Chris Pratt Is Ruining The Hype For The Super Mario Movie And Fans Are Taking Him Down
Chris Pratt has made it clear that he doesn't know much about Mario despite voicing the character in the new movie, and fans aren't letting him get away with it.
Ever since The Super Mario Bros. Movie announced that the Jurassic World: Dominion star Chris Pratt would be voicing the iconic video game character, Mario, Nintendo fans have gone feral on the internet declaring all the reasons why this was the wrong casting choice. And, according to Queerty, Pratt isn’t doing himself any favors in trying to win over the fans. In fact, while doing publicity for the movie, the actor continuously proves that he doesn’t know much about Mario or the Mushroom Kingdom at all.
Chris Pratt had already made himself unpopular with progressive movie watchers who have criticized The Terminal List actor for who he follows on social media and the church the actor attends. Pratt famously has been a member of the celebrity-wooing megachurch, Hillsong Church—a global Australian Christian church that is infamously anti-LGBTQ+.
And though Pratt has preached love and acceptance and swears that he doesn’t have anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs, some people beg to differ because of the personalities and groups the actor follows on social media. The Guardians of the Galaxy actor has a history of following extreme right-wing public figures like Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, and the anti-gay hate group Turning Points USA on social media.
Because of these associations, Chris Pratt had already earned the title of “the least favorite Chris in Hollywood,” compared with other famous Chrises, including fellow Marvel alums Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. No doubt, Pratt believed that he would get back in the fans’ good graces by accepting the role of the beloved Mario, but, as it turns out, his casting in The Super Mario Bros. Movie made the actor even more unpopular.
On the one hand, Mario is an Italian immigrant (or, in the case of the movie, the son of an Italian immigrant), and Chris Pratt is not of Italian descent. But what confused fans even more than Mario’s lineage was when the trailer for the movie dropped and fans got the first listen of Chris Pratt’s voice as Mario, and he sounded, well, like Chris Pratt. Since Mario has had a very distinct voice since 1996 when Chris Martinet first voiced the character in the Super Mario 64 video game, fans were disappointed to hear that Mario’s classic voice would not be a part of the new movie.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie has now been in publicity mode for months, giving Chris Pratt one last opportunity to convince fans that he was the right choice for the role, and, unfortunately, the Parks and Recreation actor is only reinforcing the fans’ original beliefs. While doing a group interview with the cast of the movie on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Pratt showed just how much he doesn’t know about Mario, the Mushroom Kingdom, or the rest of the source material that the movie is based on. While discussing the movie, Pratt called the video games “comic books” and said that the classic video game characters were simply avatars without personality, despite there being more than 200 games in various genres released over the past 30 years that have fleshed out who Mario and his friends are.
One particularly peeved Mario fan edited these interview slipups together in one clip, which you can see in the video below.
