Why Chris Pratt's Performance In The Mario Movie Trailer Is So Distracting

[embedded content] The worldwide introduction to Chris Pratt's Mario.

When my 8-year-old daughter came home from school on Thursday, I was excited to show her the first trailer for the upcoming animated movie The Super Mario Bros. Movie. And while she later expresses her excitement at seeing Bowser fighting off an army of penguins or Mario confused about a field of giant mushrooms, her immediate reaction after watching the trailer was more negative: /p>

"Mario's voice sounds weird."

It's not an uncommon reaction to Mario's first public reading as Chris Pratt's voice, judging by the general tone on social media over the past 24 hours. It's a reaction that seems to extend beyond the internet snark zone as well; at least two parents I know in real life have told me that their children expressed similar confusion about Mario's movie voice.

But pinning down what exactly is "weird" about Pratt's Mario performance requires a bit of scrutiny as to how the idea of ​​what Mario is "supposed" to look like first developed. place, and whether Pratt's performance can ruin what otherwise looks like a pretty solid movie.

Let the judgment begin

To be fair, the only examples of Mario's movie voice that we have so far are the two lines that Pratt delivers in the trailer. Judging Pratt's entire Mario performance on this basis is like judging an opera on the first note.

That said, the pure solicitation of Mario's first line in the trailer, "What the hell is this place?", is quite distracting. As Ars' Sam Machkovech put it yesterday, the line's delivery "comes without any sort of exaggerated Italian accent, sounding more like Chris Pratt by heart."

This delivery is more than a little ironic given that in June, Pratt told Variety that Mario's voice in the film would be "updated and different from anything you've heard in Mario World" . We're guessing that's technically true because we've never heard anyone who looks exactly like Chris Pratt in "Mario World." But still.

Enlarge / Jack Black's Bowser sounds like a monster that looks like it would be expected to sound.

Pratt's second line in the trailer - "Mushroom Kingdom, here we come." - adds the subtlest hint of an extra Brooklyn-style inflection ("Heeeeah we cahm..."). It's a line reading that has inspired countless social media comparisons to Bob's Burgers's Linda Belcher, which is both right and impossible to hear. Even here, however, the voice sounds like Chris Pratt doing a vague New York-area accent, rather than an actor truly inhabiting a unique character.

Wah, whoo, wa-hoooo!

The difference is obvious when you compare Pratt's performance to Jack Black's as Bowser in the same trailer. Each Black line offers rumbles with undertones of a guttural roar that feels entirely appropriate for the character. Beyond the trailer, you can see and hear the joy Black puts into this performance during an appearance at New York Comic-Con on Thursday.

Black has a small advantage here, however, as Bowser's voice isn't so well defined in the public consciousness. Apart