After years of rumors and speculation, Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment’s first trailer for Super Mario Bros: The Movie is here, and it’s packed with fantastic moments and a few easter eggs that Super Mario fans will appreciate.
Here you have all the details and secrets that we have found in the trailer for the Super Mario Bros.
The first shot of the trailer gives us a glimpse of a mysterious ice kingdom that Mario Bros.’ famous penguins call home. While we don’t really know how the penguins got here, ice kingdoms are pretty common in the Mario universe, as are penguins, which made their Super Mario debut in the Mountain level of Super Mario 64.
At around 25 seconds we see what at first looks like Bowser’s airship. It has a lot of structural similarities (like the retractable chains), but it seems like it’s an entire level where Bowser can fly and travel. He looks like he rolls around with his whole army, and he obviously needs a big flying island to fit them all.
We can hear Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek at about 29 seconds. Kamek often shows up to add his evil magic touch to a level and make things more difficult for Mario, but here it seems he’s sort of Bowser’s right-hand man in the opening act. If you look closely, you can see that Kamek’s teleportation particle effects are the typical squares, circles, and triangles that he uses when he casts spells in the game. Kevin Michael Richardson has been voicing him in animation projects for decades, but one of his most notable roles for gamers was when he voiced Goro in the first live-action Mortal Kombat movie.
While it’s a great shot, does the image of Bowser at 36 seconds remind anyone else of the Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury cover? In any case, it looks impressive.
In the Koopa army wide shot, a line of cannons is seen right in the center. If you’ve ever played a Mario game, especially World 8 of Super Mario Bros. 3, you’ll know that Koopas love cannons.
The wait is over, and at 47 seconds we can finally hear Jack Black’s Bowser, and what a voice. Almost every character in this trailer has been revoiced for him, but Jack Black seems to have hit the nail on the head with Bowser. Also, we can say that most of the characters are somewhat aesthetically altered for the film, but especially it seems that they have tried to make Bowser look like Jack Black.
A few seconds later, although the penguins are doing their best, we see how Bowser and Kamek are no match for them. At least we haven’t been forced to watch Mario throw one off a cliff…yet.
At 1:30 we see a power star! Stars can mean different things in the Mario universe. Sometimes they grant temporary invincibility, sometimes they’re the main item Mario hunts in games like Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy, and other times they’re what determines who wins a Mario Party match, but either way, they’re always very and it obviously seems that collecting them is Bowser’s main goal. Presumably there’s more to the movie than this, and there’s probably one hidden somewhere in the Mushroom Kingdom, which is the one that will set Mario and Bowser on a collision course.
When Mario first lands in the Mushroom Kingdom, at 1:41, he is seen lying on his back and, for a brief moment, a yellow butterfly can be seen flying away, a plane that looks eerily like a plane. end of Super Mario Galaxy. Then when we cut to the wide angle of Mario standing up, there is a flurry of butterflies all around. Just like in Super Mario 64, if Mario is standing still, he seems to draw butterflies towards him.
We finally get to hear Chris Pratt talk like Mario, but… he basically sounds like Chris Pratt.
When exploring the Mushroom Kingdom in search of secrets, the first easily recognizable thing is the Cheep Cheeps that swim in the river. You’ll need a microscope to see them, but they sure are there.
This is clearly an origin story, as Mario is confused as to where he is. He is seen falling from the pipe, so in theory this movie could take the (loose) canon approach that Mario lives in New York (or maybe… New Donk?) and was sucked down a drain that was trying to unblock and teleported to the Mushroom Kingdom. An important detail about Mario’s outfit is that he wears a collared shirt. Why would he wear a collared shirt with overalls over it? We can only theorize.
At 2:08 we have an amazing wide shot of the Mushroom Kingdom. You can see that the hills here look like realistic versions of the tall, rounded ones in the background of some of the game’s levels. Also, while it’s a bit obvious, we’re going to point it out anyway: Peach’s castle is visible in the distance. And it’s so pretty. It also has a rainbow floating above it, and if you’ve played Super Mario 64, you’ll know that the rainbow loves to be on top of Peach’s castle.
We also assume that one of the next scenes, right after seeing Mario bouncing off the mushrooms, will be his arrival in the Mushroom Kingdom. In a brief shot, we see Mario running towards the castle with Toad in tow. We’re going to assume he gets it, as the poster that was revealed earlier this week shows Mario standing (sort of) in front of a market square, with Toad beside him, welcoming him.
As the Mario trailer comes to an end, we see Charlie Day as Luigi being chased by Dry Bones. Luigi is noticeably separate from Mario, as usual. Presumably Mario and Luigi arrived in the Mushroom Kingdom at the same time, but something separated them, and Luigi seems to have been unlucky.
And these are all the little details that we’ve caught so far in the trailer for Super Mario Bros: The Movie. Have you noticed something that we have missed? Let me know in the comments.