Brie Larson is glowing when she talks about playing Rosalina in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which is set to hit theaters on April 1. According to NBC, she enjoys a passion for gaming and has a lifelong love for Nintendo games, which made this new role so fulfilling. She shared that her earliest memories involve playing Super Mario, making this the “best and easiest press tour” of her career since it connects so well with her family’s gaming traditions.
However, some folks like Geeky REAL GINGER Sparkles, who goes by @desert_starr_57 on X, were quick to interpret her joy as a sign she’s “grown up” and is “far more genuine and happy here,” suggesting that “being miserable and activisty about everything makes you miserable.” This narrative, painting Larson as a “miserable activist” who has only just found happiness, completely ignores her actual history and the genuine passion she’s always shown for her work.
Not everyone shares this view. Larson’s defenders argue that the intense backlash actually reveals discomfort with women pushing for inclusion, not any real lack of excitement in her previous projects. They argue that she has never lacked excitement; she simply refused to perform a palatable femininity while advocating for systemic change.
The renewed clash really highlights an ongoing cultural debate
Our own Rachel Leishman pointed out “she did. all brie larson did was advocate for people like me to have a seat at the table for junkets/covering female centric stories, especially in the superhero genre. she didn’t ask to take seats away from men. she offered more of her time & men crucified her for it on this app.”
Ashe, who goes by @GerrardSimoly on X, shared a bunch of photos of Larson at press events for movies, saying, “This is literally Brie Larson in her activist era you might buy into the idea that she’s ‘miserable’ because a man told you so, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s always been an absolute ball of energy.”
Larson’s activism really ramped up around the time of Captain Marvel. During the 2018 Women In Film Crystal + Lucy Awards, she pushed for better women and women of color representation among critics. She said,, “Am I saying I hate white dudes? No, I am not.” She added that she didn’t need “a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time. It wasn’t made for him. I want to hear what it meant to women of color, to biracial women, to teen women of color.”
Larson has never stopped being an activist
She went on to advocate for studios and publicists to prioritize diverse journalists in junkets and screenings. Larson also openly supported inclusion riders and the Time’s Up efforts against harassment, all aimed at fostering a more equitable industry. While her comments were clearly framed as calls for broader representation, not exclusion, they still sparked an incredibly intense debate online.
Before Captain Marvel even premiered, the film faced a coordinated “review bombing” campaign on Rotten Tomatoes. Negative audience scores and comments decrying “SJW nonsense” were often directly tied to Larson’s diversity remarks, even though many of these reviewers hadn’t even seen the movie yet. Rotten Tomatoes eventually had to disable pre-release user reviews and alter its policies to combat this kind of coordinated attack.
Critics also really fixated on Larson’s serious demeanor in trailers, going so far as to photoshop smiles onto her face and label her “wooden” or uninterested. This was a stark contrast to how male MCU stars, who rarely grin in promo material, were treated.
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