There are two classic movies from the 80s that both open with a video game scene. Big, which actually debuted a year after Princess Bride, starts with Cavern of the Evil Wizard, a fictional game made specifically for the film. That game taught us all an important lesson:

You will have more time for video games when you are older.

Is it fun?

Princess Bride starts with an actual video game, Hardball, from the Commodore 64. And I only bring this up, because in the 1980s, this was maybe the most ingenious way to immediately grab a kid’s attention at the start of that movie. Right from the first scene, the first time I watched it, The Princess Bride was fun.

Almost everything about this movie  is fun. The bad guys are fun.

The monsters are fun.

But more than anything else, the sword-fighting is fun. That’s how my dad sold this movie to me when I was first watched it.  I was NOT convinced going in. I was the kid in the movie.

My dad said, “Just watch it ‘til the sword fighting scene, and if you don’t like it, then you don’t have to watch any further.” Hahaha. Sly old bastard.

And goddamn if it wasn’t the best sword fighting scene.

And if you think about …

…it also introduced a whole generation of violent 80’s kids to the rapier. Part stabbing sword, part slashing sword, ALL fancy sword.

That sword couldn’t be any “rapier.” My notes for this write up include the comment “make a better joke here.” But I didn’t.

And I want you to consider, if perhaps this is the best sword fighting scene in any movie. It really might be.  

It’s not realistic, but then good sword fighting isn’t realistic. Realistic sword fighting looks like this:

Sword fighting in movies got a lot more brutal after Princes Bride…

…but it didn’t necessarily get better. Each of the Star Wars’s’s’s can make a case for a great sword fight, but the sword fighting was far from fun.

Unless you’re into that sort of thing. You sicko.

Don’t get me wrong, sword fighting has come a long way in cinema since 1987, but most of that progress has come in the form of new and innovative ways to disembowel NPCs. I still put Princess Bride at the top of the list of greatest sword fights, and it adds context to that scene in the director’s cut when Westley and Inigo start making out. [Slurp][kiss] [slurp] “I’m not left handed either.”

Are the characters gewd?

Most of them are, yes. At least one of them isn’t. We’ll come back to it! Cary Elwes, who made a career of playing douchebags following this movie …

…is basically perfect as Westley.  Inigo is even better. Fezig is even better than that.  Damn that’s solid casting. Lucky thing too…

…because the plot is not exactly well written. Hahaha. For being adapted from a book, it doesn’t have much of a story.  Search your feelings, you know this to be true.  Prince Humperdink plans to murder his wife in his own bedroom and blame it on his rival nation. As someone who’s considered strangling their spouse…

… let me tell ya – your own bedroom isn’t the best place to dodge blame for it.

It’s full of plot … holes (??). Plot absences.  At one point, Inigo and Fezig locate Westley, the man they just decided they need to find, when they hear screaming coming from somewhere in a 7 mile radius. Inigo is like, “That’s the scream of someone who lost true love.” Hahaha. Alright. No Biggie. They’re able to reverse engineer the sound back to a grove of trees (because of love, idiot) where Inigo’s sword is able to maguffin the rest of the way to the finish line.  It’s painfully stupid.  But you try staying mad at this face:

Also, how good does soup always look so good in movies?

I’d eat the hell out of that.

Does it hate women?

I hate to tell you this, but The Princess Bride is rapier than you remember. 

Did you see that joke coming? Good. You must have a studied hissa gripa!

You might be a stickler about this. Something like, “That doesn’t count. Humperdink wasn’t trying to rape her. Just murrrrder her.” But to that I say… maybe watch it again. That scene is like Bill Cosby’s cologne – it’s rape adjacent.

On top of that, I want you to try and name one female character in this movie, other than “Buttercup,” who HAS… A…. NAME (there aren’t any).

And now describe Buttercup’s character, the one female character in the movie, as it relates to anything other than Westley. There is an entire hour of this movie where Buttercup’s entire character arc consists of asking about Westley. Not a great look for your only female character.

Princess Bride is a classic family film that hates women.  Maybe that makes you wonder why it is that you hate women.  I mean even Princess Bride hates them, and it’s a great movie.

Is it worth watching?

Nevertheless, it’s worth watching.  It introduced a fantasy world where the characters were witty, and funny, and talked like us!  Inigio and Westley’s whole…

“Can I give you my word as a Spaniard?”
“No good! I’ve known too many Spaniards.”

…is a hilarious exchange that doesn’t need to be converted into ye-olde-fantasy-English.  If your fantasy has fire swamps and Miracle Max, then it can also have video games and characters who don’t speak British antiquity.

The costumes are great, the cinematography is bright and memorable. Even the soundtrack, which I think is just one guy on a synthesizer keyboard, holds up if you turn in on Spotify and just hang back and listen to it.  And maybe smoke a little weed. Just a little.

It was a step in the right direction of fantasy, on the cusp of the first great fantasy. And it wasn’t a bad way to remember your childhood, if you’ve ever considered the possibility that you wasted much of it…