Charles Martinet is an extremely talented and flexible voice actor who’s been the voice of Mario for 30 years. This is a weird shift. I just saw another movie where Martinet showed off his incredible command of voice.
Pratt always just plays Pratt. The Magnificent Seven remake was the role I saw him in that had the most convincing acting from him and it was serviceable but it came off as just “somewhat serious Chris Pratt”. I wouldn’t care if he were Toad, even though everything Curse says about him is true. It feels lazy for a lead role that had 2 very distinctive voices before in Martinet and Albano. Sonic also abandoned their prior distinctive voices but I felt the new casting did a fine job feeling Sonic even if it was still a bit of a shift (I hate that art style though).
Black is pulling off a stellar performance but still sounds too high pitch by an octave or two.
I completely forgot about this, thanks for reminding me.
What’s odd is that Martinet will have a voice role in the movie as a cameo.
The best acting I saw from him was in Money Ball, which wasn’t a comedic role at all. I think that’s the only time I saw him do something that didn’t feel like Chris Pratt.
Oh yikes, I am not someone who pays attention to celebrities or their drama but this is… yikes. While I’m not jumping on the hate parade (yet), I’m definitely going to be at least side eyeing from now on.
Exactly! I was like ‘wait wut?’ when they said Chris Pratt of all people would be voicing Mario. Charles Martinet has probably been the most ideal voice Mario has ever had (subject to opinion), why change it? I know the real answer is to tack a glitzy name to the roster, but they shouldn’t have fixed what wasn’t broken.
That’s always been Hollywood’s problem. They always break what worked for years and than act shocked when their attempts at fixing/modernizing it goes sideways and nobody enjoys it
the devil’s advocate position is that Martinet never had a significant role voicing anything but Mario and the Mario cast before 2011’s Skyrim where he was Paarthurnax, and even now his list of non-Mario major credits is fairly small for the guy who is the longest-running voice actor in video games. Magenta in DB Super: Super Hero is his second most prominent non-Mario role and that just came out. He has never done extended dialogue in a game as Mario; there may be concerns about his ability to maintain that voice for long enough to have a whole conversation (Toad’s voice actors have commented on how recording sessions for Toad destroys their voice unusually fast even for how physically taxing VA sessions generally can be) or the audience’s ability to tolerate that voice.
However, while Martinet’s non-Mario credits are small, he’s clearly capable of more than just Paarthurnax, and he’s been doing the voice at conventions, etc. so long I’d be genuinely surprised if he couldn’t manage Mario for an extended period. And as replacements go, why Chris Pratt?
It probably says something that I just found out my favorite WoW dungeon of all time is being remade for Dragonflight and my emotional reaction was about as inert as helium. I’m not horrified. But I’m not excited, either. Just, “oh. that is a thing.”
Do you know if they are revamping it like they did Scholomance in MoP, or will it be part of the DF lore? I think it deserves a bit of a revamp but not sure if it NEEDS a Karazhan style overhaul?
Uldaman arguably had the most interesting five-man dungeon fights in classic, especially at its climax.
Titan Lore was not only interesting then, it was a surprise; up until Uldaman, the dwarves felt pretty much like short humans, Uldaman was where you started to distinguish.
Uldaman is one of the most visually varying dungeons and in a way that makes sense. You have two competing aesthetics: general cave, and marble fine architecture. Most other WoW dungeons of Classic have one aesthetic, and most multi-aesthetic dungeons since Uldaman are transparently doing multiple aesthetics for its own sake, not what necessarily makes sense.
Uldaman had multiple entrances and exits along with a trainer in the dungeon itself, which helped keep it fresh and underlined the exploratory feel it had.
In an era where WoW used pop culture less, its Indiana Jones reference was tastefully done but fun if you caught it.
It was low enough level that if you sucked or your spec sucked (or both, as was the case for me then; hybrids!) you could come back at a higher level and power through it rather than just getting your face smashed in over and over again like BRD. Pre-Cross-Realm Dungeoning and given the worse state of information and balance in those days, that may not sound like much, but…
Uldaman has competition on most of these points in Classic, but only BRD really gives it a run for its money on many of them, imo, and BRD had the problem that it was so long that you would have had to have been in a better guild than mine to truly appreciate it before BC (although doing stealth two-mans with my guildie for key items remains a huge memory of BRD for me, and Marshal Windsor was THE reason to care about Bolvar and the Black Dragon storyline).
Part of DF lore, presumably it will get a second entrance a la Kara.
This is why I love Uldaman as well, I love Dwarf lore so anything that gave more of it was welcome especially in Classic era WoW. I love how it had that vibe of ‘Archaeological dig gone awry’ which was unique to lower level dungeons that were more ominous caves or strongholds.
Hm, not sure how I feel about that. Hopefully they at least preserve Cata-era Uldaman for nostalgia sake, or at least give us some cool Dwarven lore maybe? Silver lining at least.
It’s gonna be all about the dragons. All Titan stuff is for everyone or dragons now.
I don’t like dragons and I liked it better when humans were suggested to have evolved in the real world way. Wrath adding Vrykul AND THEN also adding Vrykul to the Titan thing AND ALSO the entirely unexplained WTF of Kvaldir AND the Titan explosion the whole thing kicked off is just an amazing set of things that sent Titan flavor awry.
Ugh… I see. I can understand your lack of enthusiasm then!
I do wish they would’ve preserved the Titanforged lore to be Dwarf/Gnome specific. Although, I can see the angle they were taking with the Vrykul since Humans also share similar features to the other two. Then it was doubled down upon with the Tol’vir/Anubisaths, Mogu and Giants and I feel like it diluted it quite a bit in the unique/interesting department.
The Old Gods and Titans both suffer the same problem funnily enough. They got overexposed and overexplained. Both were so much cooler when we knew so little about them
I understand the ‘physical resemblance’ argument, but even if you take out the Vrykul being an awkward and unnecessary intermediate stage to the point where humans are uniquely spoiled for choice on ‘cool heritages’
it really left the bronzebeard dwarves feeling undefined again.
Who has the advanced tech? Gnomes.
Who has the military tech? Dwar- psych, as of Wrath, it’s humans and their airships!
Who has the fully developed theological organizations? The Church of the Holy Light.
It also undermined the close bond of dwarves and gnomes because Earthen are no longer a likely shared point of origin for dwarves and gnomes but just another lineage that led to the Titanfleshies, separate from the mechagnomes and iron vrykul.
And at the same time I feel like it undermines humans somewhat because Titan stuff informs nothing of modern human culture, seven expansions on from Wrath. We see Vrykul as much as trolls these days, but Earthen? Frost Dwarves? Iron Dwarves? OG Mechagnomes? When was the last time we saw any of those? Vrykul aren’t even treated as an ancient legacy of humans, they’re another culture of (cooler-looking, seriously, let us use those models) humans in opposition to the Seven Kingdoms. When was the last time we heard a peep about the Empire of Arathor other than just “hey, let’s let the Forsaken plague everything north of Ironforge for game balance in a part of the world no one plays anymore”.
This is why I’m glad they gave us the opportunity to be Wildhammer and Dark Iron flavours of Dwarf, because honestly, without them it feels disappointing to be a Bronzebeard and have all of your lore stripped and/or undermined by races that hog the Alliance lore spotlight constantly.
Not that they should serve as a band-aid, but they kinda do and it’s a bit depressing.
