The Super Mario Bros. Movie is here, and while not all critics are in love with it, the box office has shown the new Mario movie is already a massive hit. And not only did the audience go in droves to see the film, but most people who have seen it seem to love it. This is in stark contrast to the original Super Mario Bros. film, which most people agree isn’t great, but now we’re seeing lines drawn from some of the cast of those films.
It’s to be expected that when a popular IP gets a second film, people are going to look back at the first. I this case maybe not that fondly, but John Leguizamo, who played Luigi in the original film says he’s got a real problem with the new movie. Meanwhile Seth Rogen is taking some pretty hard shots at the live-action movie.
What John Leguizamo Has Said About The Super Mario Bros. Movie
It’s perhaps a bit understandable that a member of the cast of the original Super Mario Bros. might have an issue with another moving being made. The first film was given a very specific sequel setup, which never happened because the film flopped. The new animated Super Mario Bros. Movie is another acknowledgment that what they did the first time didn’t work.
However, John Leguizamo recently told TMZ he’s boycotting the movie. This isn’t because of the movie itself, but specifically due to the casting. Leguizamo has stated previously that the first film broke new ground by casting him as Luigi, and he would have liked to have seen more diverse casting in the animated film. Back in November, Leguizamo said…
The directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton fought really hard for me to be the lead because I was a Latin man, and they [the studio] didn’t want me to be the lead. They fought really hard, and it was such a breakthrough. For them to go backwards and not cast another [actor of color] kind of sucks.
It was certainly a surprising choice, especially for a movie in 1993, to cast a Latin-American actor to play an Italian-American character. And for all the movie’s problems, casting of the Mario Bros. was not one of them.
Seth Rogen’s Opinion Of The Original Super Mario Bros. Does Not Hold Back
If it were just one person with beef that would be one thing, but the war of words goes both ways. Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong in the new film, has said the first Super Mario Bros. isn’t simply a bad movie, but one of the worst movies ever made. Rogen says he was 11 when he saw the movie for the first time and even then he knew it was terrible. Rogen said…
[I]t’s one of the worst films ever made. I was so disappointed. I think it made me realize that movies, like, could be bad. That never occurred to me until that moment.
When you’re a kid every movie is great and Rogen indicates that Super Mario Bros. was the film that disabused him of that idea. Maybe for that reason, it actually seems worse than it was. Or maybe not.
Neither of these verbal shots is directed at anyone specifically. It’s just general opinions about each film, but there are clearly strong feelings here. And with a strong indication that the new animated Super Mario Bros. Movie could see the sequel that the first film never got, we could see the war of words persist.