The voice cast of the upcoming and as yet-untitled animated “Super Mario” movie, which will probably called “Super Mario: The Movie” or something, was revealed at a Nintendo press event on Thursday, with fat dumbass-turned hunky leading man Chris Pratt voicing the diminutive, hallucinogenic-mushroom consuming plumber, Axios reported Thursday, continuing Hollywood’s troubled history with inappropriately casting roles mismatching the characters’ ethnicities.
Admittedly, having an Irish-ish guy like Pratt voice Mario isn’t nearly as problematic as having the Jewish-Danish Jake Gyllenhaal play an Iranian regent in that “Prince of Persia” movie everyone forgot existed or Johnny Depp as a Navajo in the shitty “Lone Ranger” pic, but whatever, it’s important to people who like to get offended by these sort of things. Mario himself doesn’t make a lot of sense come to think of it. Before he could actually speak in games, his canonical accent was that of an Italian American from Brooklyn – as first portrayed by an actual Italian American from the New York City area, the late great Captain Lou Albano, and then a British guy who convincingly pulled it off, the late great Bob Hoskins in the seminal 1993 classic, Super Mario Bros.
It wasn’t until 1996 when Super Mario 64 was released on a platform capable of playing in-game audio files that “It’s-a-me Mario!” in an Italian accent was first heard. From there, a character who was once a proud American and New Yorker became an Italian immigrant with a comically exaggerated inflection to everything he said. Did he hit his head or something? What the hell happened to Mario 25 years ago? You know what? Fuck it. I’m glad Chris Pratt is playing Mario. Who cares if he’s not Italian. It’s time an American retook the role. No more of this shit. Let’s-a-go!