The 1980s were an age of surplus in terms of just about everything. From the music and clothes to the explosions on screen, the 1980s were a clear example of excess, of wealth of ideas and resources, and nowhere was it more obvious than in the movie industry.
From teen films to comedies to blockbuster action extravaganzas, the 1980s movie industry, led by directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Richard Donner and more, brought a combination style of ‘throwback’ + innovation to many of their films. Movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones directly imitated and updated sci-fi and adventure serials from Spielberg and George Lucas’s youth, whereas films like Joe Dante’s Gremlins poked fun at ‘50s B-Movie horror movies. John Carpenter’s The Thing provided an updated look at a classic monster flick, and his The Fog called back to plenty older ghost stories, while making something new of his own. Although the 1980s was a period of exploration in film, with new genres being pioneered and explored in different directions, part of that exploration included looking backward and experimenting with previously existing genres, with the up and coming generation of ‘Movie Brat’ directors choosing to play with elements they’d grown up knowing and loving themselves.
That extended to the fantasy genre.
From the pulpy style of the Low Fantasy Conan the Barbarian films to the magical feeling of movies like Labyrinth or Willow, the 1980s theaters experienced a major boom in terms of fantasy films, experiencing varying levels of success. From Excalibur to Legend, these new fantasy films took risks with special effects, methods of storytelling, and styles of characters (although lots of them became known as Cliche Storms). These movies utilized unique spins on fairy-tale stories and legends, updating and modernizing aspects of them and either making them darker, or finding new ways to acknowledge the fantastical elements of the story.
Most interesting is that, in the 1980s, the fantasy genre didn’t have a whole lot of history to draw from.
Unlike the B-Sci-Fi flicks from the ‘50s or the Creature Features, or even the adventure serials that would go on to spark Indiana Jones, there wasn’t a lot of previous canon in the fantasy genre. Films like The Wizard of Oz, which were landmarks in the genre, didn’t have a whole lot of obvious influence on the sword-and-sorcery films that came afterwards.
Now, you may be asking why all of this matters. Or why any of it matters, in fact.
Here’s the thing: no film is an island. Every movie, (some more than others) is directly influenced by the culture it exists in, and the pool of resources that have come before it, especially in the cases of the films directly designed to emulate genres or specific movies that have already been made.
And that certainly seems to have been the case, at least partially, as far as The Princess Bride is concerned.
Despite being released in the 1980s, with the original book by William Goldman written in 1973, The Princess Bride doesn’t wholly read like it’s contemporaries in the fantasy genre. If you watch it alongside the likes of Ladyhawke, Labyrinth, and Legend, you’ll find that more about the film stands out other than not following my alliterative pattern.
In many of the other fairy-tale-esque stories populating Hollywood during this decade, the characters talk and act very much like they are in a very grand story. There is gravity to the situation and most of the characters, (exception being some of the creatures in Labyrinth) and the story is typically an epic one.
The Princess Bride, on the other hand, manages to avoid this tone and story structure, by including a very traditional fairy-tale plot: save the princess from the evil prince, but by going about it using styles more typical of a different era entirely.
Rather than using the fantasy, action, or even adventure styles traditionally used by the 1980s, The Princess Bride utilized something a little earlier: the swashbuckling style of the 1930s.
Due to the way that the story and characters are written (with a sharp, sly, tongue-in-cheek edge), The Princess Bride cannot be played as a straight fantasy film (check out the Genre article to hear more), and while it does retain plenty of the 1980s charm about it, it also uses the fast-dialogue and witty humor found in stories like The Adventures of Robin Hood and other swashbuckler stories from that decade of adventure films. Watching the fencing match between Inigo Montoya and Westley is eerily similar to many such fight scenes in older action-adventure movies, and listening to the dialogue during this and other sequences, the humorous tone with dry, quick wit, is also an echo of older screwball-style dialogue.
Whether this was intentional or not, the fact is, this makes The Princess Bride’s style very fresh and new in the middle of the fantasy boom of the 1980s. It also had a very interesting side effect:
It made The Princess Bride ‘timeless’.
The idea of something being ‘timeless’ is an interesting topic in the film world.
The word ‘timeless’ is best defined as ‘not affected by the passage of time or changes
in fashion’. It carries the implication that, applied to film, a ‘timeless’ movie would be one totally understandable and relatable years after the culture has changed. Carried further, the ideal ‘timeless’ movie would be one with no cultural identity of its own, completely orphaned from the original context that the story originated in. In other words, this is a story that can be enjoyed no matter how much time has passed. Typically, this word gets applied to period stories, sci-fi films, or fantasies: stories not set in the contemporary time period.
In direct contrast, of course, the word ‘dated’ is simply used to apply to anything created in a discernible time period. This word typically carries the connotation of ‘old-fashioned’. This word’s connotation is that, (applied to film) a ‘dated’ film is one that is less understandable by those looking from outside that particular culture or time period. This would be a film that hasn’t ‘aged well’, most often describing contemporary films of the day.
