Davroth said:
As for Other M, let me address your points one by one. When Samus agreed to join the squad to find out what happened in the Bottleship, she agreed to follow Malkovich's command. Like a soldier. That also means that she has to wait for authorization before she can use her shit. You better believe that real soldiers need to be authorized to use their equipment. If anything, it makes her more honorable of a character then I'd have given her credit for, seeing how she disregards direct orders in Metroid Fusion. The only reason people harp on this is because she's female, and I'm sick and tired of hearing it. If she was male, people would most likely say "Give him a bloody medal for facing a superheated lava chamber without his heat protecting suit, even though it's a clear oversight by his superior not to clear usage of that upgrade."
But there's no reason for her to follow his orders. She just arbitrarily decides to do so, for no other reason beyond daddy issues with Adam. And your logic falls apart when, later in the game, Samus activates her Space Jump
without a direct order and then activates her Power Bombs
despite being told that use of them would never be authorized. And if Samus was male, people would still say "Wow, that was pretty stupid" because we expect our badass action heroes to disregard the rules.
That Ridley scene, ever heard of post traumatic stress disorder? She's beaten that monster to a bloody pulp how many times now? And still the monster from her childhood keeps tormenting her over and over. Again, what if it was a male galactic bounty hunter? I find it sickening how OF COURSE Samus is less of a badass now that she showed a surprising, unprecedented moment of weakness.
Okay, Samus freezing up, I could potentially accept, but keep in mind that "Oh, he keeps coming back, so of course she gets spooked" falls apart when she's shown no such reactions in any of the other half-dozen times she faces Ridley throughout the series.
Samus is still a badass, because people ignore Other M as the sexist piece of trash it was. Individual things, you can reason away, but taken as a whole, it's just heavy-handed bullshit. Like being repeatedly hit over the head with the whole 'mother' thing. Mother in the title of the game, the 'bottle' ship, the 'baby's cry' distress call. And the thing with the baby metroid. You know, the life form that she was about to kill when she found it? The life form that she gave up to the scientists to study without a second thought? Yeah, now it seems she's grieving its loss as if it were her own child. And then the death becomes ho-hum again in Fusion. The freezing up against Ridley, the having to be saved by the boys, the fact that canonically 6' tall Samus is DWARFED by the black guy in the final cutscene, who must be at least 7'6".
The fact that she's a woman makes it sexism, but even if Samus wasn't a woman, it wouldn't make it any less jarringly wrong. It's like Batman refusing to use any gadget that Commissioner Gordon didn't specifically tell him he could use. It's like John McClane from Die Hard having to be rescued at one point by the hostages. It's like Inigo Montoya freezing up when he sees the six-fingered man.