The Heart of Peach

Earlier today, Nintendo revealed the first real trailer for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie - ushering in a wave of excitement from normal people and reviving some tiresome discussions about Princess Peach in other corners of the web.

Guess which part I’m focused on! 💀

I should probably take better care of myself and how I interact with social media, ’cause this sort of stuff does get under my skin too often. Still, while I’m here and imperfect, I figure I might as well write something longer than a tweet (which is what I’m calling my posts on Bluesky even though I deleted my Twitter).

But on to the Topic at Hand!

Princess Peach was in her first Mario movie a couple years ago (after having her role be filled by Daisy in the first attempt at turning Mario into a film) and I loved every minute she was on screen! She was funny, cute, and (famously or infamously, depending on whose side you’re on) she KICKED ASS.

Yes - to go with the decision to have her tag along with Mario to go save Luigi, instead of Mario & Luigi saving her as is typical in the games, they also let Peach do some cool stuff in the film! It made for some of my favorite sequences in the film and gave Peach something to do besides… I dunno, sit and be pretty.

It goes hand-in-hand with how Nintendo has been allowing Peach to join in on adventures a lot more lately, too! You see it in Super Mario 3D World, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and probably a lot more games after this blog post is published - Peach can stomp on Goombas and throw fireballs with the best of them!

So everyone was normal about it when the movie did it, right? Since we’d already been over this, it already happened in the video games, at least everyone who PLAYS Mario games surely received this without even thinking it was news… right?

People Were Not Normal About It

I’m being a little unfair here, the movie does change the character a bit - she’s a bit more frank, not as prim and proper as Peach has ever been in the games, and isn’t shown doing stuff like baking cakes and such. There are definitely meaningful differences to the character.

This led to some wishing she was allowed to be “more girly,” in a film where she has long blonde hair and is constantly seen wearing some article of clothing with pink on it. I wonder how the people making these complaints would react if they encountered, like, a butch in real-life. Would their eyes spontaneously combust?

I could take some easy potshots and paint the whole thing as coming from dudes angry that she didn’t destroy that Bowser cutout with her ass, but I think there’s a more interesting discussion to be had about the underlying misogyny at play here.

Because, at the same time people complained about her not being good enough at being girly, they also complained she was too good at being a badass!

“A GIRLBOSS?!?”

Gonna be brutally honest here, this one really grates on me.

Of all the things to be upset about in the world, all the annoying and idiotic men who’ve badgered me and mansplained shit to me that they understand way less than I do, for some reason the notion of a girl thinking she is the boss of you is this unthinkable indignity that must be enshrined online as a universal evil.

But I’m gonna try and be charitable.

There is a concern that, in making woman characters hyper-competent automatons who cannot be stopped by any mortal man, they are still being objectified and not allowed to be… y’know, human beings.

And yeah, there have been times where I’ve noticed a story (written by a man, of course) leans way too heavily on “and now the woman makes the man’s dick sad” for lack of actually being decent at writing women.

Are women actually being helped by being depicted as “Ice Queens” with no needs to fulfill as they’re already perfectly self-sufficient?

Depicting Women in Fiction

Women should get to face difficult situations, moments of hardship and even sacrifice, where there isn’t a clear path to victory. If men were the only ones who got to experience a full spectrum of experiences in fiction, that is definitionally a superior position than what women would have even in a hypothetical where women are only allowed to be “great.”

Empowerment has a very important role in fiction before you even get into gender, but powerlessness is a part of life as well - and pretty inevitably part of womens’ lives. If we never saw that reflected on the screen, who would it be for?

All the while, their lives still revolve around men in these stories. They hardly get to do anything that doesn’t further the goals of men.

There is some of that at play here, since Peach is just one character in a Mario movie that is unavoidably about Mario, but there’s more going on than that in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

And so, it’s time to do the unthinkable: actually delve into the plot of the film.

“Will You Marry Me?”

Throughout the film, Bowser is obsessed with Peach and wants to marry her. He thinks he can win her heart by promising her invincible and unquestioning rule at his side, the sort of rule that he enjoys in The Darklands (where he doesn’t even seem to know all the peoples he rules over).

It’s not a big shock when she rejects this proposal, we’ve been given no reason at any point in the film to expect her to find the offer attractive, but I highlight this moment to dig into the heart of her character in the film.

The Mushroom Kingdom and the Toads that live in it are all Peach has. She didn’t come with anything else when they found her, and she has nowhere to call home beyond it. She’s only a princess because they were kind enough to accept her when she came to them and embrace her as such after she’d grown.

They gave her all their values and in turn she embodies them. This is why she accepts Mario and gives him chance after chance after chance.

Not just because the movie needs her to, and not just because he’s the first human she’s met apart from herself, but because she is the kind and loving princess of a kind and loving kingdom.

So she refuses ultimate power, refuses unquestioning authority, because it is not in her character to want those things.

“You Will Marry Me.”

