The Super Mario Bros. Movie, based on Nintendo’s Mario video game franchise, hit cinemas last weekend. Box office figures released yesterday show it achieved the biggest ever opening for an animated feature globally, hauling in $377 million.
The success has confounded some. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes give the movie just 56%, despite the audience score of 96% on the same site.
Actor John Leguizamo – who was in the original Mario Bros movie, but isn’t in the reboot – has blasted the film’s makers over a lack of diversity in casting.
The PostMillennial has the story.
Reviewers were not the only ones going after Mario. Fox News reports that Leguizamo said in November 2022 that the film was “backwards” to voice cast two white actors, [Chris] Pratt and Charlie Day, to play the two white, Italian-American characters of Mario and Luigi.
Leguizamo, who is Hispanic, was cast in the first adaptation of the beloved Mario Bros video game franchise in 1993 as Mario’s brother, Luigi. That film, which is universally hated by both critics and fans according to Rotten Tomatoes, saw British actor Bob Hoskins cast as the Italian-American Mario alongside Leguizamo’s Luigi. …
Leguizamo said he would not be watching the new iteration when asked on Friday by TMZ.
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