#Bowser would've destroyed her kingdom and she clearly HAS NOTHING in that moment to stop him

[iholli]

watching the Mario movie again reminded me just. how much raw mad respect I have for Nintendo's portrayal of Peach in the movie.

I've never been a Peach fan, in the games she's always been annoying and helpless and girly. And I went into the movie expecting the exact opposite, even worse-- the inexplicably already perfect insufferable bitchy girlboss who exists to belittle the male characters because "everything you can do I can do better." It's no secret I hate that female character troupe. And I went into the movie like, I'm going to hate Peach, she's going to make me roll my eyes every time she's on screen.

But she didn't.

Nintendo perfectly walked the extremely thin line between powerful and insufferable. She's feminine, but not annoying. Yeah, Peach is a girlboss, she's in charge, she holds her own, she doesn't really need Mario at all, she did the practice course the first try and she's ready to stick it to Bowser one way or another. But it makes sense for her ["I grew up here"]. She was raised and trained for it almost her entire life before stepping foot onto the course. She's not a bitch, she's commanding, but there's warmth and caring behind it. Her first instinct is to protect her subjects even at the cost of herself ["I'll marry you, just don't hurt my Toads"], but she gives everyone the benefit of the doubt [letting Mario explain himself even though he just broke in to her castle and she just threw him on the floor]. She's not annoying, she's kind and even tries to help Mario feel better about his failure ["now you're just trying to make me feel better." "no! no! ...is it working?" "kinda, yeah"], she gets genuinely excited when he wins battles ["you just don't know when to quit!" "I've never thought of that as a good thing." "That's a GREAT thing!"] even though at any time she could take charge and get her way on her own [she would've gone to the Jungle Kingdom herself even if Mario hadn't shown up, she obviously had a plan to win Cranky Kong over]. She doesn't need anyone to do things for her, but she's willing to let them. Because she sees that they can do it, too, and she's trusting them and encouraging that the whole time.

And that's a character troupe I can get behind.