I'm not a fan of how Peach and Rosalina are being portrayed in the upcoming Super Mario Galaxy movie.
Peach has been completely masculinised again, just like in the original 2023 Mario film. Instead of being the gentle, graceful, occasionally ditzy but always caring and feminine princess she’s always been in the games, she’s suddenly an action heroine who fights off hordes of enemies. That’s never been her character in the games, and it shouldn't be here either; in the actual Galaxy and Odyssey games, she gets captured by Bowser and Mario rescues her — that’s the core fairy‑tale dynamic Mario was built on, from the very beginning on the NES.
Rosalina is getting the same treatment now, which is truly unfortunate. In the Galaxy games, she was a serene cosmic guide who advised Mario and cared for the Lumas. She didn’t fight. She wasn’t meant to fight. Turning her into another combat-focused action girl just erases what made her unique.
The problem isn’t that female characters shouldn’t have agency — it’s that their agency is always being rewritten to look exactly like male agency. Femininity gets tossed aside in favour of generic action‑hero traits, and that’s both unrealistic and boring. Peach could’ve had a great role doing something more fitting, like stealthily gathering information after being captured (like in the first two Paper Mario games) and sending it to Mario through a Luma, like how she sent information about Bowser's activities or the upcoming region to Mario through Twink, the Star Kid, in the first Paper Mario game. Heck, since these movies love referencing old Mario games, they could have even named this Luma "Twink"!
As for Rosalina, she should’ve stayed a non‑combat advisor to the Bros., guiding them instead of throwing magic around and battling Megaleg herself - remained an advisor, like she was in the first Super Mario Galaxy game, where she cared for the Lumas and kept watch over the Bros. whilst staying on board her Comet Observatory.
Not every character needs to be a fighter to be valuable. Let the Mario Bros. be the main heroes, and let the princesses keep the feminine qualities that made them iconic and beloved in the first place.