#good portrayal of an iconic character

[teegeeteegee]

Super Mario Bros Movie Talk Part 1: Mario

I finally have the time to talk about the movie. As of right now, the plan is to break it up and talk about certain sections of the movie. I may come back and edit these posts here and there, but these posts will mostly consist of what comes to mind at the moment.

With that said, what better way than to start this endeavor than to talk about the main man himself?

The movie did a great job with Mario. In the games, Mario is this mostly upbeat character without a lot of depth. He doesn't get to have any lengthy dialogue and only says a few albeit iconic catch phrases here and there. In the movie, however, he is a determined, brave, and adventurous guy who has a huge chip on his shoulder and wants to prove himself. However, he is made to be small both literally and figuratively as not only is his height the subject of jokes, he isn't taken seriously by everyone around him including his own family.

Having said that, Mario does have his flaws. His main one is his impulsive nature. Although his heart is in the right place, he is so eager to go out and do something that he doesn't think of any potential consequences that may come from his actions. The main one that comes to mind is when he dragged Luigi into the Brooklyn sewers to try to fix the water leak that flooded the streets, resulting in both of them being sucked into a pipe that led Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi to the Dark Lands. Him having such flaws make him more relatable rather than him being immediately being great at everything. Despite saving the day at the end, there is this feeling he still has things he needs to improve on.

The last thing I'll talk about is Chris Pratt. There was a lot of skepticism about him when he was announced as the voice for Mario, and the first trailer did very little to ease any of it. Admittedly, I was disappointed Charles Martinet wasn't going to voice Mario, although I was happy he got to take part in the movie. With that said, I wanted to see the movie first before basing my thoughts on Chris Pratt's performance, and I have to say he did Mario justice. That's not to say he was perfect, but he did enough to make Mario believable. Most important, he wasn't awful enough to make me long for Martinet. Pratt has made a living playing or voicing the everyman character roles, and who in the video game industry depicts this more than our favorite Italian plumber?

In the end, one of the main things the movie got right was the portrayal of Mario. Seeing that he's the main protagonist, it would have been a disappointment had he not been rootable. Should there be any sequels, I would be interested to see what they do with him from here.