The Super Mario Bros Movie officially arrives in theaters tomorrow, some of us at The Escapist have already bought our tickets, and we’re basically hyped out of our minds for it. To build that hype further, movie creators and actors have been hitting the interview circuit to discuss the film. In particular, Variety interviewed Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto about The Super Mario Bros Movie, and among other things, Miyamoto explained the decision not to make Princess Peach a “damsel in distress” this time around.
“As a video game, we needed to make it simple and easy to understand what the objective is,” said Miyamoto, describing the origins of the Mario video game franchise. “So (Peach) stayed the ‘damsel in distress’ for a while. But we did have desires to make her a playable character, make her have her own story, be a more powerful princess, etc. We tried to push that further for the movie, and I think it was one of our first conversations, to maker her the strong, powerful princess she was always meant to be.”
Some had speculated that the idea to make Princess Peach a proactive leader and not a damsel in distress was pushed on Nintendo by Illumination, so it’s nice to hear from creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself that an empowered Peach was something he had wanted in The Super Mario Bros Movie all along. This isn’t surprising though, since Peach has been a sporadically playable character in the Mario franchise for decades, and she also starred in her own Nintendo DS platformer, the very underrated Super Princess Peach.
Catch The Super Mario Bros Movie in theaters on April 5, and if you’re not worried about spoilers, you can watch the final trailer for the movie that was released last month.