So, here’s the thing.
These definitions, while technically correct, are far more complex than this in the film world.
By the dictionary definition, no film is truly timeless. Every film is a product of the times they were created in, because people who lived in those times created them. Every movie, every piece of media are products of the times they are from, but they are not defined by them. A film is not ‘dated’ because it shows the culture, or the technology of its time, or uses that technology when trying to create the world of the movie itself. A movie is not dated because it uses puppets instead of CGI.
As I mentioned, a film is considered ‘dated’ in a true sense if it is less understandable or enjoyable in hindsight, from a place outside of that specific culture. Less easily overlooked are ideas, and here’s what truly does date a movie.
It really doesn’t matter if a film is made in the ‘70s and set in the far future, or made in the ‘50s and set in the distant past, because quite frankly, the movie is still being made in that decade. As a result, even period films end up carrying the thumbprint of the contemporary ideas of the people who made it. Indiana Jones is best remembered as an ‘80s style action hero because although his films are set in the 1930s and made in the style of adventure serials from that time period, the style of action and characterization was very current, in order to update the genre.
The ideas and thematic core of a film, how certain topics and characters are treated and viewed, both in universe and in the narrative, can be what truly dates a film, even if it has none of the recognizable trimmings like a tie-dye shirt, and here’s where we can tread into good vs. bad territory: because while in some cases, the ideas can be pleasantly positive, in others, the opinions presented by the filmmakers can be rather uncomfortable to modern audiences.
So, all of this is to lead us to an important question:
Is The Princess Bride timeless, or at least, as timeless as movies can get?
Well, some would argue no.
A glaring problem with modern movie-goers is the character of Buttercup, who, as I mentioned in the ‘Characters’ article, really doesn’t do much apart from getting passed-around, fought over and protected. Admittedly, especially to a generation used to Princess Leias, Marion Ravenwoods, and even Lilis, Buttercup seems largely useless, relegating the only woman of the film (aside from Valerie, Miracle Max’s wife) to a plot device, an object without much personality.
To a lot of moviegoers, this is pretty blatantly bad representation: there are two named women in the movie, and one of them has less than five minutes of screen time, and the other essentially exists as nothing other than the title of the film. The film also employs a distinctly monochrome cast, another element that can lead to people pointing to a different era of Hollywood, one that didn’t tend to focus on that kind of representation, or in the case of Buttercup, borderline problematic representation.
There are other moments of issues: Westley’s line about ‘there are penalties when a woman lies’ and his berating her for ‘moving on’ and getting married when she’d long thought him dead might rub modern moviegoers the wrong way.
In the end, though, is this…a problem? A detriment to enjoyment of the movie as a whole? Do these elements actively work against the movie in a modern environment?
Well…yes and no.
It is true that now, films are making an active step towards more diverse representation, and that is certainly a good thing. Many movies now are also including more female characters with stronger characters than the distressed plot-devices of old. Heck, even other movies of the 1980s were instituting more ethnic diversity and female characters with more agency in films like Aliens, Baby Boom, The Color Purple and Willow.
Looking back, it can be easy to wince at those moments in The Princess Bride and make the assumption that the film was just being outdated because of when it was made, or due to the ‘fantasy’ period, or even because it’s deliberately utilizing story elements from 1930s films, but in the end, those elements don’t actively hurt the narrative.
Female characters don’t have to be sword-wielders like Sorsha from Willow, or Silk-Hiding-Steel like Isabeau from Ladyhawke. Princesses don’t have to always take over their own rescues. In the end, there’s more support for female characters in the variety offered by the 1980s rather than the eradication of any weak female characters whatsoever, because as it turns out, some women are weak, just as some are strong. (It would have been nice if the weak character wasn’t the only female one, though.)
Is The Princess Bride progressive? Well, no, not really, but it’s not regressive, either. It doesn’t actively serve as detriment to the film to notice these things, not in the same way that other movies experience backlash for outright sexist and racist content. As it stands, The Princess Bride is an excellent movie that manages to stand the test of time because it is so ridiculously fairy-tale-esque. As I said before, the old-fashioned story and dialogue paired with the budget and technology of a 1980s film (except for the ROUS, which is charmingly unbelievable) manages to create something similar to George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy: a film that is as removed from its cultural context as a piece of media can be (aside from the Grandson’s bedroom decor).
It is potentially largely this element, this aspect of borderline ‘timelessness’ that has allowed The Princess Bride to stand as a forgotten, overlooked classic for over thirty years. That, combined with the genuine warmth, humor, and passion of the film itself, will allow it to continue to stand for far longer, as long as we keep telling our children fairy-tales.
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Twentieth Century Fun With Film 