Today, Nintendo revealed a first look at the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie ahead of its official trailer release coming this week at New York Comic Con, and it’s glorious, save for the disenchanting washboard ass of its titular character, Mario.
Nintendo’s teaser image prominently features a gaggle of Toads going about their business in the town square while one Toad carrying a Captain Toad-like assortment of gear on his back glances toward Mario. Mario, in turn, is doing his best Cloud Strife Shinra factory pose as he looks up at what can only be presumed to be Princess Peach’s castle. The character models look really nice, and the designs for the Mushroom Kingdom cityscape look as crisp as any cutscene in a contemporary Mario game. While most normal internet folks remarked on how good the setting looked and the undeniable cuteness of its denizens, one subset of gamers took umbrage with animation studio Illumination’s depiction of Mario.
As you can surmise from the headline, their gripes weren’t about an inaccurate thread count of Mario’s overalls or the way his wisps of hair lay under his hat. Instead, fans claimed Mario was looking mad unfamiliar because the tunnel-hopping plumber wasn’t double-cheeked up. Turns out while we were all worried about “Italian erasure” with the casting of Crisp Ratt, we should have been concerned about the shapeliness of Mario’s ass. How could we have been so foolish?
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“GIVE THE PLUMBER HIS CAKE!!!!!” wrote one Twitter user, accompanying their tweet with a generous edit of Mario with a BBL.
“This is unacceptable. They took his ass, he can’t shit,” wrote another devastated Twitter user.
“Bro Mario got NO ass bro this movie’s gonna suck DICK. How tf am I supposed to enjoy this movie if my Mario ain’t got a couple mega mushrooms down there,” said one fan with a keen eye for units of measurement.
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A catastrophic character assassination of this nature sadly isn’t new to the realm of video games. In the past, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate had the gall to nerf Snake’s perfect ass for being too powerful, causing Twitter to have a conniption. Sometimes, I can still hear him sneaking around with his old dummy thicc ass.
As we all know, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. With that in mind, I won’t be surprised if any Mario fanatics took this light-hearted internet rabble-rousing as an opportunity to go the route Sonic movie fans took by knocking on Illumination’s door begging for a redesign to beef up Mario’s buttocks. And I honestly can’t blame those complaining.
As a plumber, a profession that’s more known for having buttcracks on display than for being proficient at preventing bathroom incidents, Mario needed—nay, deserved—to have the plumpest ass ever committed to film, animation, or otherwise. It’s not like Illumination hasn’t already subjected us to seeing The Minions’ cylindrical tic-tac bunds on its movie posters. All we’re asking is to give Nintendo’s stalwart character a feature film-worthy ass. So long as you can bounce a gold coin off it, we, the real Mario fans will be sated. It’s what Mario deserves.
Butt-gate aside, fans will hopefully get an eye full of more charitable shots of Mario’s derriere that don’t distract us from the reality that it’s attached to Chris Pratt’s voice upon the trailer’s upcoming premiere this Thursday.
The Mario movie is slated to hit theaters on April 7.