Hey, did something happen to be revealed yesterday? Just kidding, yes the first official trailer for Super Mario Bros. film, sure. As half the internet loses its collective mind over Chris Pratt’s vocal performance, another more cultured subset of the interwebs have begun to theorize that the upcoming movie sounds a lot like an isekai. But what does that mean?
Even if you’ve never heard the word isekai before, chances are you’ve seen these types of stories before. Hollywood movies like space jam, Back to the futureaand even the 1993 Super Mario Bros.. movie are all isekai if you really think about it. So let’s break down what an isekai is and why people online including the MF’in Washington Postthink the new Super Mario Bros. trailer places the film in this genre.
An isekai, literally translated as “different world” or “other world”, is a genre of storytelling usually found in anime like Sword Art Online and Re: Zero. The typical structure of an isekai story revolves around its main character, in this case Mario, being suddenly teleported to a new world. Arriving in the new world, which is usually a fantasy setting, the main character is driven to become a hero who, under the guidance of a loyal crew of allies, i.e. Toad, must clean up the world. of his towering and evil overseer: enter Jack Bowser.
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From the first moments of the trailer, we see that Bowser is not to be taken lightly. Hell, they might as well call the movie Super Mario Bros: Bowser’s Fury Roadbecause this man… is, dragon turtle…looked downright unbeatable, immortal even. His dope-as-hell villain entrance was jam-packed with the ingredients that make an isekai villain. You have an entourage of evil minions, pun intended, in Bowser’s Legion of Koopas, and an evil comic lair made in his own image. After destroying the Ice Kingdom’s penguin army, Bowser completes his role as the villainous isekai by obtaining an almighty weapon from the Super starand practically begging anyone to dethrone him.
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Obviously that person will be Mario because that’s not just what isekai heroes do, it’s what Mario has been doing since the 1985 video game. Super Mario Bros.. on the Nintendo Entertainment System first took him to the Mushroom Kingdom. But Mario won’t be able to defeat Bowser alone, which is where the isekai hero’s party comes in. Somewhere along the journey, an isekai hero gains more allies with their own set of skills. Thanks to the foresight provided by Shigeru Miyamoto’s Hollywood casting announcement, we know those allies will likely be Charlie Day’s Luigi, who we saw running for his life at the end of the trailer, and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Princess Peach. Hopefully Peach isn’t too preoccupied with being kidnapped in the movie and manages to sneak out of another castle to join Mario and kick Bowser’s ass.
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In the meantime, it remains to be seen how Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong will fit into all of this. Sure, he was the villain of the first Mario game, but he’s been widely touted as a good guy ever since. donkey kong country abandoned nearly 30 years ago. It looks like things could go either way, although my money is for him to team up with Mario before all is said and done.
While all the evidence points to the Super Mario Bros. the movie being an isekai, there’s always a car-shaped elephant in the room: how exactly does Mario end up teleporting to the Mushroom Kingdom? A Twitter account posited that since we hear Chris Pratt’s normal Minnesota accent, that Pratt himself is somehow transformed into Mario, à la Jumanji rules, and now we follow his adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom in the film. Typically in an isekai, the process of teleportation to the fantasy world comes at the cost of being wrapped around the bumper of a moving vehicle, usually a white truck. To keep things in line with the tradition of the mario universe, I think it would be appropriate for Pratt to become the main character after a hit-and-run during one of these real-life events Mario Kart exits. That’s what you should do.
The Super Mario Bros. The film is set to hit theaters on April 7.
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