While everyone is excited about the much-anticipated release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie on April 5^th, a few months back, some fans were not thrilled to hear Chris Pratt’s vocal interpretation of the titular character.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s premiere, Pratt described his feelings when accepting the role: “… I was pretty nervous when they offered it to me. I thought, ‘Wow, let’s not screw this up…’ People are passionate about this character and they’ve probably seen some of their favorite IP getting screwed up. It’s kind of a cynical business. People make movies just because a title has reach.”

Pratt went on to say, “So it’s a big challenge. Just because something has reach doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good movie and there’s instances of people making bad movies and ruining people’s childhoods. So the pressure was on to not do that and, thankfully, we didn’t. I think the movie is fantastic and I think your childhood is firmly intact.”

The director of the film, Aaron Horvath, defended the casting of Pratt by emphasizing that Mario is meant to be an everyman: “We wanted to make sure that Mario felt like a real character in this movie, that he’s a real guy with a real family, really flesh him out.” Horvath further added to this topic by claiming that the Italian accent that many fans are familiar with would potentially break the suspension of disbelief. He stated, “Our feeling was you wouldn’t believe that he was a real character doing that accent for the entirety of the film. We grew up with the [1989] Super Show! and the movie where part of it is they’re from Brooklyn, so it just felt like a natural course for us to take.”