The Super Mario Bros. movie makes a small but necessary update to the larger Super Mario lore, showing Mario and Luigi’s immediate and extended family for the first time. We have seen unofficial glimpses of the brothers father beforebut Nintendo and Illumination have greatly expanded the Mario family tree for the new Mario movie.
Of course, that all happened with Nintendo’s approval. The creator of the game even provided the appearance of Mario’s father, who is played by a well-known voice actor in the movie, and was based on previously unused character designs from Nintendo.
Super Mario Bros. movie directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic told Polygon that a dinner scene starring the extended Mario family was essential to the film’s storytelling.
“It goes back to […] grounding the characters,” Horvath said. “We wanted them for a lively family dinner. So it’s like, Well, we need a lot of people – who would be there? Mario’s father and mother. He’d have some uncles who would, you know, bust his balls. These are his father’s brothers, [Uncle Arthur, played by John DiMaggio, and Uncle Tony, played by Rino Romano]and his aunt Marie.”
Mario and Luigi’s niece and their grandfather are also there to tease the plumbers about their new (and already nearly failed) venture and the costumes they wear.
“Nintendo was totally open to it – they totally agreed with this cinematic portrayal of Mario and knew he won’t just be a guy popping out of a pipe and shouting ‘Wahoo!’ say. and then he goes on an adventure,” Horvath said. “We had to do a little more work to believe that he is a real man with a real life and real problems. So they were all about creating this family for Mario.
“They sent us character sketches they made years ago that they never used; Mario’s dad is almost a one-to-one design adaptation of [Nintendo’s] original design from Mario’s dad that they provided us. That was really great to get that in the movie.
Horvath says the film’s character designers tweaked the design of Mario’s mother, voiced by Jessica DiCicco: “We made a few more changes to her, but she’s very close to their original design. And Mario’s grandpa in our movie is a little bit more like Mario, but like he used to be a boxer or something. We strayed a bit from their designs with some of the other family members, but Mom and Dad were very close. Very close.”
The Super Mario Bros. movie now playing in theaters.