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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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@Allandrel:
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.
It also feels very much like a Xianxia film, with the ziplines providing a handwaved mundane excuse for the magical-flying-swordfighter aerial combat.
(Wuxia is the wandering-martial-hero genre; in Xianxia, the qi powers are escalated to the point that the characters are outright mages (and the characters in high-level Xianxia can be outright gods and demons. The distinctions sometimes blur, of course.)
@Dave, Redsilkphoenix:
And, of course, on top of that, the CIA agent friend was actually helping T’Challa against a ‘rogue’ Navy SEAL who was betraying the U.S. (Rogue in scare quotes because it was obvious Killmonger had joined in the first place to set up his long-term revenge plan; it’s hard to say if it’s a betrayal when he joined under false pretenses to start with.)
@KMB:
Capoeira is fun. And yes, doubles as a dance form because that allowed slaves to practice the combat techniques out in the open without the slavemasters realizing they were combat techniques. This is also why Capoeira focuses so much on footwork and lower-body attacks: it was deliberately designed to be usable while manacled. (I did some research for a story I was working on.)
@Allandrel: When “Crazy Rich Asians” was being set up, both his mom and sister emailed him all “why aren’t YOU directing this?” and lo, it came to pass.
You can see bits of the mostly-cut full choreographed dance sequence remaining in the wedding reception.
But then his next movie, the actual musical of “In the Heights” had the misfortune to open in mid-2020.
So yeah, he likes the movement. I’m sure he’s seen all the Xianxia movies ever. We used to watch Chinese/Hong Kong movies on Saturday night off the local free to air stations; one ran modern martial arts dubbed into Spanish, but there’s only so many tough cops busting Triads we could take, so we’d watch the untranslated no-subtitle period ones that were in Mandarin, for the great costumes and wuxia, plus — sorry boys –.tough beautiful women in even fancier clothes than Princess Peach.
@ dancing and martial arts everybody
An excuse to post this! Jackie Chan cutting a rug. And they literally say dancing in the song so it’s on topic.
@alan, I have watched that clip about 500 times since you last posted it!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/some-right-wingers-claim-super-mario-bros-movie-success-is-because-it-s-anti-woke/ar-AA19GUo9
They don’t care about their own contradictions.
Sorry to necro; but this was quite funny