He’s a poor, simple farm kid, and we know just enough about him to feel sorry when he is apparently killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Still, what little we do see of him doesn’t seem to indicate any piracy tendencies, or even much in ‘adventurer’. He isn’t given much screen time, or much personality, for that matter: we know very little about him besides the fact that he is very much in love with Buttercup, and demonstrates it with the phrase ‘as you wish’. When we first meet Westley, when he’s first described at the very beginning of the story, he is a simple Farm-boy, a traditional fantasy-figure. Starting with the duality of the character.įor all of The Princess Bride’s straightforward fairy-tale nature, there’s actually a fair amount of subversion and deception on the part of many characters, and Westley is no exception. Much like Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood, Westley possesses an incredible audacity and humor that allows him to fence with focus and a quick-quip for each strike.Īll of this makes Westley an engaging character to watch, but there are a few elements about his character that actually allow him to delve a little deeper than a simple surface swashbuckler. Westley is intelligent, cool-as-ice, and formidable, but above all, he’s also dedicated to the love of his life, and funny to boot. Cary Elwes portrayed the hero of The Princess Bride as dashing in an old-fashioned, ‘30s movie-serial kind of way with a wit sharper than his sword. (Elwes would actually go on to play a parody of Flynn’s Robin Hood in the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993.) He’s the Ace, stronger than the film’s giant, more skilled than the Spanish swordsman, and more intelligent than the leader of the band of kidnappers who dared to abduct his true love. There’s little of the Luke Skywalker ‘white knight’ to be found in the character of Westley, rather, he actually fits the bill of a different kind of fantasy hero: the swashbuckler.Ĭary Elwes’s portrayal of Westley actually has a lot more in common with Errol Flynn’s performance as Robin Hood from The Adventure of Robin Hood in 1938, as well as a healthy dash of various portrayals of the character of Zorro. Westley doesn’t quite fit the mold of your typical ‘fantasy hero’ right off the bat: he’s no knight in shining armor, that’s for sure. Today, we’re going to be taking a look at these traditional fantasy characters, starting, of course, with our Hero: Westley. Instead of subverting these tropes or twisting them in some way, The Princess Bride embraces the simple ideas that these characters are founded upon, and proceeds to use the tropes as a playground, fully using the fantasy archetypes to craft a story that somehow manages to keep these ‘blank slate’ characters fresh, interesting, and unique, despite their clear fairy-tale blueprint. The Princess Bride seems to delight in its use of traditional fantasy archetypes: the damsel, the evil prince, the hero, the wizard, true love, etc. Ladyhawke told the story not as a fairy-tale, but as normal people trapped under a fairy-tale curse.Īt first glance, it seems like The Princess Bride didn’t do either, and instead, did what seems like one of the worst ideas: played it straight. The Wizard of Oz managed it by infusing a few twists, such as a protagonist from the ‘real world’. While not impossible, the fact is, it’s very tricky to make your characters true fantasy generic ‘archetypes’ and still create genuinely interesting characters. In most fairy tales, there really isn’t a lot of variety or development built into the characters involved, since the characters more or less exist to give the audience someone to root for, someone to root against, and, most importantly: to move the plot forward. By focusing your emphasis on what the characters are doing, instead of who they are, you remove the main thrust of most stories: character growth, and turn it into something else: good vs. When the story you’re writing is focused less on the characters and more on the plot, you can run the risk of making your audience not care about the characters themselves. From a scriptwriting perspective, or indeed, a writing perspective in general, this is a terrible idea. In most legends and fairy tales, characters aren’t really people, they’re archetypes, designed to be described in one word so that the audience understands immediately everything they need to about the character: the Knight, the Princess, the Dragon: clearly divided into ‘good vs. The Princess Bride: The Characters, Part 1: Introduction, Westley, and ButtercupĪs easy as it might seem, as it turns out, writing a fairy-tale for the screen can be rather challenging, especially in terms of what might seem to be the ‘easiest’ part: the characters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |