The Princess Bride by William Goldman

A Slightly Spoilery First Read but Kind of Reread Review

I have been a fan of The Princess Bride since I was about 12. It really is the perfect movie for a fantasy obsessed 12 year old. Had I known at the time that the movie was an adaptation, I definitely would have read The Princess Bride a lot sooner. That said, I’m also not a fan of wading through tacked-on introductions… so I just didn’t. Well, the 30th anniversary intro, I didn’t. The 25 anniversary intro was actually fun to read and contextualized the abridged bit of the book. I really wish Kindle had a “skip intro” button. Lol. I also did not read the Buttercup’s Baby portion at the end of the book. The rest of The Princess Bride was fantastic, though.

I was surprised how much of the book was just plopped into the movie, actually. I’m used to my adaptations being straight up bad or cutting whole swaths of the book to fit the movie’s runtime and/or revised story. There were a lot more similarities between The Princess Bride book and movie than there are differences.

The big difference I noticed was the Death Zoo Humperdink apparently had. I’m not surprised at its exclusion from the movie, really. It was largely unnecessary, in my opinion. After all, we didn’t see Humperdink actually do any of the supposed hunting he was so good at. Literally could have just had the level Westley was kept on and left it at that.

I enjoyed getting backstory on both Inigo and Fezzik. I’m largely unsurprised we got nothing on Vizzini. He shall forever remain the man felled by Iocane Powder and little else. My absolute favorite part of both book and movie is, like, 99% unchanged between them. I could hear Billy Crystal and Carol Kane’s voices in my head as I read the Miracle Max scene. It was prefect.

I’m really not sure there’s much else to say that’s not my gushing about how much I loved both book and movie. It’s interesting to do this adaptation thing backward. I’ve got several series in my backlog that I’m basically doing the same with, but I doubt any will come anywhere close to The Princess Bride. Definitely give these a read and a watch if you’ve somehow missed them. They’re fantastic.

Favorite Line

"The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys." - Buttercup

In Other News

Currently Reading: Midnight's Daughter by Karen Chance and Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish by John Hargove

Currently Watching: Motherland and Project Runway