As You Wish: Remem­ber­ing The Princess Bride at 30

In his mem­oir ​‘As You Wish: Incon­ceiv­able Tales from the Mak­ing of The Princess Bride’, actor Cary Elwes dis­cuss­es the suc­cess of the film, writ­ing ​“like a good wine with­out iocane pow­der, it seems to get bet­ter with age.” Despite ini­tial­ly being regard­ed as an unmar­ketable movie with mod­est com­mer­cial prospects (it took a lit­tle over $200k from its lim­it­ed open­ing week­end), the film, which cel­e­brates its 30^th birth­day this month, has been gain­ing fans across the globe ever since, pass­ing from view­er to view­er like a pre­cious heirloom.

Pub­lished in 1973 with a screen­play draft­ed the fol­low­ing year, William Goldman’s epic tale of romance and adven­ture was writ­ten for his young daugh­ters and is pep­pered with tongue-in-cheek ref­er­ences for old­er mem­bers of his fam­i­ly to enjoy, includ­ing nam­ing the ancient Mir­a­cle Max and his wife Valerie after his own par­ents. Per­haps the main rea­son why The Princess Bride is now con­sid­ered a fam­i­ly clas­sic is that it was writ­ten with fam­i­lies in mind.

That famil­ial con­nec­tion was there before the cam­eras began rolling. Fol­low­ing failed attempts from the likes of Nor­man Jew­i­son and François Truf­faut, it was Rob Rein­er who even­tu­al­ly seized the chance to adapt the book, which he had been intro­duced to by his father. Rein­er adored Goldman’s sto­ry, and in order to do it jus­tice he drew from his own recent body of work, mar­ry­ing the sub­ver­sive­ness of This Is Spinal Tap with the smart, sin­cere romance of The Sure Thing and the youth­ful vigour of Stand by Me. The director’s strong affin­i­ty for the source mate­r­i­al clear­ly trans­lat­ed to the pro­duc­tion, as many of the cast and crew – includ­ing Robin Wright, com­pos­er Mark Knopfler and pro­duc­tion design­er Nor­man Gar­wood – have cit­ed The Princess Bride as their most cher­ished work.

A decade before The Princess Bride’s release, a dif­fer­ent kind of fam­i­ly friend­ly cin­e­ma had start­ed to emerge. Films like Bugsy Mal­one and Escape to Witch Moun­tain, and lat­er The Goonies, Labyrinth and Return to Oz, took young audi­ences on more per­ilous adven­tures, pluck­ing them from the safe­ty of Disney’s nurs­ery into the Big Bad World beyond, where every­thing got a lit­tle more seri­ous – and a whole lot more exciting.

Described by Gold­man as a sto­ry in which ​“she gets kid­napped, he gets killed, but it all turns out okay”, The Princess Bride’s bril­liant satire comes from tak­ing adult themes and fram­ing them in a fun, child­ish con­text, as the char­ac­ters’ var­i­ous quests all play on very real, uni­ver­sal hopes and fears: the death of a par­ent, the desire to be accept­ed, and, ulti­mate­ly, the pur­suit of true love.

In Goldman’s world, both good and bad sides have great strengths, and are sep­a­rat­ed only by love: those who feel it, and those who don’t. West­ley (Elwes) and Buttercup’s (Wright) mis­sion sees them chal­lenge Prince Humperdinck (Chris Saran­don), who pur­sues sta­tus and pow­er with the same cun­ning that allows him to track a fal­con on a cloudy day. Fezzik (Andre the Giant) uses his con­sid­er­able stature and strength in the name of loy­al­ty and broth­er­hood, while Vizzi­ni (Wal­lace Shawn) uses his intel­lect to bul­ly and war­mon­ger. And with the most excit­ing mis­sion of all, Ini­go Mon­toya (Mandy Patinkin) is dri­ven by an unwa­ver­ing and rev­er­en­tial love for his mur­dered father, bring­ing him face-to-face with his killer, the unspeak­ably wicked Count Tyrone Rugen (Christo­pher Guest).

Rugen’s even­tu­al death – a mas­ter­ful scene filled with gen­uine rage from Patinkin, who lost his real father a few years ear­li­er – feels like the van­quish­ing of evil by the forces of good. The scene was soft­ened for the screen, as in the book Ini­go cuts his enemy’s heart out, just as had been done to him fig­u­ra­tive­ly. Even the unnamed grand­son to whom the sto­ry if being told goes on a jour­ney of his own, peel­ing off lay­ers of pre­teen pes­simism with every turn of the page.

Like the most endur­ing fairy tales before it, The Princess Bride is an epic moral fable blan­ket­ed by well-man­nered sword fights and choco­late-cov­ered mir­a­cles, sneak­i­ly teach­ing glee­ful chil­dren some­thing new, and remind­ing adults of what they might have for­got­ten along the way. While the char­ac­ters them­selves nev­er change, the film allows us to step into their respec­tive roles, first as the sick­ly grand­kid, being cared for and kept safe, then as West­ley and But­ter­cup seek­ing out true love, then Ini­go mourn­ing the loss of a par­ent, and final­ly the Grand­fa­ther, shar­ing the sto­ry all over again.

The Princess Bride is, as Rob Rein­er has said, ​“a cel­e­bra­tion of sto­ry­telling”, and an endur­ing reminder that love is fun­ny and mag­i­cal and tri­umphant. A reminder we all need, every once in a while, no mat­ter how much we grow up.