The Princess Bride (film): Difference between revisions

* [[Cuffs Off, Rub Wrists]]: Buttercup after being untied.

* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: During the [[Storming the Castle]] sequence, four palace guards charge our heroes. [[Badass Spaniard|Inigo]] kills them in five. seconds. flat. Without ever taking his eyes off [[The Dragon|Count Rugen]].

* [[Derailed for Details]]: The kid in the [[Framing Device]], occasionally. Sometimes asking to skip romance scenes or [[Get On With It Already]].

* [[Determinator]]: Inigo in his fight with Count Rugen. Stabbed repeatedly and still keeps coming. He '''will''' avenge his father’s death.

* [[Double Take]]

* [[The Dreaded]]: The Dread Pirate Roberts.

** The [[Evil Genius]]: Vizzini

** [[The Dark Chick]]: Inigo Montoya

* [[Flynning]]: The duel on the Cliffs of Insanity in the film is basically an homage. The screenplay explicitly says they’re Flynning as they have nothing personal driving their duel and are trying to have fun with someone who can fight as well as they can.

* [[Fractured Fairy Tale]]: Interruptions in between and the occasional [[Rodents of Unusual Size]].

* [[Framing Device]] / [[Separate Scene Storytelling]]: The kid and the grandpa, and the main scenes of the movie.

* [[Genre Savvy]]: The entire story.

** A particularly good example from the film:

'''Inigo:''' I will not budge. Keep your ''[[Precision F-Strike|joder]]''. }}

* [[Give Me a Sign]]: While holding the sword his late father made, Inigo asks his father’s spirit to guide his sword and lead him to Westley. Then he closes his eyes while holding the sword out in front of him, and ultimately {{spoiler|sticks it into a tree}}. Feeling let down and probably foolish, Inigo slumps down onto the tree. {{spoiler|And then it opens up…}}

* [[The Good King]]: Unfortunately one so doddery that [[The Evil Prince]] is reigning for him.

* [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]]:

** Inigo has Good Scars.

** And Count Rugen gets Evil Scars! For bonus points they’re exactly the same wounds he’s inflicted on Inigo, from cheeks to gut. {{spoiler|(And then he dies ten seconds later)}}.

* [[Hair of Gold]]: Both Buttercup and Westley.

* [[Happily Ever After]]

* [[He Will Come for Me]]: No less than three Will Come For Me moments.

** A variation while Buttercup is held prisoner by the Man in Black.

{{quote|'''Valerie''': Liar! Liar! LIIIAAAAAR!}}

* [[Heroic Second Wind]]: Inigo isn’t going down that easily.

* [[Home, Sweet Home]]: Westley wants to settle down with Buttercup.

* [[I Am Not Left-Handed]]: The Chatty Duel is the [[Trope Namer]].

* [[I Don't Pay You to Think]]: Vizzini tells Fezzik “You were not hired for your brains!”

* [[Ignoring by Singing]]: Miracle Max’s response when his wife provokes him by reminding him of his treatment by Prince Humperdinck.

* [[The Igor]]: The Albino.

** Subverted: He starts speaking in a typical “Igor voice,” then coughs and continues speaking in a perfectly normal voice.

* [[Incendiary Exponent]]: Fezzik during the storming of the castle.

* [[Indecisive Medium]]: The film is about reading a book.

** Humperdinck! Humperdinck! Humperdinck!

** Also, Count Rugen: “Stop ''saying'' that!”

* [[No Time to Explain]]: “Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

* [[Only a Flesh Wound]]: In his final battle with Count Rugen, Inigo twice deflects sword thrusts into his shoulder and yet seems to show no visible effect from it.

* [[Only Mostly Dead]]: [[Trope Namer]]. After Humperdinck kills Westley, his friends take him to Miracle Max, who diagnoses him as “only mostly dead” and thus a candidate for revival.

* [[Our Hero Is Dead]]: {{spoiler|Well, it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.}}

* [[Out-Gambitted]]: Go ahead and go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line {{spoiler|if you are immune to a poison you are using}}.

* [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]: It took {{spoiler|“[[As You Wish]]”}} to realize it?!

* [[Passing the Torch]]: Suggested in the film that Inigo will take Westley’s place {{spoiler|as the Dread Pirate Roberts.}}

* [[Person with the Clothing]]: The Man in Black.

* [[Pet Rat]]: The goons hired by Prince Humperdinck whose job is to clear out the Thieves Quarter. Not to mention Vizzini and his crew.

* [[Pistol-Whipping]]: Sword whipping, actually.

* [[Plot-Powered Stamina]]: Fezzik’s arms never get tired.

* [[Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo]]: Part of Vizzini’s [[Batman Gambit]] that revolves around the aforementioned [[I Know You Know I Know]].

* [[Pragmatic Adaptation]]: Interesting case since the author himself adapted it to a screenplay. The book had far more characters (who were usually only important to one other character) who had great lines transplanted on to movie characters. (“Life hurts. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.” was said by Fezzik’s mother to her son in the book, not Westley to Buttercup.) However, William Goldman has a long and storied career as a Hollywood screenwriter, so he is better suited than most writers to adapt his work. In particular, it seems like he had a [[Fridge Logic]] moment near the end that he added into the screenplay — presumably Buttercup didn’t say “I do” in the book either, but Westley doesn’t think of that, instead just saying basically “Well, that’s okay, you won’t be married to him [[Murder the Hypotenuse|very long]].”

** The extraordinarily complicated stack of frame stories and unreliable narrations in the book, all focused on the reader-writer relationship (S. Morgenstern’s novel — in Florinese and in translation; the version Goldman remembers his grandfather telling him; Goldman’s opinionated summaries of sections he’s “cut”; the unflattering fictional “Goldman” narrating the outer layer, complete with unflattering family life; commentary by his copy-editor and an eminent Morgenstern scholar; the supposed ‘real’ history of Florin and Guilder, and of course the actual book) is slimmed down to one simple frame story, removing practically all the postmodernism and satire, for the movie. Hilariously, the fictionalized Goldman discusses and complains, in the book’s introduction, about the restrictions imposed by executives when adapting books for Hollywood; the real Goldman clearly knew exactly what he was going to have to do for the movie adaptation ''when he wrote the book''.

* [[Prince Charmless]]: And {{spoiler|Murderous!}}

* [[Psycho for Hire]]: Count Rugen

* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: Inigo and Fezzik.

{{quote|'''Inigo:''' I work for Vizzini to pay the bills. There’s not a lot of money in revenge.}}

* [[Punch-Punch-Punch Uh-Oh]]

* [[Quicksand Sucks]]: In the cave with the ROUS.

* [[Rags to Royalty]]: Buttercup.

* [["Reading Is Cool" Aesop]]

* [[Red Right Hand]]: It has six fingers.

* [[The Slow Walk]]: Inigo during his final duel with Count Rugen. Justified because he was seriously injured at the time.

* [[So Beautiful It's a Curse]]: Buttercup. Her beauty is enough to get her promoted to future queen, except the Prince threatens to kill her if she refuses. And {{spoiler|he’s planning to kill her anyway}}. In fact, if she were slightly less beautiful, the whole conflict wouldn’t have happened.

* [[So What Do We Do Now?]]: {{spoiler|Inigo gets his revenge, but he spent all his adult life in pursuit of it. What should he do? Fortunately Westley passes on the mantle of The Dread Pirate Roberts to him.}}

* [[Sparing the Aces]]: The Man in Black would no sooner kill a genius than shatter a stained glass window.

* [[Stealth Pun]]: At the end of the movie, when Inigo wonders what to do with his life: