This is one of those moments that all great comedies have where it stops being funny for just a while and you have to take it absolutely, deadly seriously.
It’s heartbreaking, but I don’t think it’s dead serious. On some level, there’s still something camp and ridiculous about it (that line is inherently silly, regardless of context), and it’s the combination of silly and serious that makes it so poignant. We’re not doing something different than before, we’re just looking at the same thing from a different angle: “what if that objectively silly and camp thing made someone happy, and gave them peace in their last moments?” And that’s what makes it moving and powerful. That’s the whole point of the movie, and that’s why Galaxy Quest is the best Star Trek movie ever.
Whereas, in The Princess Bride for example, there’s NOTHING funny in the line “I want my father back, you son of a bitch.” It’s unambiguously raw. We shifted gears completely, we’re doing another thing altogether. We’re not repeating the funny line any more, and the funny line (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”) was not funny inherently, only in the delivery (calm, gentle, with a smile) and the repetition throughout the movie. When you stopped saying it gently to the void and started saying it angrily to the actual killer, it stopped being funny. Shit got real.
Two different ways to accomplish the same thing, both wonderful.
well, part of how You Killed My Father worked the way it did is that when he said it to the killer, the killer treated it as a joke.
it was funny to him then, like it had been funny to us all along.
and then inigo, stabbed, keeps saying it, bleeding, stumbling, and it’s never been more absurd but it’s no longer funny, it’s heartbreaking, it’s his whole life for nothing, spilling out on the floor but still clung to by the fingernails.
and then he keeps saying it, and it builds until it’s not funny, until the count is snapping at him to stop saying that because inigo still isn’t dead and still isn’t giving up and it’s unnerving him now, it matters to him now, the words Inigo has held in his mouth all these years to spit at him, when of themselves they never could have mattered because he doesn’t care about the people he’s killed.
and then it’s triumphal, he’s winning, rugen is retreating, rugen is listening so closely, and he gets to the part of the script he hasn’t shared before and makes rugen say his lines at swordpoint.
and then he kills him.
it’s not just that it got real, because part of the humor was always how poorly the reality was likely to square with the plan in his head. it’s that inigo managed to make the story play out the way he needed it to, despite it looking like it absolutely would not and cynical reality was going to win.
in both these cases, the moment of death turns a formula into an incantation, into something real and powerful and cathartic.
but with inigo he’s forcing his own words to be accepted by the world, dragging rugen along into his narrative when rugen would have made it empty, while alexander is voluntarily turning into the narrative that quellek loves, and that he has hated and been burdened by as an inescapable hollow thing that has nevertheless defined him.
it’s very much the same thing, that stepping-in to make a concept of ‘what story is being lived’ real and the presence of death sealing it, it’s just the mechanics are very different, because in Galaxy Quest the guy is moved by someone else’s respect and sincerity and by pity and grief to commit to the bit, while in Princess Bride inigo just drags the other party into the bit by the barely-metaphorical throat.
This is obviously a sacreligious concept and not to be tolerated.
Unless.
I have heard two (2) ideas that I would accept as potential remakes of TPB.
1. Fred Savage is a father, whose 10 year old daughter is sick, and he’s reading her the book his grandfather used to read to him when he was sick. Because it’s a new audience, and a different time, the story is recast and reimagined. The daughter interrupts in different places than The Grandson did. Bonus points if the book story portions are word-for-word from the original, but shot/costumed/acted differently.
You know, one of the things I didn’t fully appreciate about The Princess Bride until I started really thinking about it is that Fezzik is definitely the brains of the two but Inigo knows what kind of story he’s in.
Inigo: I have searched for twenty years for the man with six fingers Fezzik: Yeah I went over to the neighboring kingdom, asked for a guy with six fingers, I know his name and where he lives now.
Inigo: We’re gonna go find the Man in Black Fezzik: We… don’t actually know where he is. Inigo: Don’t bother me with trifles, I need to complete my revenge by tonight!
*scream rings out* Inigo: That is the scream of the Man in Black, it’s because his true love is Buttercup and tonight she marries someone else. Fezzik: I have no idea how you got all that from “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” but hey, it’s not like we have any other leads.
Fezzik: Yeah, he’s dead. So are we moving on to Plan B or… Inigo: Nope we’re gonna resurrect him. Fezzik: Okay, fine, it’s not like he can get any deader.
Inigo: *twenty year long revenge plan is nearly foiled by a door and then runs into a gut wound that he overcomes by sheer protagonist power* Fezzik: ….You know what? I’m gonna plan our escape route.
