Schrödinger's 'Woke' Mario Movie

What its success or failure does or does not say, in my opinion. Or not.

I must confess that like the majority of the jamokes presently reacting to it on social media, I have not seen The Super Mario Bros. Movie, nor do I know what actually happens in it.

What I do know, however, is that the movie flopped at the box office because audiences are tired of the “woke” agenda being rammed down their throats by Hollywood and Japanese corporations. Just like they’re tired of seeing their unrepresentative, liberal government flush this country down the tubes like Mario going down the tubes for a bonus level or whatever. I haven’t played a Mario game since I was a child, but I think that’s what he does with the tubes. He goes down them.

Take Princess Peach. Timeless American character, practically written into the Constitution. We know her deal. She wears a pink, poofy dress, gets rescued from Bowser, and goes Yeeeeah! Just like most women. What did the Mario movie do? It put her in a pink jumpsuit and gave her a halberd. They might as well have had her face the audience and say, “my pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘they.’” It’s yet another instance of the girlbossification of female characters giving young girls everywhere the unrealistic notion that they can hold an ax or wear pants.

It doesn’t stop there. 

The movie takes Luigi, long understood to be a symbol of masculinity and a walking manifestation of the importance of brotherly bonds, and makes him a damsel in distress. Bowser kidnaps him because he’s gay or something, prompting Mario to give viewers a long, tortured lecture about how it’s never okay to kidnap someone, but homophobia is inexcusable, and while Bowser might not hear your homophobic remarks, your gay friends in the Mushroom Kingdom will.

That’s what I bet happens, anyway. I also bet Luigi comes out as bisexual in Bowser’s dungeon and the two of them fall in love. I bet Bowser realizes he’s only been acting like a villain all this time because of his unresolved trauma, and Luigi’s affection makes him realize that he, too, has redeemable qualities. I bet they go on a date at a candle-lit Italian restaurant at a table with a checkered tablecloth and they accidentally kiss while eating spaghetti, and Luigi blushes while Bowser accesses a joy he never knew he was allowed to feel, and he wonders for the first time in his life if happiness, if tenderness might be possible for a creature like him after all.

I bet some degenerate garbage like that happens, in between the Mushroom Kingdom dissolving their monarchy and electing a girl Toad to the halls of power. “Trans rights,” she says at her inauguration. Mario is Afro-Latinx, by the way. It’s no wonder audiences rejected this arthouse claptrap that set out to defile the beloved characters we grew up with. 

Or.

What I know about The Super Mario Bros. Movie is that its record-breaking success at the box office is a loud and clear repudiation of the liberal witch hunt against Chris Pratt, who was crucified simply for breathing and loving America. 

It’s everyday Americans showing up to theaters and voting with their wallets to say “Princess Peach is a biological woman, and it would not be misogynist to lock her up if she did the Mushroom Kingdom equivalent of Benghazi. It would be fair.” 

They heard the out-of-touch critics panning it before it was released because it wasn’t gay enough. They heard John Leguizamo urging them to boycott the movie unless Nintendo made Mario Mexican or something. And what was their response? They said “screw your backwards values, commies. Anya Taylor-Joy is Argentinian. Trump 2024.”

The wild success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a clarion call. It’s telling our leaders that we are fed up, and we’re not going to take anymore of their gender ideology, or their contempt for the rich, or their tax-funded drag brunches at Catholic elementary schools. It’s shouting to the world that Mario will never be Italianx. He’s a red-blooded, conservative American, just like the silent majority in this country, and we’re finally speaking up. As evidenced by the fact that this movie based on a popular video game made a lot of money. Yahoo!

It’s definitely one of the two scenarios presented.