Mario Bros. Animated Movie Coming from Illumination

[SupahBerry]

You need to read between the lines on what really went down with Paper Mario:

Miyamoto had little involvement in their creative direction; Tanabe took Miyamoto's mere suggestion, not order, and exaggerated what he was coming from. He has to answer to the IP team about the character design, who may also had influence on how Toads are portrayed in this film

Edited October 5, 2022 by Supah Berry
Never mind I found it

[DaBigJ]

16 minutes ago, Supah Berry said:

N/A

What was the context

[light-gaia]

21 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Surely you would blame ALL of that on Miyamoto alone and not Nintendo as whole's strict decision to unify and sterilize the Mario brand...

Miyamoto said one thing about characters and it spun off from there in people's mind.

Maybe he is not the person to blame (or at least nor the only one), but I can't help to notice the similarities between this poster and the recent Paper Mario entries. Tones of recolor Toads everywhere

[DaBigJ]

It's almost as if Toads populate the Mushroom Kingdom and always had.

 

But nah, it's just that mean ol' Miyamoto's fault that Toads exist.

[light-gaia]

7 minutes ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

It's almost as if Toads populate the Mushroom Kingdom and always had.

But nah, it's just that mean ol' Miyamoto's fault that Toads exist.

It's possible to make interesting character designs based on Mario's style. For example:



Furthermore, some things work when it comes to games, but don't work in other kinds of media that require more focus on storytelling, world building, etc. I don't think this is a good approach for a movie, even though it's like that in tones of games.

Games and movies are totally different kinds of media.

Also, I don't even know if the movie will have this kind of problem, I'm just saying it's a red flag, in my opinion.

[Salamander]

Regardless of Nintendo's current, perhaps too stifling brand cohesion rules, I always expected a Mario movie to use the most standard Mario series designs.  This is effectively their movie debut, after all; I would expect everything to be at its most recognisable.  If anything I'm surprised they aren't just using higher-resolution versions of the game models, given the high-quality results sometimes achieved with those - in the cutscenes for Luigi's Mansion 3, for example.

(I'd also note that the Mario & Luigi remakes demonstrate that legacy designs for named characters can survive the current mandates.  As such, the movies could probably import some of the weirder Toad designs that already exist, if they really wanted to.)

[DaBigJ]

Closer look at the Mario face leak

Spoiler

 

 

[StaticMania]

Ew, he has a collar.

 

[DaBigJ]

Oh god I didn't even notice

[Dr. Mechano]

4 hours ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

It's almost as if Toads populate the Mushroom Kingdom and always had.

But nah, it's just that mean ol' Miyamoto's fault that Toads exist.

I think the objection was the homogenization of the Toads, not their mere presence.

You used to have female Toads (other than Toadette), old man mustache Toads, fat Toads, skinny Toads, etc.

At some point it was decided that this was no longer true, with all Toads being color-swaps of the same basic model. Whether you like with this change or not, I think it is important to understand that this is what people are complaining about, not the simple fact that most NPCs are Toads.

[DaBigJ]

I guess that's fine then, reasonable even. The ol' "Smurf" effect. Who knows, maybe this movie can change this?

[StaticMania]

30 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

At some point it was decided that this was no longer true...

As early as Toadette was introduced.

The thing is, it was always not true...for everything but Mario & Luigi and the Paper Mario series.

For Mario & Luigi it was as early as the 2nd game. There are only 4 unique Toads in Bowser's Inside Story and then a generic male & female sprite.

Paper Mario dropped Toads entirely in the 3rd game and they paid the price for 2 whole games.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

The leaked design looks decent. I'm cautiously optimistic about this movie.

[Salamander]

There are other Mario series characters which were brought a little closer to their "standard" design between the Mario & Luigi originals and their remakes; but as certain characters remained weird, there's a contention that this was more a case of convenient asset reuse rather than brand uniformity.  (Of course, it can be both.)

[StaticMania]

My contention is just that the Bowser, Goomba, & Toad sprites in the original game were just ugly.

Which was fixed in the sequel.

Partners in Time is full of Toads, of which only 2 are actually unique, then there are a race of extreme Toads with black caps and vests.

It's definitely asset reuse and just easier to have done that, especially in sprite form. Compared to Paper Mario, M&L is sparse on original characters in general.

[DaBigJ]

More stuff leaked. Someone posted this in a server I was in.

Spoiler

 

[Salamander]

1 hour ago, StaticMania said:

Compared to Paper Mario, M&L is sparse on original characters in general.

Hmm.  Original spins on traditional Mario series designs, anyway, though as for original characters more broadly then that varied per game.  Superstar Saga probably did have far and away the most.

1 hour ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

More stuff leaked. Someone posted this in a server I was in.

  Reveal hidden contents

I think I accidentally got invested in discussing this.  I might have to actually watch the Direct now.

Spoiler

Admittedly a tiny picture, but Peach looks a little more on-model - or at least, less uncanny.  Her hair looks as though it might be somewhat different, but overall she looks okay.

[DaBigJ]

Spoiler

I feel like I'd like the designs more if they had less realism, because currently it clashes with the Mario aspect of....everything else.

 

[Shiny Gems]

Here it is, guys.

 

[DaBigJ]

I fucking detest how Mario sounds in this movie. Chris Pratt is downright not even trying to be Mario in anyway, shape or form and it feels like a giant slap to the face to both the DIC Mario voice and the Game Universe Mario voice.

 

Everything else is just perfectly fine. Toad's voice is fine. The animation is fine. This looks to be a fine movie.

[Salamander]

Honestly, better than expected?  It was so normal that it was actually a little bit surreal to watch.  I kept on waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The other shoe, unfortunately, was Mario.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

This is frustrating. Honestly frustrating. A lot of this movie looks like it can work, but a lot, if not all the problems center around Mario himself. The focal point of the movie!

[DaBigJ]

11 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

This is frustrating. Honestly frustrating. A lot of this movie looks like it can work, but a lot, if not all the problems center around Mario himself. The focal point of the movie!

It's more his voice than Mario himself. He acts fine, looks...okay I guess? But his voice....no.

[Sonicka]

I mean, after the Sonic Movie(s) I’ll give this the benefit of the doubt. But because that’s live action it’s expected that the model would look different (obviously we know how that went). 

With Mario, it’s… huh. This is 3D animation and I feel trained to know what Mario should look like in 3D since 1996. This is well animated, but bizarre to look at. 

As for the voice, I don’t know what I expected Mario to sound like, apart from Charles Martinet - but I’d honestly have taken knockoff StarLord or Andy Dwyer as a voice. Instead we have Chris Pratt attempting to do a soft Italian Charles Martinet. 

I’ll say that I think Jack Black as Bowser is fine. Bowser in general has had a lot more sass in recent games so anyway so it seems to suit his MO, but the model, again is super weird. 

[light-gaia]

It looks fine, I don't think this movie will be a masterpiece, but in the worst-case scenario it will be inoffensive