Adapting something to the big screen for the first time is hard enough. But when it’s a franchise as big and respected as Mario, it’s an almost impossibly tall order—more likely to piss people off than win.
There were a lot of things that could go wrong at Illumination Entertainment. Super Mario Brothers Movie, Nintendo’s first animated feature based on popular video games. Considering that the franchise was so widely known and received a critically acclaimed live-action movie 30 years ago, Illumination’s Nintendo collaboration faced an uphill battle to win the people over. Other than this huge, dedicated fan base, Mario games are clearly not cinematic material. They are defined not by storytelling, but by satisfying platform-based gameplay. It’s just “Wahoo!” A franchise with a main character that says. and “Here we go!” after all, with a terribly stereotypical Italian accent.
That left the Hollywood voice cast, which included Chris Pratt as Mario, Anya-Taylor Joy as Peach, and Jack Black as Bowser, to reinvent the wheel a bit as the Mario characters finally gained solid verbal dialogue. And for most of the cast – especially Keegan-Michael Key, who plays Mario and Peach’s very high-pitched friend Toad – it meant finding a way to make the characters a little more enjoyable to listen to without completely alienating fans.
When you first heard of Toad Super Mario Brothers., it’s hard to believe it’s actually the Key. We’re used to her modulating her voice lower, not higher, as in her debut sketches. Key and Peele And Crazy TV. Even past animation roles, including Chip and Dale: Rescue the Rangers And Toy Story 4did not push Key towards the upper end of its range. Then you’d be forgiven for thinking that Key was simply exaggerated in the movie.
Not so: It’s all Key’s own voice as the Frog. We even heard that he played him alive.
Nintendo/Universal Images
Key told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed how he created Toad’s new voice prior to the movie’s release last week. “What I did to find the voice was to use a friend of mine as a reference for the vocal pattern and rhythms.” But then something funny happened: “When I started showing this [voice] with [directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic,] They were like, ‘All is well and good’. I love this. I also want to find out how we can take it higher.’”
This led Key to explore the limits of his own range as he continued to experiment with higher and higher pitched tones at the behest of the directors. She happily took on the challenge of forcing her voice, something she told us in this interview with eerie calm.
“We’ve finally found a place we love,” Key explained, returning his voice to normal after his trip into the cartoonish voice zone. “We have this beautiful, high-pitched helium-type voice. I imagine Toad would talk like that if he was talking dialogue.
“Then I hope that whenever I yell, yell, or scream in the movie, it’s more like the sounds you’re used to from games,” he added.
We wouldn’t go that far as the game version of Toad (voiced by Samantha Kelly in the English dubs) sounds like a very young child trying to make a deep voice. Key’s Toad isn’t quite like that, which is probably for the best, because it’s a sustained, more dialogue-heavy performance.
But although the voice of the Frog is sometimes deafening, this is also one of the defining traits of the character. Key’s attempt to bring that same energy into the character was not only a recognition of that indelible tone, but a move to appease Mario fans who were ready to scrutinize any minor changes from the games.
“Joining the cast was a little frustrating because these characters are valuable to people. The reason they’re valuable is because people add memories, especially good memories, to the gameplay. … It’s clear there’s a nostalgic aspect to it that you want to honor, which is hard to do, because You don’t know how to do that for everyone.”
Fortunately, the movie itself does most of that nostalgic heavy lifting by playing to Mario’s strengths: it captures that uniquely compelling energy that Nintendo’s popular games have always boasted. Super Mario Brothers. manages to recreate the spirit of the series with the same priorities: a fun, fluid sense of movement over deep storytelling.
Key said that emulating games for the movie in this way benefits both the actors and the movie. “I think if a game has that many stories and a real backstory for the main characters, then there isn’t much room to play. But there was a lot of room to play here.”
Nintendo/Universal Images
Apart from creating his own version of Toad’s recognizable voice, Key bent over other elements of the character he described in the script. “He has a lot of civic pride in where he’s from,” Key said. “[In the games,] we see her all the time with Princess Peach. But one thing we learned is how much he loves it. [the Mushroom Kingdom,] and how willing he was to help Mario.”
Maybe we’ll see Toad embark on his own adventure in another Super Mario movie – maybe a movie inspired by the character’s spin-offs, Captain Frog: Treasure Pursuit. With Super Mario Brothers. Film it’s already breaking box office records, it’s definitely out of the question.
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