Book to Film (The Princess Bride)

This week for the Book to Film topic I decided to watch The Princess Bride. My friend gave me the book in seventh grade and I remember reading it and really liking it even though I found it pretty weird. I never watched the movie, so I figured I might as well watch it now since I liked the story. The movie starts off with a boy complaining over his grandpa reading him a book that the grandpa claims to be amazing and full of action. As the grandpa starts off reading the book that begins with a sappy love story, the boy cringes in disgust, but the grandpa insists that the story gets better. The movie then plunges into the storyline as Buttercup is captured during her engagement to the prince and the mysterious man in black fights battles of fencing, strength, and brains to get to Buttercup. It is pretty obvious that the man in black is Wesley, Buttercups previous lover who believes to be dead. However, Buttercup cannot see this until she pushes him off the side of the hill. The story continues even as Buttercup is returned to the prince and Wesley is taken to the torture chamber (without the knowledge of Buttercup). As it becomes obvious to the audience that the prince is evil and plans to murder Buttercup on the night of their wedding, dramatic irony is created as Buttercup does not realize the prince's plans. As Inigo and Fezzik save Wesley to help with Inigo's revenge plot for his father, Wesley finally saves the princess from both her own suicide and the prince and they all escape to live happily ever after. This movie used a lot of long landscape shots to show characters escaping on horseback and the vastness of the landscape, close up shots to show details of certain characters, such as Wesley's eyes so he would be recognizable as the man in black, as well as extreme low shots to make certain characters appear more powerful, such as when Inigo asks his sword to guide him to his fathers killer. The theme in this movie was man v. man, as almost every character spent most of the movie fighting or searching to fight someone else in order to get something in return, whether it be vengeance or true love. I liked how the movie wasn't just the story of Buttercup and Wesley but instead also included the plot of the grandpa and grandson as it added to the depth of the movie and captured, at least to me, what its like to read a book you . My favorite part of the movie was definitely the dialogue, especially as Wesley and Inigo fought while maintaining a full conversation and complimenting each other, and as Inigo finally fought the man who killed his father while repeating the phrase he had been practicing for so long. The dialogue throughout the movie added humor and made the movie more interesting and not just a sappy love story. Overall, I found The Princess Bride very entertaining and would give it an 8 out of 10.