By now the gaming community has reached critical mass when it comes to online discussions surrounding the Super Mario Bros. Movie. While we can debate whether or not the film’s legacy will be etched into the annals of video game history as the most expensive crowd-pleasing advertisement committed to film, the Mario movie’s Hollywood cast settled an even more important debate: which actor is the best at Mario Kart?
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Jack Black. The answer is Jack Black. Long may he reign. Unsurprisingly, Black’s show-stopping performance in the Mario movie as Bowser extends to his skills in Mario Kart. On the surface, this revelation shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Black has a YouTube channel called Jablinski Games where he and his brood occasionally play video games. However, the question of “how” Black defeated his castmates is more telling than the fact that he did. For you see, Black is apparently aware of a killer Mario Kart build.
I owe you an apology, I wasn’t really familiar with your Mario Kart game
On April 3, Illumination posted a highly-edited down YouTube video where Black, Chris Pratt (Mario), Charlie Day (Luigi), and Seth Rogen (Donkey Kong) competed against each other in Mario Kart. While the rest of his castmates played their respective characters, Black went the galaxy-brained route by choosing Toadette. For casual players, this might seem like an odd choice.
Toadette, for the uninitiated, is one of the best characters to play in Mario Kart because her small stature allows players to hit greater speeds, especially while driving the Flame Rider kart with Ancient Tires and Flower Glider, according to GameRant. Black would go on to win the “Four Player Showdown” by taking out Rogen using an expertly-timed super horn.
Black’s reign as the king of Mario Kart swiftly came to an end when prolific YouTuber Jacksepticeye swapped out with Pratt and mercilessly defeated the Hollywood actors in his own YouTube video. However, the biggest takeaway from the Mario movie cast’s Mario Kart play sessions wasn’t their gaps in skills, but how they spoke about gaming as a hobby.
Jack Black carried the Mario movie cast by genuinely having fun
In contrast to Black admitting to playing video games often on his personal YouTube channel and his general disposition that having fun is more important than winning, Black’s castmates would either talk about gaming in the past tense. And the memories weren’t always positive.
For example, at the start of the video, Rogen jokingly said he spent most of high school not making friends and playing Mario Kart instead and likened Illuminations’ ‘Four Player Showdown’ to “being in his friend’s mom’s basement hearing his parents argue upstairs.”
Throughout the Mario movie’s pressers, Black fully embraced gaming culture by repeatedly dressing up as Bowser.
“I play occasionally,” Black said about Mario Kart. “I actually legit enjoy my video games.”
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While many online Mario fans shat on Chris Pratt’s vocal performance as Mario, a majority of the actors basically used their normal voice in the film as well. While some got more shit online for mailing it in it than others, Jack somehow always felt like he brought more of himself into playing Bowser than his cast mates. At the end of Jacksepticeye’s video with the Mario cast, Black revealed how he got into character for Bowser.
“I have a little secret to tell you. All my characters are pretty much just Jack Black but I bring a spicy version of Jabels,” Black said before getting a Bullet Bill and crushing Tanuki Mario. “The secret to my energy is just when cameras roll. The rest of the time I’m conserving energy. Because when camera’s roll, it’s easy to bring the hot spicy mustard if you know it’s just that part of the day.”
Admittedly, he lost me a bit in the last half there but I fucks with it. I just pray whatever amount of energy Black has on reserve continues to be used for good because, at the end of the day, it’s Jack Black’s world and we’re all fortunate enough to be existing alongside him.