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Proving themselves once again to be the most sensitive of snowflakes, right-wing culture warriors are losing it over the portrayal of a character in a video game movie. A couple of days ago, a clip from the new Super Mario Bros Movie hit the internet, featuring Princess Peach confidently making her way past an assortment of enemies and traps, prompting the culture warriors to cry foul, whining that this new “girlboss” Princess was a far cry from the damsel in distress they remembered from the video game.
Now-banned YouTuber Sneako, known for his deliberately offensive videos, led the charge:
Others had the same complaint:
Meanwhile,
Never mind that, as more than a few fans of the Mario franchise pointed out, Princess Peach has been not-so-quietly kicking ass in the games since the late 80s.
Weirdly, one regular player in the culture wars is sitting this one out: Bounding into Comics. In a post there, Spencer Baculi makes a point of noting that Peach
has long evolved past her being the simple ‘damsel in distress’ that pop-culture has portrayed her as … the dismissal of her character as nothing more than a helpless prize disingenuously ignores all the subsequent instances in which she played pivotal and capable roles in a story’s respective narrative.
Amazing, something from Bounding into Comics that isn’t completely ridiculous.
But, ever the pedant, our critic reacts angrily to those who say that Peach is a badass because of her role in the multiplayer brawler series known as Super Smash Bros, which according to Baculi represents only “what a child may imagine while playing with figures of the characters and thus should not be considered canon to any of the involved series.”
He added:
Ok, he didn’t really add that. But I do sometimes wonder if Bounding into Comics isn’t secretly written by this guy.
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@GSS ex-noob,
I don’t mean to make you feel old, but “nowadays” started in 1982. G.I. Joes were Barbie-sized for only 18 years, and have been between 3.75-6″ for 41 years.
Me, I’m still adusting to 6″ G.I. Joes introduced in 2020. (The short-lived 6″ “G.I. Joe EXTREME” line from the 90s doesn’t count.) So I grant that one day my belief that G.I. Joes should be 3.75″ will get an “Okay, Millennial.”
constant-instigator on Tumblr offers their $0.02 on their dad’s interpretation of the Princess archetype:
I get why a lot of people hate the whole princess culture aimed at little girls. There’s a hell of a lot of toxic bullshit in there.
But when I was a tiny princess, my dad used to be my royal advisor. He would come to me, and over tea we would discuss the problems of the kingdom. He would tell me that new people wanted to move to the kingdom, and ask me what we should do. Or he would tell me that the teddybears and the dolls were fighting over the enchanted forest, and ask me what to do. Basically, he took the trappings of the princess culture, and used it as a tool to teach me about leadership, civic responsibility, and compassion.
So if you have a little princess around, consider helping her figure out how to run her kingdom. There’s no sense in telling a kid they can’t be a leader, or that they can’t wear sparkles while they do it.
(Source: https://constant-instigator.tumblr.com/post/72172159641/i-get-why-a-lot-of-people-hate-the-whole-princess)
And somehow I find myself irresistibly casting Fred Rogers as the OP’s dad.
(Edited: the OP is a they/them.)
@Allandrel: Yes, I know, with the cartoon. But I was in college by then (Aside: I am very slightly acquainted with a guy who directed one of the GI Joe movies. It was a job).
It was just funner to have Joe and Barbie being the same scale (Joe was 12″, Barbie’s 11″). But I guess that was too girl-cootie-adjacent for the Reagan years, so Joe, Cobra, etc. had to be cut down to action-figure size.
I kinda don’t get the 6″ size. To me, it’s Barbie-sized, or action-figure sized, pick a lane! I guess the 6″ is the thing now, I’ve a friend with the new He-Man figures in that size. It does mean the accessories are larger, which probably makes them easier to keep track of. Not necessarily — the number of lost Barbie shoes is probably in the millions by now.
@FMOx: that is lovely!
@GSS ex-noob,
Cool, which film? I’m a big fan of the director of the first live-action film, even though that particular film was… not his best work.
Okay, so you’ve walked into one of my autistic special interests, so feel absolutely free to skip over this very long answer.
TLDR: It was Vietnam and OPEC, prior to Reagan.
Longer: The G.I. Joe 12″ dolls (as a huge fan of action figures, I maintain that these are dolls) was launched in 1964, as “America’s Fighting Man Head To Toe.” But it wasn’t many years before anti-military sentiment caused by the Vietnam conflict started to affect sales, and in 1970 Hasbro re-branded the line as the non-military “G.I. Joe Adventure Team.” The line’s sales continued to decline, even as Habsro added scifi elements like cyborgs and aliens.
