The moment of clarity has arrived, yesterday rather, the long anticipated Super Mario Bros. animated film from Illumination itself has been shown off and at last, and in spite of my concerns (especially in regards to the company's recent input), it's proven to be very promising. To things in perspective, IMO at least, Illumination made 2 great films (Despicable Me 1 and 2) and everything else ranges to decent (The Grinch) to watchable (The Lorax, Secret Life of Pets, and of course Despicable Me 3) to well, crap (I'm looking at you Hop....), not exactly a great track record but it could have been worse, though I must stress that I haven't seen the rest the company made, especially the Minions Movies and the recent Rise of Gru (which looks like a return to form for the DM series and should basically be DM3 at this point but that's another story). Besides the idea of doing an adaptation of the Mario games, especially the Super series, is quite a feat for a company to do, especially after the um, not-so satisfactory nature of the SMB film that came out in 1993, even though it wasn't a bad film by all accounts. Although there was the Super Mario Bros. Super Show which is okay, ditto with the shows based on 3 and World, though Lou Albano is the most based voice actor for Mario of all time (damn shame he's dead now), and of course there was the book series which I enjoyed as a kid, but that's another story (pun intended). What is an interesting story is when Illumination's efforts in regards to this flick would end up being more promising than anyone thought, even though I had some small amount of hope for it. For disclosure, I watched the entire premiere exactly as it began at the time, and I got nervous at first which is a given but I got a great impression by now. Besides, it's something for me to get my mind off of bullets, bombings, bringing nukes, and bad orange people, so let's a-begin with my thoughts on the trailer, shall we?
Now, the premiere starts off with Miyamoto Shigeru-san showing up and thanking us for the wait along with Chris Meledandri chiming in along with two of the voice actors giving their thanks, Chris Pratt and Jack Black, of whom I forgot is voicing Bowser in this film (I'll get to Pratt later). They all seem pretty proud of their work which helps boost my confidence (of course) but by then I'm like, show the trailer! And finally the trailer starts off with Bowser Koopa's airship-world thing coming to invade what's presumably the Ice Kingdom populated by the penguins from Super Mario 64, and boy calling them adapted badasses (to put it in TV Tropes terms) is quite accurate. They put up a hell of a fight, though granted it's ineffective obviously but at least the comedy rights itself, and I got a good chuckle out of it, and during this time, we hear Bowser's voice which is pretty spot on, alot actually, though that last line where he says, "Who's gonna stop me!!!" is a bit more Blackish than anything. Boy, writing this makes it surreal to me that Jack Black of all people would be a good voice for the big Koopa himself. Not to mention, he looks pretty damn impressive, along with many of the characters shown (especially the Nook Nook or Koopa Troopas or whatever the hell you prefer to call them), exactly how I'd imagine they be in this film (I'll get to the other cast shown soon).
Then we cut to Mario being shot of a pipe, presumably, and smacks into some mushrooms in of course the Mushroom Kingdom and here we not only, for the first time, see the iconic plumber's likeness in 3D animated form but also hear Pratt's voice, about him asking what is this place, and it's pretty.......alright. I mean he could do worse but the other lines he says in the trailer aren't really impressive, especially where he says, "Mushroom Kingdom, here we come!" isn't really helping matters. Especially when the guy in the French dub does it way better, as pointed out by Yongyea and others, so that makes me wonder why did they bother with Pratt in the first place? At least the other characters shown sound pretty fine at least, though it would have been a golden opportunity to have Adam Sandler voice one of the Toads in the film, and that toad looks good, same with Luigi, as well as the Dry-Boneses attacking him. As for the obvious lead, he looks good too though oddly he looks like a relative of Fix-It Felix Jr. from Wreck-It Ralph if anything, which is ironic since Felix Jr. is practically an expy of Mario in the first place to homage the setup of Donkey Kong the arcade game, so it all goes full circle in terms of resemble, coincidental or not. Also he has a collar on him, nice touch. Though the least the trailer could have done is have somewhat more of Luigi so we can get familiar with how he might play in the film, but we will have to wait on that, as well as everything else.
So far, as I've said before, it's pretty promising for a company that has a generally okay film resume with two great films and one stinker. Hell, it's even more impressive that Nintendo green-lit this, though I suspect that the success of the Sonic films may have been a factor in influencing this for extremely obvious reasons, so obvious I shouldn't have to spell it out for the sake of not insulting one's intelligence. Still, though, I do wonder if this will be isekai just like how some American made adaptations of Mario addressed since Mario and Luigi did come from what's basically New York City of our world or that they were summoned from New Donk City that existed in the same planet as the Mushroom Kingdom did (just like in Odyssey) or maybe something else? Who the hell knows? But me thinks that the plot might be a combo of SMB 1 and 3 with many of the other games, especially 2, thrown in for good measure, though it wouldn't hurt to see Sunshine get a good representation at least along with the Land games. So much possibilities yet the important thing is how good the film is, even if it might be a tad predicable at times but whatever, if Sonic can deliver, so can his rival.
