urged her to try to separate game Mario and movie Mario, who must be different because movies, unlike games, are all about telling a story. She jokingly dismissed this, insisting, "If the REAL Mario (as if there's a real Mario) saw this he'd be ashamed, Dada. ASHAMED!" Then I showed her the trailer for the 1993 Super Mario movie, which released when I was 12, but I haven't shown her yet because I can't ever find it anywhere. To this she said, bizarrely enough, "At least they got Mario's voice right!", which inspired, from me, great guffaws of confusion. Oddly enough, and much to my amazement, her assessment of the 93 trailer was, "It's more acceptable, Dada, because it's like they didn't know what they were doing because it was the 90s." I totally understood this and was very impressed and proud of her in this moment because she nailed it completely. Oh, and she keenly and correctly pegged those penguins as Minions stand-ins.
TL;DR Kids are going to be more confused by this than the 1993 live action adaptation because it feels closer to the games but is just different enough to be wrong somehow and most of you sound like an 11-year-old girl raised by a guy who thinks he's funny.
Okay hear me out...the Penguin King is Pablo from Backyardigans
They removed his wolverine claws
@Astral-Grain Yeah I can see marketing reasons to cast Chris Pratt. They want a big recognizable name. Nobody knows the names of professional voice actors and so they can't market their names on posters and trailer, and they won't draw audiences for talk show and press junkets to promote the movie. It's an unfortunate turn animation has taken.
I mean, I guess that's a reason anyway. The target audience for this movie is kids. Do they care? But there just seems no reason to change his look.
Where is the, it's not terrible but still could be improved? I mean they still have 7 months before release and it's not un heard of to polish a game. And yeah, it could have been as bad as Sonic.
@Purgatorium RIght, if it's marketed at kids, they should know kids don't care about actor names, all they care about is seeing and hearing the iconic Mario from video games.
I think it would be really funny if at the end of the movie they reveal this was just some alternative universe Mario and the real Mario is still voiced by Charles Martinet. I think that would be a clever way to justify why they did this.
Every other studio has a multiverse lol so why not, I can dream.
He looks the same. Why is there no option to vote for the obvious.
Edit: I can see many people would prefer a Mario with no facial expressions and a high pitched voice. Talk about creepy and annoying at the same time, I'm glad these people are not responsible for the movie.
Also Mario's original popularity was not a thing because he was a Mickey Mouse voiced mascot without personality. People liked him because he was ORDINARY and relatable to everyman, a plumber from Brooklyn. It seems Nintendo has realized that and combined the best of both worlds.
Looks great! Cant wait for this movie.
I showed my kids the 1993 Mario movie trailer and then told them to be happy with what they're getting.
Tap here to load 96 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...