Chris Pratt playing Garfield and Mario isn’t ‘Italian erasure’, but bad news for voice actors

The casting of animated films is not, historically, a hotbed of public controversy. Prior to Robin Williams’ turn in Aladdin, the first headline grabbing, A-list animation performance of modern times, voice casting was rarely discussed outside the industry.

If early Disney films boasted popular Broadway performers, big-name composers and Vaudeville legends, they didn’t attract widespread criticism. Now, however, the casting of voice actors has become a magnet for fan outrage.

This week it was announced that Chris Pratt will play Garfield the cat in a new adaptation of the comic strip, having recently also been announced as voicing Mario in an animated adventure based on the Nintendo games. The fan response has been, it’s fair to say, unenthusiastic. He was jokingly accused of “Italian erasure” as Mario, and Garfield, fans asked, “Did he win a bet with a witch?” to get the role.

Pratt is not alone in drawing the internet’s ire. Idris Elba, cast to voice Knuckles in the sequel to another game adaptation, Sonic The Hedgehog, had to clarify that he would not be “sexing up” the animated echidna.

Less controversial but still prompting murmurs of discontent was the first trailer for Pixar’s Lightyear, which sees Chris Evans voice the fictional character from the Toy Story universe, voiced in the original films by Tim Allen. Technically, he’s not voicing the Buzz we know, but fans are still wary.

Dr Sam Summers, a lecturer in animation and co-host of the Disniversity podcast, explains why these controversies are so prevalent.

“The rise in celebrity casting also coincided with a move away from adapting classic source material,” he says. “For a long time most CG movies were original stories or based on less well-known books, so there weren’t any huge casting controversies. It’s only recently that we’re seeing a lot of big animated franchise movies, as the Pixar classics become big franchises themselves and The Lego Movie convinced people they can just adapt anything.”

When it comes to these franchises, however, a big issue for fans is when these celebrity voices replace established voice actors. The first Transformers movie drew fire when Hugo Weaving was cast as the voice of Megatron instead of the cartoon’s original cast member Frank Welker. Pratt displaces Charles Andre Martinet, who has voiced Mario in the games since the ‘90s. If anyone has lost out from the rise of the celebrity voice actor, it is the voice actor specialists who have been bringing characters to life for decades, and the theatre stars who once dominated big-screen animation.

The biggest source of controversy, however, has been racial sensitivity or the lack of it; the decision by some European territories to dub the lead character of Joe in Pixar’s Soul with a white actor drew widespread condemnation, while Hank Azaria has stepped down from voicing Apu in The Simpsons after years of criticism.

Racially appropriate casting immediately requires more thought than studios seemed to give animated films in the early ‘00s, where the policy seemed to be simply throwing as many A-listers into the cast as possible.

It’s worth noting that Pratt could be very good in both these roles – Garfield feels close to his Andy Dwyer character in Parks And Recreation, while Mario is not a million miles from his Lego Movie role of construction worker Emmett – and the fans may yet be won over.

But as animation starts to focus more on franchises and adaptations of popular existing characters, there will be more of these controversies to come. Chris Pratt may soon have company on the internet’s hit list.