Damsel Is Not The Clever Fairy Tale You Want It To Be

Theres a prince and a princess. Theres a wedding. And, of course, theres a fire-breathing dragon, but Damsel is not your average fairy tale, and the movie makes it impossible to forget that fact. 

Netflixs newest original movie opens with a black screen and a voiceover. There are many stories of chivalry where the heroic knight saves the damsel in distress. This is not one of them, says the films protagonist, Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown). 

In Damsel, the insistence that what makes this movie unique is that Elodie is a woman who must save herself is so heavy-handed that it feels patronizing. Its also unsurprising that this flat female-centered screenplay was written by a man, Dan Mazeua, because it lacks the depth of female experience, of what it means to be a princess, stepmother, queen or dragon. 

When the screen fills with color, there are pounding hoofbeats in a grassy field, a dragons shadow in the sky, and a red-faced king screaming, Lets kill the beast! as he leads a rage-filled charge toward the mountain caves. Inside the lair, it quickly becomes clear they have no chance of survival when the dragon spews fire, and a group of men melt in the waves of flame. The few remaining knights are captured and killed when the beasts tentacle-like tail whips them into the stone walls. Standing alone and faced with his own demise, the king kneels before the shadow-covered dragon. 

The opening scene is gruesome and dark and seemingly simple a kingdom fighting to protect itself against a vicious dragon and it sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which picks up centuries later in a faraway land. 

In a cold, barren, stump-filled countryside, Elodie is talking to her younger sister Floria (Brooke Carter) and chopping whatever wood she can find for her people to use as kindling. A gilded carriage appears on the road behind them, and the mysterious, red-robed visitor sets the plot in motion with an offer of marriage to a prince in a faraway kingdom. At her fathers urging and to save her freezing and starving people, Elodie dutifully agrees to the match. She travels to the lush kingdom of Aurea where she fulfills her obligation to marry the prince. 

After the wedding, Elodie is tossed into the dragons lair as a ritual sacrifice for the kingdoms ancient debt, the one Aurea has owed since its king first knelt before the beast centuries earlier. The movie hinges upon this subversion, on the idea that a damsel will be in distress and that a prince not only isnt going to save her, but also is the very reason shes in danger. 

This point is obvious from the opening voiceover, and it is reiterated through an undermining of both traditional and modern symbols. While Elodie seems like a classic damsel with a heart as caring as Cinderellas and the wanderlust of Ariel and Belle and Rapunzel, her marriage isnt going to lead to a traditional happy ending where prince and princess escape the harsh realities of life to live happily ever after. Instead, Elodies prince carries her over a rose-petal covered threshold, so he can throw her to her death (by dragon).

These subversions arent subtle, and, when combined with a point of view that is focalized almost entirely through Elodies eyes (and captured with a lot of close lens camera shots), it undermines the very complexities that the film wants to create. 

This shortfall is most evident in the poor development of the secondary characters. The casting choices encourage viewers to question stereotypes. Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone) is Elodies harsh father. The warm and wonderful Angela Bassett is the not-wicked stepmother Lady Bayford. Robin Wright, the same actress who played iconic damsel Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride, is the manipulative and merciless Queen Isabelle. As her son, Prince Henry, played by Nick Robinson, appears as likable as the other love interests hes played in young adult romcoms such as Love, Simon and Everything, Everything. Rounding out the cast, Shohreh Aghdashloo gives the dragons voice depth and emotion. 

However, instead of adding complexity, these characters fall flat under the weight of Elodies storyline. They shouldnt feel one-dimensional because the cast is talented, and the duty that each of these characters struggle to carry should engender sympathy and elicit questions about how they are subverting their own tropes: caring father, vapid stepmother, benevolent queen, savior prince and evil dragon. For example, Prince Henrys internal struggle between the duty he feels to his people and the guilt he feels for deceiving and harming princesses like Elodie is hinted at through his facial expressions and the few lines of dialogue hes given, but his character, like the others, could be so much more interesting. 

Instead, too much of the movie is spent in the gritty caves with Elodie as she tries to escape and outsmart a shockingly sentient dragon determined to kill her. If you want to watch Millie Bobby Brown in an action-packed film as she runs and climbs through dark caves while making various facial expressions of horror and deconstructing her Swiss-Army-knife-esque wedding dress to create survival tools, then Damsel is the movie for you. 

However, if youre expecting a clever fairy tale being reimagined through a feminist lens, Id look elsewhere. 

Women deserve to be more than their tropes, and having a damsel save herself from a dragon doesnt do enough to reimagine the traditional fairy tale narrative.