There is a good argument for not casting him, though. Martinet’s voice is good for short sound bites and small single sentences at most, which is mostly what’s needed for Mario in the games, and that’s something he did very well. As far as the games are concerned, his will always be the iconic Mario voice. Applying that to an entire movie’s worth of dialogue, though, would have been painful. No Italian I’ve ever heard actually speak English talks like that. They especially would not have wanted the Martinet voice for having Mario be a Brooklyn native as in the movie.
I agree with you. I imagine if the film was made by Disney, they would have had the confidence to go with Martinet. Illumination really leans into getting large voice acting names to get a bit of prestige. Keeping Martinet probably wasn’t considered for very long.
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There is a good argument for not casting him, though. Martinet’s voice is good for short sound bites and small single sentences at most, which is mostly what’s needed for Mario in the games, and that’s something he did very well. As far as the games are concerned, his will always be the iconic Mario voice. Applying that to an entire movie’s worth of dialogue, though, would have been painful. No Italian I’ve ever heard actually speak English talks like that. They especially would not have wanted the Martinet voice for having Mario be a Brooklyn native as in the movie.
Martinet is a great voice actor, look up his other roles. He easily could have done a more normal Mario
I agree with you. I imagine if the film was made by Disney, they would have had the confidence to go with Martinet. Illumination really leans into getting large voice acting names to get a bit of prestige. Keeping Martinet probably wasn’t considered for very long.