Damsels in distress is a trope almost as old tropes themselves. From Lois Lane to Deainaria and beyond, there are so many examples. So many tales focus on helpless women needing to be saved by dashing male heroes…. “Damsel” is not one of those stories.
No, this story focuses on Princess Elodie, the daughter of Lord Bayford ruler of an unnamed land. You see her land is in dire straits of the economic variety, so out of desperation, Bayford has promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to Prince Henry, the charming young son of Queen Isabelle of Aurea in return for economic salvation. Elodie hits it off immediately with Henry, the queen seems easily able and more than willing to bail Elodie’s kingdom out of the economic gutter and it all seems perfect. Until Henry casts his bride of barely a few hours down a deep chasm and the dragon starts talking. Now Elodie is faced with insurmountable odds, in addition to needing to find a way out of the dark deep chasm she has been cast into. Now she has to find a way to survive the large hungry, pissed-off dragon. In order to do that she will have to draw onto all of her inner strength and intelligence, and along the way she’ll discover a royal conspiracy as well as the source of the dragon’s vendetta against her. But if she can survive against all odds maybe just maybe she’ll have not just her own revenge but justice for every woman Isabelle has fed to the dragon.
Starring in the film is Millie Bobby Brown of “Stranger Things” fame as Elodie, Ray Winstone known for roles in films such as “Snow White and The Huntsman” and “Black Widow” stars as her father the gruff but good, natured Lord Bayford. Angela Bassett known for appearing in films like “Black Panther” and “Gunpowder Milkshake” plays the role of Lady Bayford Elodie’s stepmother. Nick Robinson known for roles in such works as “Jurassic World” and “The 5th Wave” appears as the duplicitous Prince Henry. Robin Wright known for being in such films as “Forrest Gump,” “The Princess Bride,” “Wonder Woman” and “Blade Runner 2049” plays the part of the evil Queen Isabelle, and Shohreh Aghdashloo is known for having roles in the likes of “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” “24” and the “Mass Effect” trilogy voices the dragon.
Now as for this movie. My feelings are mixed. It’s not bad by any stretch, it’s entertaining, Elodie isn’t unlikable and the action is great making an adequate movie. But that’s the thing, the movie is just that, adequate. Elodie for example is likable I guess. It’s hard to tell considering we don’t know all that much about her as a character beyond her loving her father and wanting to help her kingdom. She’s as cookie-cutter as they come, she’s a cookie cutter made of cookies being cut by another cookie cutter. And the dragon, what to say about her? For starters the reason I simply keep calling her the dragon isn’t because I forgot her name. It’s because the movie never gave her one. Which is weird because midway through the film they make a push to try to humanize her, to get the audience to sympathize with her which is a little hard when they don’t even bother to name her. I mean even Smaug from the works of J.R.R. Tolkien had a name and he was a bad guy! Why they didn’t think to name the character they were trying to humanize is beyond me. I mean even if they wanted Elodie to nickname her Scales or something like that, that would have been something. But no, she’s just the dragon. Other parts of the film don’t exactly add up either. Isabelle’s plan is faulty at best making the fact that it has supposedly been working for a very long time strange, they can’t decide what they want Henry to be as he literally throws Elodie down the chasm with barely a second thought. Then they almost try to make the audience sympathize with him, see him as not that bad of a guy but then do nothing with that, the poster markets it as something new – literally. The poster states: “This is not a fairytale” and it’s like of course. I can see that, it’s also not some grim dark fresh new take, it’s cookie-cutter to the point of being predictable. Isabelle, despite the fact that she’s supposed to be some kind of scheming tyrant, stands and allows Elodie to lecture her and shows her true nature to Lady Bayford. It’s just flat characters which we’ve seen a trillion times before at this point and a plot which on paper has a lot of promise but completely face plants on execution and it’s frustrating. This movie is so very frustrating. Frustrating, but not bad, I give it four and a half torches out of 10. It’s not as good as it seems to think that it is, as it fails to capitalize on its premise, Elodie makes Rey Skywalker look like Buffy Summers by comparison and despite Brown’s best efforts she just can’t save the character. That’s another thing I will say, the actors, namely Brown, did the best with what they got but there’s only so much they could do. Even if you pour water on a flaming script it’s still gonna be burned beyond recognition. But as stated it is still a component movie, far from the worst film I’ve seen and if you’re looking for a good popcorn flick you can definitely do worse.
