Chris Pratt Was Worried They’d Screw Up ‘Super Mario Bros’ Too

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was met with high expectations, and it seems to have reached them. (The film had the biggest opening weekend in the history of animation.) Audiences weren’t the only ones worried about the finished product, though.

Chris Pratt himself, the voice of Mario in the movie, says he was just as nervous as fans that the film would turn out to be a disappointment. When you’re working on a project this big, it’s understandable that you’d be more than a little worried about the outcome. To make matters worse, Pratt received a lot of backlash as soon as fans realized he had been cast, because they didn’t think he sounded enough like the “real” Mario.

On top of all that, when the first trailer came out, people realized that Chris Pratt was basically just using his normal speaking voice. People pointed to Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario in the classic Nintendo games, as a better casting choice. The issue with that is that the high-pitched nature of it may not have been suited to full blocks of dialogue. Fans were also upset because this is a larger problem with Hollywood. They’ll replace talented, long-time voice actors just for the sake of giving a movie a bit more star power. At least in this case, that decision seems to have worked out.

READ MORE: All the Classic Nintendo References in The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Pratt spoke with ET to share where he was at before the movie debuted.

There had been a lot of backlash and people talking about the casting. And I was like, ‘Oh, man. I hope it’s good.’ And then it’s so good. It was just such a relief. I was as nervous as everybody else that this was going to get screwed up and I was grateful that it didn’t.

It seems that all of those worries have been assuaged because the film is doing great. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now playing in theaters everywhere.