In today’s first trailer for next year’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, there’s one aspect that stuck out as very peculiar. Throughout the two minutes of footage, the titular star speaks only two words (unless you count a “Wahoo!”), and they’re incredibly out of character for the mustachioed good guy. “It’s trash,” sneers Chris Pratt voicing Mario, looking at Bowser’s painting while sanctimoniously closing his eyes in the least Mario-like moment I’ve ever seen. So what could be happening?
Let’s describe the scene a little better. Bowser, having eaten a Mini Mushroom at the end of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, is now miniature, and living in a shrunken castle in Peach’s place. He’s seemingly very content in this new life, taking care of his plants, working on his (somewhat passive-aggressive) art, and excited to show his latest finished painting to Mario and Luigi. The painting, which is very competent and even quite impressive, if deeply trite and embarrassing in what it depicts, shows an idealized Bowser with rippling abs and windswept hair being doted upon by a besotted Princes Peach. But this being cartoon-land, and without room for nuance, we’re expected to read this as simply “bad,” and Luigi underlines this by stretching for a compliment and saying, “…Love the colors!”
Mario, however, leans in and delivers that deeply smug “It’s trash,” sending Bowser into a furious squeaky-voiced explosion, before he catches himself and tries to calm down. This is a scene that’s all about Bowser, and the jokes are all his, and it ends with his rambling nonsense as he treads into his castle tower. Mario, meanwhile, just glares.
This really stuck out to me as I was watching, because I’ve just never seen Mario act like this, ever. Of course, that’s primarily because across almost all of the video games, Mario doesn’t speak at all but for his exclamation sounds of excitement or disgruntlement. And given that his reactions are almost always wordless, even his grumpy or disappointed reactions play as comedy, because they’re all exaggerated expressions. Perhaps, if he were to have spoken in all those scenarios, he’d have come across very differently, but the point remains that he did not.
Now, clearly Mario very much did speak in the previous movie, and it was rarely a highlight. That’s primarily down to the inexplicable casting of Earth’s most generic actor, Chris Pratt, who delivered the typically more Italian character in a way that was indistinguishable from his lead role as every-guy Emmet in The Lego Movie. But even so, and as banal as he was throughout, he was never nasty. So why now?
It’s obviously tempting to pretend that somehow the title character of the movie has become so imbued with everyone’s least favorable take on actor Chris Pratt that he’s just devolved into an archetypal smart-ass sassy guy. A Power Star-Lord, if you will. But that’s obviously not realistic, given this is a movie overseen by Nintendo and clearly a passion project of Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto. No one else is going to be determining the personality of Nintendo’s company mascot, and it’s surely beyond credibility that he would ever be allowed to abandon his positive spirit and become an unpleasant jerk…unless it were for a major plot beat in the movie.
Could that be it? I’m really hoping it is, given the other options are less palatable. Read out of context in this trailer, what we seem to have is a petulant, jealous Mario, looking to make a reforming Bowser feel horrible about something he’s proud of, and that’s what makes it feel so gross. But clearly the scene in the movie will provide the missing context. Here’s my optimistic guess: Bowser’s attempts to be pleasant and improved are all a facade, one that Mario’s seen through, but everyone else is falling for. Peach, Luigi, etc, all tell him he’s wrong, that Bowser is really trying to be different this time, and he just has to give him a break, but Mario has discovered his real intentions. Slightly worse case version: Bowser is trying to reform, but Mario’s been burned too many times before and is refusing to give him a chance, and will be learning a life lesson about forgiveness or some such schmaltzy Hollywood bilge. (I wonder what it could be about Hollywood that it keeps producing these reformed villain characters who deserve a 37th chance because this time they really mean it…)
Or maybe he’s been possessed by a cruel Boo? Or perhaps he’s not really Mario but someone disguised as him to undermine his character?
Because outside of this, Mario’s just being a jerk. And I don’t ever want Mario to be a jerk! Mario is one of life’s dependably decent people, the sort of guy you can always rely on to wade in, help out, and support those he cares about. Mario’s the kind of guy who would absolutely be there to help you move, and if he grumbled about it, it’d be a quick facial expression you’d likely miss before he shifted boxes all afternoon. That’s the Mario the world needs, not some guy who just shits on someone’s artwork just to make them feel (literally) small. I hate that Mario!
I didn’t realize how much I just need Mario types to be secure in their steadfastness until I saw its absence in such a stark and weirdly cruel moment. So he’d better have a good excuse, because the alternatives are just too upsetting to consider. Not now, Mario. Not now.