At the same time, OPEC’s action resulted in drastically increased oil prices, and thus plastic prices, which bought up the toys’ prices and further limited sales. The line limped along until Hasbro finally canceled it in 1978, joining other “action doll” lines like Major Matt Mason that had been affected by oil prices.
Oil prices were a major reason that another toy company at the time, Kenner, decided on a 3.75″ scale for a movie license that they bought after everyone else had passed on it, for some project no one cared about called “The Star Wars” or something. They recognized that vehicles were going to be a big part of the brand’s appeal, and that kids would prefer vehicles that they could put their figures into and interact with rather than a smaller scale, which necessitated small figures to keep the price points down.
There’s a story that the specific size of 3.75″ was determined by Kenner’s CEO going “make it about THIS size” with his thumb and forefinger, but I find that unlikely given that this specifc toy size was not only already on the market with lines like Fisher-Price’s Adventure People, the Star Wars mock-ups made by Kenner’s designers were in fact Adventure People and Kenner kept that exact scale AND articulation.
Kenner’s Star Wars toys were, of course, absurdly successful (once they were finally released a year after the movie, which is a whole other story), and as corporations do, everybody wanted to copy what they did in the hopes of getting the same success.
Hasbro wasn’t getting anywhere with licensed properties, so the decided to try reviving G.I. Joe in the same scale as Star Wars, with the line focusing in vehicles and the figures as really just “guys to drive the vehicles.” That would change when they partnered with Marvel Comics to do a tie-in comic series, and writer Larry Hama developed identities, backgrounds, and… well pretty much everything about toys that had been developed with such characters as “Artillery Specialist” and “Commando.”
Hama also created Cobra, G.I. Joe’s iconic bad guys. Prior to his input, Habsro had not even planned on making bad guy toys, expecting kids to have their Joes fight their other toys. Hama pointed out the missed sales that this would entail, and created Cobra based heavily on a rejected Marvel project that he had pitched a while back – if you’ve ever wondered about Cobra’s resemblance to Marvel’s Hydra, yeah, that is not a coincidence.
All this was around 1980, with the line finally debuting in 1982, so the relaunch wasn’t really affected by the Reagan era during its development. That did change, of course, ESPECIALLY when Reagan had the FCC loosen restrictions on children’s programming that enabled those lovely 30-minute animated toy commercials cartoons, which G.I. Joe would go on to have as miniseries in 1983 and 1984, followed by a syndicated series from 1985-87 from Sunbow, and later series from other studios.
@Allandrel:
And knowing’s half the battle; YO, JOE!
Oh well, at least this looks like it’ll give us a decent video game movie, unlike the first Super Mario Brothers movie in 1993. Remember that one? Compared to that, the fact that they want to make Princess Peach a strong character shouldn’t matter that much, even to them.
John Leguizamo is so funny that it’s hard to believe anything with him as the main character could be terrible, and yet…
All that fuss because now they can’t masturbate to a cartoon woman any more because she can take care of herself.
@Gerald Fnord: Right up there with Tucker’s green M&M fascination.
@Allandrel: Believe me, everyone in the early-mid 70s still called them GI Joe and they were in their military outfits. There have occasionally been 12″ sized military dolls since then. And whatever they were calling Joes during the oil crisis of the 70s, plenty of the full-sized ones were still around.
Even into the 80s, and everyone in their 20s-30s at the time was all, “Oh, Star Wars ripoff size.” I remember having to wait soooo long for the Star Wars toys to come out.
(The Rock was in it, but that may not narrow it down?)
@ Full Metal Ox:
Now I kind of want a Nicholas Brothers action movie. You know they could have done it.
@Lollypop:
Over on Tumblr, everyone’s been making Barbie Movie posters for their favourite celebrities (regardless of gender, they’re usually introduced as Barbies).
When I first read The Woman In White as a teenager, I found Laura a bit of a wimp, especially in comparison to her awesome sister Marion. Nowadays, I think she is quite strong in her way—but like all the good characters in the novel, she always lets her conscience override her common-sense until it’s almost too late.
@Full Metal Ox
That’s a lovely story! Great dad, and it sounds both adorable and like a good way to teach a kid responsibility and leadership in a playful way, without stifling their own imagination and who they are.
@GSS ex-noob
The 1970 re-branding kept the G.I. Joe name but did change their military uniforms to civilian uniforms. And while G.I. Joe was not military during that period, there certainly were other lines of military 12″ dolls (the British version of G.I. Joe, Action Man, produced some really gorgeous stuff during this period).
https://gijoe.fandom.com/wiki/Adventure_Team
As I said, the 12″ line was not canceled until 1978. In fact, it was the 70s Adventure Team line that introduced many of the iconic features associated with G.I. Joe dolls, including Lifelike Hair, Kung Fu Grip, and Eagle Eyes. The military line never had any of those features.
