The movie is good, I enjoyed it a lot more then I thought I would. It was surprising how well Mario is portrayed. He has flaws to overcome but he is resilient and is motivated by wanting to protect his little brother, in the end he becomes a hero and saves everyone. On the other side we have Peach, she is just perfect, does everything good all her life, effortless throws Mario to the ground and makes fun of him being short the first time she meets him, she is loved by everyone and she can fight better then anyone and even saves Mario at least once. She defeats Bowser and fights a good portion of his army on her own and only lost by sheer bad luck. Her saving grace is that she does not act as a mean girl boss and and seems to like Mario.
From a movie point of view Mario should not have mattered since Peach could have defeated everyone anyway and the fact that Mario is allowed to fight Bowser at the end seems extremely forced and more like something Nintendo demanded. Makes no sense for Peach not fighting him since she was stronger and better then Mario.
Even Donkey Kong is a more interesting and better written character then Peach. In fact Peach is the worse written character in the movie. You can remove most of the scenes with Peach and the movie plays about the same, almost like there were 2 story lines, one centered on Peach and one on Mario.
So it just looks like they wanted a girl boss movie but Nintendo said no and demanded Mario to be the hero of the movie so we got this strange mix of great and woke.
It also made me think, the argument I've seen online is "imagine if a girl goes to see Mario and Peach does nothing for the entire movie?". The obvious answer is that there can be a middle ground and the girl have flaws and even allow Mario to save her once or twice and also be a great and powerful character in her own right. But more importantly where was the same argument for Elsa or Brave or most other girl centered cartoons? Even How to train your dragon had to have a strong female character and that was the last good cartoon I remember seeing in a cinema that I liked.
You always hear about what the little girls are gonna think in regards to a piece of media that doesn’t check all the female empowerment boxes. Nobody gives a shit about what little boys think though when the situation is reversed. Male expendability rears its ugly head again.
Honestly, I think in most cases men are getting exactly what we need. The truth that life is hard and no one cares about you, so work harder to make something of yourself while women get it easy. It sucks, but its also not going to change especially if you try to appeal to women's decency and empathy (lol).
In this specific case, Mario fucks up a bunch but still manages to stubbornly power through until eventually he succeeds at things, most of which he is bad at to start. A tangible and real goal for boys. Peach just skips all that and was great with no show of the work, something that makes girls instantly give up when they don't win on the first showing.
And it should never stop. Men should understand that we are not superheroes, that most of us are grunts, that we have to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Men didn't build civilization by being a gathering of kings; they did it by cooperation, and yes, hierarchy. Let women keep their princess bullshit if they must, its for the birds. The problem is that society has stopped rewarding its best supporters: boys and men. I don't know what the solution is, but I know its not men acting like women.
"Artists" nail a urinal to a wall, but artisans spend three generations building a cathedral.
The bargain of Christian civilization is that in exchange for loyalty and labor the lower-tier men who make shoes and design sewer systems get to have wives they don't have to kill for and children that are highly likely to be theirs.
This requires suppression of womens' natural inclination to disregard lower tier men and insert herself into the harem of a higher tier man. That suppression was done through religious indoctrination, economic and sometimes physical sanction against deviancy, and mainly social pressure, mostly from older women who had resigned themselves to the suppression of their instincts when they were younger.
No that is a manifestation of the problem. "Their princess bullshit" is part of the cultural emanations of respect is part of the bargain. Men cannot be shown being disrespected and "shown up" by women. Adult men know it is retarded and just roll their eyes but that meme is devastating to boys and damaging to girls. Boys need to grow up imaging themselves as the hero and girls need to grow up imaging themselves as the prize the hero fights for.
We know what the solution is. Roll back the last 150 years of "progressive" legislation.
Since the 19th amendment makes that impossible the next contingency is to prepare for collapse.
Dude there's plenty of great movies that get this message across, but part of the bargain for expendability is that you get honored in some way however small. Being truly expendable as in "we'll toss you like a used napkin" was never the deal.