The Super Mario Bros movie is just around the corner, and directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic spoke with film magazine Total Film about what they wanted from Luigi and Peach (thanks, Nintendo Life). While the Mushroom Kingdom princess often takes a passive role in Mario games, usually as the object of a kidnapping scheme like in Super Mario Odyssey, Horvath and Jelenic wanted to take a different approach.
Rather than Peach getting swiped from her castle once again, the movie trailers show her leading a war council and developing plans to deal with the Bowser situation.
“[Peach is] the monarch who leads this kingdom of hapless, adorable Toads,” Horvath and Jelenic said. “We were thinking how strong that person would need to be to protect those people. All that informed the idea for Peach’s character in our movie.”
However, Mario has to have someone to rescue, and in Illumination’s movie, that someone is Luigi.
“It’s Mario’s goal to save his brother from Bowser’s clutches,” Horvath and Jelenic said. “He has to go on this epic adventure to do that. So Luigi, who’s a famously nervous, anxious character, finds himself in the worst possible predicament: having to survive interrogations with Bowser, and make it through that gauntlet.”
Whether Luigi’s nerves survive this ordeal after three haunted house incidents and a rather embarrassing fashion day at the tennis courts remains to be seen. Still, with just one game – Super Princess Peach – that let the Mushroom monarch shine, it’s about time someone else bears the brunt of Bowser’s wrath.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
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