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.
I agree that Peach is a little bit too much, but I don't think she's quite as bad as people seem to think.
For comparison's sake, I'm going to use Rey as the archetypical Mary Sue. Rey is a scavenger on a desert planet, collecting scrap to sell for a living. We then jump to her repairing and flying spaceships better than their lifelong pilots. We start with her being a proficient staff fighter, and then jump to her being a natural with a Lightsaber AND the Force, defeating people who have been training their whole lives in the Light AND Dark sides. Han? Nothing compared to her. Luke? Nothing compared to her. Kylo? Nothing compared to her. She's given every advantage and never fails ever. Rey's power levels make no sense for what is established, and she can never be defeated by any challenge the films put forward.
Conversely, Princess Peach is shown to have been raised in the Mushroom Kingdom and been trained in all of its dangers and wonders. Thus she's shown as being a capable platformer and adventurer in her own right. She makes the plan to team up with the Kongs to fight off Bowser. And then... The plan doesn't work. Cranky turns her down flat until Mario steps up to challenge DK. And then once they have the Kongs' support, Bowser beats them all anyway. Then, when she stands to face Bowser's minions, she immediately caves when Kamek threatens Toad, another loss. And then, after that, when she makes her bid for freedom, she loses against King Bob-Omb. It takes Mario and DK to save everyone and repel Bowser's nuclear option. Peach's power levels are consistent with what is established, and she's unable to clear multiple challenges without explicit help from other characters, most often our hero, Mario.
And that's not getting into Peach's generally supportive and encouraging attitude, compared to Rey's "Stop holding my hand!" bitching.
Except she did it on her first try
I don't see this as a loss, she did not allow Toad to be tortured and bought some time. She lost nothing. It just further cemented how great she is under pressure
She did not lose to anyone, she accidentally lighted up his fuse. Until that moment she had already defeated Bowser and all the guards.
She did not need help in any task. Only moment were it comes in to play is Mario saving the day at the end, that seems more of an intervention from Nintendo then the writers
I agree with this part. Her personality was cute. They could have written her with a bit of strugle, even if it was just theoretical about her learning to live in this world and the movie would have been great. Compare her to all the other characters, all of them are more interesting and better made then Peach.
Question is do you believe that is because the creators wanted to be faithful to a game or because they HAD to follow the hollywood mantra of no flaws to girls and no man can be better then her and never ever save her?
I'm willing to cut the film some slack on its narrative because they put forth effort to make Peach pleasant and actively give Mario opportunities to step up and be a hero. I'm willing to take things like the joke of Peach getting it first try in stride (Never mind how long she's plausibly experienced the Mushroom Kingdom proper by this point.) Because they go on to show that Mario is instrumental in saving the day and Peach would have failed on her own, even as good as she is. And that's the key, for me.
Critical Drinker once said that the fun of wish fulfilment is seeing awesome characters on the backfoot and pulling through despite being setback. Peach may be awesome, but the Kongs are more awesome, and Bowser and his troops are even more awesome, so Mario becomes even more awesome then that in response.
I believe that the initial filmmakers were probably trying to turn Peach into a Mary Sue, but Nintendo put their foot down, and gave her realistic setbacks. You say "Oh, the writers just coincidentally had her get hit by King Bob-Omb." But what is life but a series of coincidences? It doesn't matter how awesome you are, sometimes, you get delt a bad hand and need help. (Also, pretty sure she set him off on purpose and it backfired on her, again, a believable scenario.)
Also, surrender is failure by definition. Losing a battle to win the war is still a loss.