The real stars of the Super Mario movie trailer are the penguins

Super Mario Movie penguins — (Image credit: Illumination)

Following the reveal of The Super Mario Bros Movie trailer yesterday, an unexpected character has stolen the spotlight.

Illumination's upcoming Mario movie has a lot of memorable characters set to appear on the big screen. Not only have we got the obvious characters like Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Princess Peach, and more, but also some lesser known characters like Foreman Spike and Cranky Kong. One character that we didn't expect so many people to instantly fall in love with though is the penguin king that appears early on in the trailer.

In case you missed it, The Super Mario Bros Movie trailer starts off with a scene where Bowser is attempting to infiltrate the penguin's kingdom. This scene is probably pretty standard if you're not very familiar with Mario's catalogue of games, however most Super Mario fans spotted that this group of penguins has actually been part of Mario's adventures for several years now. Perhaps most notably, for me at least, in the Cool, Cool Mountain level of Super Mario 64 where Mario can race penguins and also throw their offspring off the top of small shacks.

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It didn't take long for Twitter to catch on to this not too subtle reference and very quickly fall in love with the penguin king and the rest of his kingdom. It's also since been revealed that The Walking Dead actor Khary Payton is actually the voice of king penguin, which is sure to get even more fans on board once they find out.

I was also not expecting the upcoming animated Super Mario Bros. movie to even have the penguins from numerous of the spin-off Mario games appearing in it.The more I keep thinking about this movie, the more my mind is being blown by it. THAT'S how excited I am to see the movie. pic.twitter.com/bhUKN83kb1October 7, 2022

I was not expecting the penguins from Mario 64 to be so prominent in the movie but this is awesome! Imagine if they reference Mario being able to drop the baby penguin off the cliff 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/mv56ntp7v1October 6, 2022

The big twist of The Super Mario Bros Movie is gonna be when Mario joins Bowser to murder all the penguins pic.twitter.com/PyGSiFua0UOctober 6, 2022

This is just one of many things we've seen online following the trailer's release yesterday. Penguins aside, it's also become apparent that a lot of Super Mario fans might actually end up watching the foreign language version of the movie when it releases due to preferring the French, Italian, and Brazilian voice actor's Mario performance over actor Chris Pratt's. It also seems like Mario won't be the star of this movie as a lot of people have already been won over by Jack Black's performance as King Koopa Bowser.

Want to know more about the upcoming film? Jack Black says The Super Mario Bros. Movie has "musical aspects"

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.