The Super Mario Bros. Movie drew on unused Nintendo designs to build out Mario’s family
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’ve seen unofficial glimpses of the bros’ dad before, but Nintendo and Illumination expanded the Mario family tree in a big way for the new Mario movie.
That was all done with Nintendo’s approval, of course. The game maker even provided the look of Mario’s dad, who is played by a well-known voice actor in the movie, and who 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 vital to the film’s storytelling.
“It goes back to […] grounding the characters,” Horvath said. “We wanted to have them at a lively family dinner scene. So it’s like, Well, we need a bunch of people — who would be there? Mario’s mom and dad. He was going to have a couple of uncles who were like, you know, breaking his balls. Those are his dad’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, ribbing the plumbers about their new (and already nearly failed) business venture and the costumes that they wear.
“Nintendo were completely open to it — they were fully on board with this cinematic representation of Mario and knowing that he’s not just going to be a guy who appears from a pipe and says ‘Wahoo!’ and then he’s off on his adventure,” Horvath said. “We needed to do a little more work to believe that he’s a real guy with a real life and real problems. So they were totally on board with creating this family
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