I’m just gonna assume that once they got past the border and Westley and Buttercup are doing the big ending kiss, Fezzik is just offscreen wrapping up Inigo’s gut wound that he was too high on adrenaline to notice.
This is one of those moments that all great comedies have where it stops being funny for just a while and you have to take it absolutely, deadly seriously.
It’s heartbreaking, but I don’t think it’s dead serious. On some level, there’s still something camp and ridiculous about it (that line is inherently silly, regardless of context), and it’s the combination of silly and serious that makes it so poignant. We’re not doing something different than before, we’re just looking at the same thing from a different angle: “what if that objectively silly and camp thing made someone happy, and gave them peace in their last moments?” And that’s what makes it moving and powerful. That’s the whole point of the movie, and that’s why Galaxy Quest is the best Star Trek movie ever.
Whereas, in The Princess Bride for example, there’s NOTHING funny in the line “I want my father back, you son of a bitch.” It’s unambiguously raw. We shifted gears completely, we’re doing another thing altogether. We’re not repeating the funny line any more, and the funny line (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”) was not funny inherently, only in the delivery (calm, gentle, with a smile) and the repetition throughout the movie. When you stopped saying it gently to the void and started saying it angrily to the actual killer, it stopped being funny. Shit got real.
Two different ways to accomplish the same thing, both wonderful.
There’s a part in The Princess Bride (the book, it’s not in the movie) where Inigo and Fezzik are looking for Westley after he’s been taken by the Prince, and they’ve been running into obstacle after obstacle, having to overcome them one after the other till they are not only worn out but they find themselves lost in the dark in the Prince’s pit of despair. They overcome and overcome and barely overcome, and then they find Westley.
Dead.
And in the middle of this horrid moment, the passage goes,
“After such effort; after being reunited with Fezzik on this day of days for this one purpose, to find the man to help him revenge his dead Domingo—gone. All was gone. Hope? Gone. Future? Gone. All the driving forces of his life. Gone. Snuffed out. Beaten. Dead.
‘I am Inigo Montoya, the son of Domingo Montoya, and I do not accept it.’”
And he drags Westley’s dead body to Max and stakes everything on a miracle happening. He is literally at the bottom of the pit of Despair with a dead man and instead of succumbing to despair himself he stops and says “I do not accept it.”
And that is one of the most powerful moments in any story I’ve read. Because sometimes the bravest and hardest thing is to insist on hope when it seems like there is none. To say no. I do not accept it. And look for a miracle if that’s what it takes!
(To against hope believe in hope, that we might obtain what was promised.)
If I was remaking the Princess Bride I’d have Buttercup hire Vizzini, Inigo and Fezzik herself to help her fake her death and take her away so she could go and seek out the Dread Pirate Roberts and get revenge for Westley’s death, and also get out of the marriage to Humperdinck, so she rocks up on the ship in disguise and this time Westley doesn’t recognise *her*, but she realises it’s Westley and she’s just making loads of snide remarks trying to figure out why he’s been merrily fucking about on a boat this whole time, meanwhile Westley’s having a little bit of a bi moment about Buttercup-in-disguise but because he’s loyal as fuck he’s not going to do anything about it but they get into a fight and Buttercup is like ‘Why the hell did you just fucking leave your girlfriend to fuck around being a pirate you could at least have written a letter’ and he’s like 'Oh I’m sorry???? What on earth would you know about it, this is none of your concern, I should’ve killed you when you came on board’ and of course during this scene they’re also having a very tense sword fight with Inigo making quips from the sidelines like a sports commentator, and Buttercup’s like 'WELL WHY DON’T YOU JUST KILL ME THEN, FARM BOY???’ But then the ship lurches to the side and she gets thrown overboard and Westley is like 'Oh my God I’m so stupid!!!!’ So then he has to dive in after and pull her out.
I LOVE THIS??!?
Once she’s back in the boat she and Westley have a heart a heart conversation and it’s very cute (Inigo and Fezzik are throwing rhyming couplets back and forth in the background).
Humperdinck is still trying to start a war, so when he hears his prospective bride is captured! by pirates! he chases them, and captures them all as soon as their boat makes landfall. Westley, Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini all go to the dungeons, and Buttercup is confined to the court physician’s rooms to ‘recover her wits’ from her ‘scare with the pirates’ (translation: she’s spitting mad and has a sword now and has to be restrained to keep from Murdering Humperdinck).