But she does not get the last word when she rejects his proposal, and it’s then that Bowser shows his true colors to the object of his desire - ordering Kamek to put Toad in a state of intense pain.

Peach is alarmed and begs him to stop, but Bowser does not budge. You see, he wants to marry her.

She doesn’t want to marry him, but he wants to marry her. She doesn’t feel the way he does at all, but he wants to marry her. She probably thought if and when she got married it would be up to her at all, since it’s called a “proposal” and not an order, and anyone who actually loved her would accept her answer no matter what… but not Bowser. He wants to marry her.

And there’s not a damn thing she can do to save Toad, and the rest of her kingdom, but to marry Bowser.

When is a Princess a Damsel?

When she’s in distress.

That’s exactly where we find Peach, in the moments before the royal wedding and as she’s walking down the aisle. She has a plan to get herself out of it, of course, but it relies upon Toad helping her smuggle an Ice Flower in her bouquet.

That’s right, our “implacable Girlboss” Princess relies on someone other than herself! Notably, no cantankerous Feminist bitches like me ever called this scene out as belittling Peach. Why is that?

Setting aside what follows immediately after and speaking only for myself, I would say the context matters. She isn’t kidnapped for the entire story, for one, and the reason she’s at this wedding ceremony is honestly laudatory!

Princess Peach is in that wedding dress and at that ceremony in the first place because she refuses to put her people in a situation she would not put herself into. She would sooner let her life end before she lets the same happen to her people.

She isn’t just here to be empowering to girls and for them to project onto as they grow up watching the film, though that is also a very important role I think she does a fine job at - she’s modeling good leadership, while Bowser models bad leadership. She leads with love and heart, which Bowser does not - despite him putting on the appearance of being motivated by love.

And now it’s time for the scene this has all been leading up to… By the way, for no reason at all: remember when I brought up “Ice Queens?” That didn’t sound too forced, did it?

The Best Laid Plans of Mushrooms and Madams…

So here’s the plan: Peach walks down the aisle and, just as Kamek begins his speech, she PUNCHES him and reveals she never had any intention of marrying Bowser! She then pulls the Ice Flower she snuck in out of her bouquet and freezes Bowser, defeating him and rescuing her kingdom from peril in the process!

There’s just one wrinkle, a small hitch in the plan - Bowser is going to ritually sacrifice all of his prisoners in Peach’s honor and they’re actively lowering their cages down to a molten doom.

But that’s fine! She can come back from that! She just freezes the thing lowering the cages and Bowser, problem solved!

She even does this really cool thing where she lights King Bob-omb’s fuse to really show she means business and won’t be taken prisoner when the crowd turns on her!

But then the ice that stopped the cages from being lowered breaks.

That’s fine too, we’re still good, ’cause she can just ice it again and—BOOM! King Bob-omb explodes after she lit his fuse (he’ll be fine) and Peach is knocked out, her Ice Flower power lost before she can stop the cages.

Peach fails in this scene and there’s nothing and no one else to blame but herself. Ultimately, the prisoners are rescued by Mario & Donkey Kong.

“A GIRLFAILURE?!?”

Well, no. She wasn’t the one who rescued the prisoners, but they definitely would’ve died if it wasn’t for her too. She isn’t the one who stops Bowser or saves her kingdom, but Bowser definitely would’ve won and her kingdom definitely would’ve been lost if it wasn’t for her and her efforts.

She wasn’t solely responsible for the success, but neither was Mario or anybody else individually. It was the result of everyone working together to make a difference and protect one another.

I guess what I’m saying is it wasn’t one extreme or the other. She did her best and everything worked out OK eventually, even with all the setbacks that came up. That’s sort of how lots of movies go, I guess. You have to strike a balance between everything and nothing working out, find a middle-ground that’s engaging to watch.

We’re good with that, right?

The Internet Abhors A Middle

I think Nintendo and Illumination struck an eerily-perfect balance in how they depicted Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie and that, knowingly or otherwise, that bugs some people.

If Peach were depicted just a little differently in any other way, it would be much more enjoyable for one segment of the audience and less enjoyable for the other. Make her less competent and you’ve got a problem with any woman with self-esteem, make her even more of a badass and the He-Man Woman-Haters are up in arms.

So that they threaded the needle so expertly leaves a third group (with some overlap between the first and second groups) just kinda disappointed not to be stimulated in one direction or the other. In an age ruled by instant gratification, one of the worst things you can be is “mid.”

And, well, there’s not really a fix for that - or any need for one, for that matter. If you’re bored, you’ll just be bored and move on.

In that sense, maybe writing all this was just a waste of time. I dunno, I had fun coming back to this film and digging into it. I might actually like it more than I did before I sat down to write this? Which is nice! Not every movie manages that.

We’ll see what The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has in store for Princess Toadstool, and for Rosalina, next year! I hope if you took the time to read this far it gave you some stuff to consider in the meantime.