Nintendo shared the first trailer for the anticipated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” an animated adventure with some very meme-worthy casting. Starring Chris Pratt as Mario and Jack Black as Bowser, fans were excited to see just how unhinged this movie would be. More than 600,000 viewers listened to the premiere on Nintendo of America’s YouTube channel, and the trailer was streamed simultaneously at New York Comic Con.
While the trailer was a bit short, it didn’t disappoint. We finally heard Chris Pratt’s voice come out of Mario’s animated form, and it was wonderfully bizarre. In addition, Keegan-Michael Key already kills it as Toad and admonishes Mario for mistaking him for a mushroom. Toad with attitude? Hell yes.
The trailer kicks off with Bowser back on his bullshit, trying to steal our stars like we’re playing “Mario Party.” The Koopa Troopas – who are literally troops, true to their name – follow Bowser to a snowy castle, where he demands that they open the gates. Some penguins try to throw snowballs at him to defend their domain, but their efforts are in vain.
So far, Black seems to have been seriously committed to his role as the terrifying Mario villain.
“Do you have any idea how long it took me to learn to breathe fire?” Black deadpanned in a pre-recorded video, which played alongside the trailer. “I had to learn from Gene Simmons from Kiss!”
To quote our own Greg Kumparak: “Bowser looks terrifying! Mario is Chris Pratt.”
He is right. We are introduced to Mario as he pops out of a warp pipe into a mushroom-filled fantasy land, but he unceremoniously lands alone in the field. So far Chris Pratt’s Mario looks more like Andy Dwyer than Star-Lord, and we think that’s great for him.
“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to become Mario,” Pratt said before the trailer aired. He remembers spending hours of his life stomping on Koopas in the original Mario arcade game at his local laundromat.
We didn’t get to see any other performances from the star-studded cast, including Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach, Charlie Day as Luigi, and former londonbusinessblog.com Disrupt speaker Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong. We might see them in trailer two!
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” will premiere on April 7, 2023.