The gang in the dungeons are all in separate cells, so they each organize their own jailbreak. Fezzik just. breaks his door, Vizzini confuses his guard into handing him the keys to the door, Inigo has his ‘Father, guide my sword’ moment and finds a secret passageway out, and Westley is just sitting outside his cell waiting for them, both of his guards knocked out. he claims they turned on each other and then he picked his lock.
Meanwhile, Humperdinck releases Buttercup, which was a mistake, because now she gets to beat him up and give the ‘to the pain’ speech. Inigo has his conclusion with the six-fingered-man, meanwhile Westley finds the queen, convinces her that Humperdinck has been warmongering, and she decides to crown her younger child instead. Westley meets up with Buttercup, and together they find Inigo and Fezzik (who has grabbed the horses).
Inigo becomes the next Dread Pirate Roberts and Fezzik goes with him. Humperdinck never recovers from the scandal and gets shoved in a monastery somewhere out of embarrassment. Westley and Buttercup become wandering swords, just Robin Hooding their way through life, settling down to be farmers in their old age.
You’re hired
“Well,” said Inigo, shrugging, “I myself am no stranger to murder plots. I just don’t know that the four of us can fight an entire crew of pirates.”
They were drawing quite close to the Revenge, now.
Vizzini scoffed. “Obviously not. They say Roberts is a bloodthirsty pirate, but too honorable for his own good. Our employer will simply challenge him to a duel.” He glanced forward, to the front of the boat, where the enigmatic figure who had purchased their services stared intently ahead, and continued in an undertone. “And, since we’ve been paid in advance, the outcome matters little.”
I have long said that in order for any comedy to truly succeed as a story, there has to be meat beneath the jokes. There has to be that moment when it is not funny any more.
Hot take: Westley is way too dramatic and Extra ™ to not be bisexual.
He can fence with either hand, if you catch my drift
By this logic, which is utterly impeccable, so is Inigo.
Of course he is. That was the most flirtatious sword fight in cinematic history. You could literally cut the sexual tension with 2 swords.
*slams the reblog button so hard* This, THIS is the kind of content I want to see!
I remind you he convinced a notoriously murdery pirate captain to keep him alive via a Scheherezade Gambit, the specifics of which we never do learn about.
:->
And on the topic of Cary Elwes… (Iocane Powder in The Princess Bride)
Remember that scene in The Princess Bride where Westley challenges Vizzini to a battle of the wits—you know, the one with the iocane powder?
The last few times I watched the movie, something about that scene didn’t set quite right with me, and I’ve been developing a theory about what’s really going on.
Westley was involved in a battle of wits against Vizzini, a battle which, necessarily, involves a certain amount of deception. I think that Westley was deceiving Vizzini about his use of the iocane powder.
Westley describes iocane powder to Vizzini as being “odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.”
When presenting the poison to Vizzini, Westley also gives him the explicit instructions “Inhale this, but do not touch.”
While I believe Westley may truthfully have spent several years building up a resistance to the effects of iocane powder, I propose that rather than poisoning both goblets as he claimed to have done, Westley didn’t pour the iocane powder into either cup of wine!
Especially since the iocane was in powder form, I suspect that rather than being an ingested poison, it was an inhalation poison!
Vizzini wasn’t poisoned when Westley poured (or didn’t pour) iocane powder into the wine goblets, but when Westley told him to waft the vial of iocane powder. Since iocane powder is odorless, Vizzini wouldn’t have noticed that trace amounts of one of the “more deadly poisons known to man” had been introduced into his system…trace amounts that were still enough to kill a man within minutes.
And since iocane powder came from Australia, and it’s well documented that Australia is home to some of the most venomous species of plants and animals on earth, there’s no reason not to believe that such a small quantity iocane powder could have killed a man of Vizzini’s stature.
Westley had already won the battle of wits before it had begun, and was simply stalling for time until the poison took it’s effect.
All quotes from the script accessed from this site: [X]
This is, in all likelihood, the most important post I’ve ever made on this blue-bordered website.
holy shit.
Has anyone asked William Goldman about this?
I showed this post to my husband, and this was his assessment:
Watch it again. I just noticed something. “It’s odorless, tasteless, DISSOLVES INSTANTLY IN LIQUID. “It’s a two-stage bomb. A binary explosive. He sniffs the vial, and now he has HALF of what will kill him sitting in the back of his throat. Westley doesn’t put anything into either glass of wine and simply waits for Vizzini to dissolve the powdered poison by drinking the wine. Westley’s not stalling, he’s waiting for the inevitable. It doesn’t matter how long it takes Vizzini to come to a conclusion. The moment that the wine hits the poison, he is toast.
