Charles Martinet still loves doing the Mario voice, doesn’t know what a Mario Ambassador is yet

He’s still a-him

Years ago I met Charles Martinet at E3. We shot a quick video where I said “It’s a-you?” and he shrieked “It’s a-me!” in the voice. I was so taken aback that I said “Holy Sh*t!” – He immediately took me aside and asked me not to post the video, as it would be inappropriate for children. We ended up posting it anyway, with my swear bleeped out, and it was a cute, hopefully inoffensive bit of fun. But what I really took away from that moment is how much Charles Martinet cares about his fans. He wants to fill their hearts with hope and joy, and not whatever the opposite of those two things is. That may be why we still haven’t heard exactly why he’s no longer the voice of Mario in the games.

This video posted yesterday from Galaxy Con Austin is the closest we’ve come to getting an idea of what’s actually going on here. The first thing to note is Charles Martinet can still do the voice. He effortlessly, and maybe even unconsciously, goes in and out of it throughout the interview. Also early on, he makes a point about how when acting, it’s best not to think about if you’re doing it “right” or not, or if the people you are auditioning for like what you’re doing. It’s better, he says, to just be in the moment and fully embody the character that you’re playing, which for Mario, means being “silly and fantastic and having fun”. You can see why he loves what he does (or did, depending on where things go from here.)

What does a Mario Ambassador actually do?

Then at around 11:30 the topic of being a Mario Ambassador comes up. Martinet says:

“So I’m now, you may have seen the news, I’m a Mario Ambassador. I don’t know what that is yet [laughs]. I’m not retired as it were, as I don’t know how… but I’m an ambassador, and as we step into the future, we’ll learn, we’ll all learn, what exactly that is. But in the meantime, I’ll be ambassiding as I always am. I’m always an ambassador of Nintendo and Mario at all these events because I just cherish every moment of it. And I hope your love of the games continues and grows the way mine does, so [Mario Voice] Thank you so much![/Mario Voice]. Now lets ask a couple questions, go ahead, but don’t ask me about the ambassadorship. I don’t know anything about it! And don’t ask me about the movie because I haven’t seen it yet. Don’t tell me what happens!”

To me, this does not sound like a guy who decided to stop playing the role of Mario. But knowing Charles, he wouldn’t want to cast a shadow of negativity over Nintendo, Mario, or anything else by saying he was “forcibly retired” or outright fired from the role. And it’s possible an NDA is holding him back from saying more as well. To be frank, I’m not expecting to hear a lot more from Martinet or Nintendo on this. The time to explain what happened has come and gone. At this point, both Martinet and Nintendo are focused on “stepping into the future”.

So all we can do is speculate. My guess is that Nintendo saw the Mario movie make over a billion dollars without Martinet in the lead role, and took that as a sign that it’s safe to move on to someone new. When Chris Pratt was cast as Mario in the film adaptation, many scoffed. But his tap water, everyman style turned out to be exactly what a lot of people wanted. At times in the film when he imitated Martinet’s voice; those moments elicited cheers from the crowd in my theater. For me, these moments drove home how the guy I saw on screen was not Mario. He was just another fan of Mario who loved imitating him,  just like everyone in the audience had at one point or another. In a meta sort of way, that made the movie Mario the most relatable version of the guy yet.

Some critics also said that Martinet’s voice also wouldn’t work for a movie with a lot of dialogue, and that the cartoonish-ly thick Italian accent and moments of extreme falsetto would become grating. I don’t agree with that at all (and he could just tone it down if that were the case), but it could be that these critics are thinking what Nintendo’s thinking too. In Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the yet-to-be-named new voice of Mario sounds a lot like he’s doing a Martinet impression, not unlike the one Pratt did here and there in the movie. But it could be that in the future, Nintendo will want to make a game where Mario has a lot more dialogue. In that case, I’d expect this new actor will do more of a Chris Pratt impression than a Charles Martinet impression for the job.

Unless the role in the games has gone to Pratt himself. That would be quite the last-minute marketing bombshell to drop on fans before Wonder goes on sale in October.