Editorial: Illumination Needs to Move Beyond Stone-Faced Princess Peach

I watched the recent trailer for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and really enjoyed it—with one exception. Princess Peach, vaulting into a Launch Star with Toad, hurtling skywards and looking about as expressive as one of the faces on Mount Rushmore. No joy. No smile. No fear. No curiosity. Just a stone-like visage while Toad emotes more like a human being than the theoretically living, breathing one next to him.

It’s a carryover from The Super Mario Movie that, sadly, doesn’t appear to be going away for this film. In that movie, Peach was essentially perfect from the outset (there’s even a joke about how she was able to complete the obstacle course in one go that Mario failed at so many times), never showing any signs of growth and generally being overpowered throughout the adventure. This includes the end, where she’s blasting through Bowser’s defenses like so much fluff.

Princess Peach’s frequent role as a hostage in the Super Mario games has become a fashionable thing for armchair activists to deride in recent years. However, where legitimate criticism can be found in Nintendo lazily reusing this plot device from game to game, the same can’t be said of ludicrous claims that it’s problematic for her to be portrayed this way for any reason whatsoever. Bombastic allegations that this diminishes Peach as a character, that it robs her of agency, and so on, are nothing more than vestiges of the Western activist takeover of entertainment within the past 15 years and not reflective of everyday people’s opinions and beliefs. Peach can be a hostage and still be an independent, strong person—just about anyone would fall victim to Bowser and his hoards of minions, after all.

Yet, that’s not good enough for the animators over at Illumination, apparently, so stoney-faced Peach remains. Which is a shame, because Peach’s warmth and kindness is a big part of who that character is. Sure, she can hold her own with the others as evidenced in games like Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D World, but she’s also dainty, a little aloof, and more inclined to bake a cake than go out to get into scrapes. But to suggest otherwise in today’s culture wars-tinged landscape would, to some, be tantamount to saying Peach should stay in the kitchen where she belongs. Which is, of course, complete nonsense, and in reality is infinitely more regressive than showing the character as traditionally feminine.

While I can respect wanting to diversify the qualities in female characters in entertainment, what presumably began with good intentions has spiraled into a fixation that has resulted in cardboard cutouts that are indistinguishable from project to project. The term “girl boss” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s hard to argue against its accuracy as a descriptor when female character after female character is diminished to the following:

• Virtually no character flaws
• Domineers over all male characters
• Experiences no growth throughout the story; instead, the characters around her come to realize that she was perfect all along

Now, to be clear, Peach isn’t terrible in The Super Mario Bros. Movie; she has moments of vulnerability, like when she’s opening up to Mario about not knowing her origins. She can be occasionally endearing. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between in the film. And now, with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie on the horizon, it’s looking like she’s going to remain unflawed, unchanged, and weirdly fierce and stoic in a way that she flat-out isn’t in any of her other depictions over the past nearly-40 years.

Let’s call it as it is: this ain’t Peach. This is someone that the audience is told to care about because she looks like Peach and sounds like Peach, but in no way acts like her. Again, our first glimpses of the character in this trailer are her rocketing through space like an automaton, brawling like an untouchable fighter, and otherwise just being a flat, one-note nothing. Take that versus Mario and Luigi, who are brimming with emotion and expression, who are allowed to show personality, both good and bad. Peach, sadly, isn’t afforded anything close to a personality. This haughty, self-impressed trope feels practically geriatric at this point.

Frustratingly, this treatment of Peach seems like it will be extended to Rosalina, as well. While it’s a cool visual watching her take down the Megaleg in the trailer, it’s also bizarre seeing the character portrayed as a cookie cutter action movie star, expressionlessly walking away from an explosion in the background. Remind me where Rosalina has ever been portrayed like this? Oh, right—nowhere but the hands of modern day Hollywood. Rosalina’s interactions with the Luma in the clip shown off after the trailer during the Direct broadcast offer some hope that Rosalina might get to be a person in the movie, but I’m not holding my breath.

I think the simplest way to approach this problem is for creators in the West to stop assuming the only way to make a female character compelling is to write them as dime store versions of Samus Aran. Peach can be delicate and goofy and caring without sacrificing her so-called agency, without appearing to be weak. She’s a classically female character and there isn’t anything wrong with that. Just like there isn’t anything wrong with Samus being the sort of character who actually would blow up a Megaleg and walk away, emotionless, as the debris rains down from the sky. This appeal to the modern audience is an appeal to no one and is long past overdue to be put out to pasture.