Pedro Pascal Proves He Is Better Mario Than Chris Pratt In SNL Skit
Pedro Pascal proved he should have been cast in place of Chris Pratt for the upcoming Super Mario movie in this hilarious SNL skit.
Nintendo fans have been unenthusiastic about Chris Pratt’s… unique take on Mario’s voice for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Many have claimed that Pratt’s take on the character is just his normal speaking voice, a far cry from Charles Martinet’s energetic (if exaggerated) Italian accent. Now, a recent SNL skit starring Pedro Pascal shows that, even if you don’t use Mario’s iconic voice, you can still do a better job than… whatever it is Chris Pratt is doing.
While, like Pratt, Pedro Pascal’s voice is far from the Mario we’re familiar with, the gruff baritone feels like it has more personality than the barely-perceivable change in Pratt’s voice. In fact, it’s reminiscent of the pre-martinet Mario performances, such as Lou Albano’s performance in 1989’s The Super Mario Bros. Super Show or Bob Hoskins’ voice in the poorly-received 1993 Super Mario Bros film. At the very least, it’s not just Pedro Pascal talking like Pedro Pascal normally talks.
The skit, which re-imagines Mario Kart as an HBO prestige drama, is a parody of the adaptation of The Last of Us, a dark, drama-heavy video game that has led to a TV series. The world of The Last of Us is a bleak, hopeless post-apocalypse where society has fallen apart, and people have turned on each other violently as a fungus-based plague ravages humanity. Mario Kart is, of course, the furthest thing from that, so turning it into a similarly dark drama with gruff The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal playing Mario makes for a hilarious contrast.
The skit opens with a close-up of a pile of rubble with a discarded artillery shell painted to look like a beat-up Bullet Bill. We then see a ramshackle camp of what appear to be refugees and a woman putting a gold coin on a table asking someone if they can transport “important cargo.” When asking this person their name, we see a close-up of a grizzled Pedro Pascal saying, gravelly, “It’s a-me, Mario.”
The skit goes on to portray a world that’s been utterly destroyed by the reign of Bowser and Pedro Pascal’s Mario being tasked with transporting Princess Peach using a go-kart. The contrast between the cartoonishly lighthearted game and the grim world is played to great comedic effect, with the characters loading Koopa shells into shotguns, and a giant, rotting banana peel blocking the road and causing Mario and Peach to spin out. When Mario tells Toad that he can dodge an incoming shell, Toad dramatically tells him, “I can’t, it’s red,” before allowing himself to die in a fiery explosion.
The skit ends with Princess Peach asking what happens if they crash. Pedro Pascal displays his considerable acting chops to have Mario grimly tell the princess the less-than-terrifying consequences: “A little guy in a cloud comes and uses a fishing pole to put you back on the road.” It’s a fantastic conclusion to a hilarious skit that lampoons both the Mario series and The Last of Us in equal measure.