Adventure Team was also where G.I. Joe first went scifi, with the alien Strongman From Another World, the totally-not-the Six Million Dollar Man Aromic Man, and for some reason a licensed Bulletman doll. (Why was Bulletman even still around in the 70s? No idea.)
Oh yeah, not just the scale, but the relaunch intself was chasing that sweet sweet Star Wars success. And Hasbro certainly got that as within a few years G.I. Joe toys had thoroughly eclipsed Star Wars toys – though I would argue that a large part of that was due to the media tie-in factor – as a licensed toyline, Star Wars was driven by its media, while as an independent toyline G.I. Joe drove its media.
Retaliation, the second live-action film directed by John Chu. Yeah, I can see that one being a job. I liked it, but it never felt like a labor of love, especially given the characters being only vague sketches of their original personalities and backgrounds. (Casting The Rock as Roadblock is fine, but making Roadblock not a gourmet chef is criminal.)
@Moon Custafer:
Now I kind of want a Nicholas Brothers action movie. You know they could have done it.
Michelle Yeoh started out in dance; I understand she’s had some subsequent success in action cinema.
And this took nearly sixty years to occur to me, but the converse is that dance movies are action films for non-violent people (1). The famous “Moses Supposes” sequence from Singin’ In The Rain portrays two people’s sudden realization of their drift compatibility (and the bewildered tutor being whisked into a sudden Theater Kid Abduction:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0DdoYspStE
(1) Although the two can of course overlap, as in West Side Story or Kung Fu Hustle.
@Allandrel:
As I said, the 12″ line was not canceled until 1978. In fact, it was the 70s Adventure Team line that introduced many of the iconic features associated with G.I. Joe dolls, including Lifelike Hair, Kung Fu Grip, and Eagle Eyes. The military line never had any of those features.
1974 U.S. schoolyard joke:
Q. Why does Barbie have sore boobs?
A. Because G.I. Joe has Kung Fu Grip.
@ FMO
As you probaly know, a lot of action movie stars have dance backgrounds. Jackie Chan, Jean Claude van Damme, that lass who was a Terminator etc
About face everybody.
Turns out, now that MB is a massive success, it’s actually an anti-woke movie.
https://twitter.com/JUNlPER/status/1645262095955505156/photo/1
@Alan Robertshaw
When Black Panther became a huge hit, I saw a columnist argue that the film – yes, Black Panther! – was really a Conservative film.
Why? Because “it promotes the conservative view that freedom is better than slavery.”
Ah, yes. I had forgotten that conservatives have a monopoly on that.
@ allandrel
The irony of course being that a number of right wing politicians and commentators have tried to argue that slaves were actually better off.
@Alan Robertshaw, and Republicans certainly love colonialism. But Black Panther does for some reason have the CIA helping an African country maintain its independence, so there is something for Conservatives to love.
@FM Ox: As another FMO, I remember that joke then too!
Most of the Chinese action stars have had dance training.
@Allandrel: Yep, if you look at Jon’s credits, he’s much more of a dance/musical guy. But early in a career, you take what you can get and do the best you can.
.
His mom and dad have posters all over the family restaurant (which is TOO TASTY). I haven’t seen him IRL since the end of the Before Times — of course he’s lived in LA for years. They’re a great family. (Not like “Crazy Rich Asians”, but I’m sure he could relate!) Gosh, the grandkids must be SO BIG now!
@ Asian action movie stars having had dance training.
Makes sense, honestly. Dancing is all about body tension and coordination, two things that are very beneficial for the kind of moves they perform in the movies, which very often looks a lot like a dance with its choreography. There is also the existence of actual battle dances that developed from battle styles, like Capoeira, which afaik was developed to preserve the original African battle techniques disguised as dance. There are many examples like that.
@Dave,
It’s been a while since I last saw the movie, but I thought the CIA stuff was ‘T’Challa had a friend who happened to be a CIA agent helping him out’ and not ‘the CIA itself was officially helping T’Challa keep his kingdom’. Though there’s nothing preventing certain conservatives from deciding the latter was what was going on and not the former, of course.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Hugh Jackman, of course; and I think Keanu Reeves has a background in ballroom dance (so did Bruce Lee, he was the cha-cha champion of Hong Kong).
@GSS ex-noob
That offers some insight into the film’s fantastic cliffside fight, which is easily the highlight of the movie, and feels very much like a dance number with all the acrobatics involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi_KyC6RfH0
Naturally. Parents gotta brag.