Damsel

A young princess from a small, impoverished kingdom agrees to marry a handsome prince from a rich and powerful kingdom, only to immediately discover following the ceremony—when her brand new husband throws her down a pit into a massive cavern where a fire-breathing dragon waits—that it’s all a trap, and she must rely on her wits if she hopes to survive.

Elodie isn’t your typical kind of princess. She isn’t a dainty lady, doing dainty lady things, she’s a wood-chopping, galloping-horse-riding, “I love the commoners” kind of princess. She and her younger sister, the delicate little flower Floria, are princesses in a remote kingdom out on the tundra. It’s a kingdom with almost no money, even less food, and whose people are fleeing, all while winter is… well, you know.

But then a Queen’s messenger arrives with a letter.

Good news for the starving smallfolk of the Tundra Kingdom, underneath all that sweat and dirt, Elodie is kinda hot and also of a marriable age, and because of this, the queen’s letter suggests that Elodie journey to the rich and powerful kingdom, so that she can marry the Queen’s son, the handsome prince. Of course, once that happens, the Tundra Kingdom will receive a handsome dowry too, so Elodie agrees, because she is all about duty, especially when it comes to helping out the smallfolk.

Unfortunately, despite the Queen’s warm welcome, and how nice the handsome prince seems to be, after the wedding, Elodie is taken to a strange ceremony high up the jagged slopes of the forboding mountain that looms over the kingdom. There, she finds the entire royal court waiting, all of them silent, watching, and wearing creepy golden masks. The queen then makes a big show of mixing Elodie’s blood with the Prince’s in the same way that people become blood brothers, and then…

They toss her down a deep pit.

What she finds waiting down there is a holy-shit-look-out, big-ass, fire-breathing, classic fantasy world dragon.

This ancient terror, this most magnificent of calamities, this great and aged beast, with its four legs and two large wings, is most definitely a dragon.

This creature is not to be confused with the familiar Wyvern, which also has wings, but only has two legs, or a Drake, which has four legs, but no wings. Nor should it be confused with the Amphithere, a beast with two wings and no legs, or with the long-bodied Lindwurm, which has two legs and no wings. It also should not be confused with a Wyrm, which has neither legs nor wings, but can still fly somehow, I assume because of magic. It also should not be confused with a Luck Dragon, which has four legs, fur, the face of a dog, and no wings, but can also fly somehow, I assume due to luck, and are also sometimes named Falkor. This illustrious colosus, this august titan should also not be confused with a Komodo dragon, which has four legs, no wings, and is real. Nor should it be confused with a Bearded dragon, which is also real, also has four legs, and also has no wings, and is often kept as pets by goth kids.

It’s definitely a dragon, and it’s definitely going to eat Elodie. But first, much like a housecat in the dead of night with a mouse who managed to find it’s poor doomed way into the house… the dragon is going to chase her around for a bit, y’know… just for funsies.

Eventually, Elodie finds out that the reason she’s down there is because, many years ago, the rich and powerful kingdom did something horrible, and so now, once every generation, they need to sacrifice three girls of royal blood to this dragon. They must do this so that the dragon will continue to slumber deep within the massive cavern of the foreboding mountain that looms over the kingdom, because if they don’t…

The dragon will burn the kingdom to a crisp.

Three girls. Three marriages. Three sacrifices.

Elodie is number two.

The kingdom, rather than sacrifice their own daughters, long ago figured out a loophole. Now, they simply find some low-born noble with a desperate kingdom, and exploit their need. The rich and powerful kingdom swoops in and offers the poor and desperate kingdoms a bunch of money so that they can marry the poor and desperate kingdom’s daughters into the family, all so that they can declare the girls to now be “royal blood” by law, and then, on the happiest day of their life, on the cusp of living a fairy tale dream, they toss those poor girls down to the waiting dragon.

This is why the kingdom is so rich and powerful, because it was built upon the bones and ash of the poor and the desperate, and a line of young naive girls, who dared to dream of love, stretching back for hundreds of years…

(Psst… It’s a metaphor.)

The rest of the film is basically Die Hard, with the mountain as Nakatomi Plaza, the dragon as Hans Gruber, and Elodie as John McClane. It’s fun. It’s silly. It’s basically a nice little bit of fluff about how, much like in our own world, the young are forced to pay for the sins of the previous generations’ cowardice, greed, and brutality, and how, much like in our own world, the old ways are unsustainable and cruel, and if Elodie wants to survive, then she must find a new way.

And there’s really only one other option…

The commoners get to survive, and the rich and powerful need to be brought down, along with their whole world. Much like in our own world, the time has come for the ruling class to be consumed in flame, writhing, their skins cracking and turning black, to become screaming, flailing torches, burning conflagrations, sacrifices to their awful gods, the column of smoke from their deaths blotting out the very sun, as their bones crumble to ember and ash, and the horrible and harmful systems they built to serve them collapse in fire.

Much like in our own world, the only answer is to burn it all down.

So, that was cool at least.

Fun and light, with a nice little message, Damsel is a good time that won’t leave much of an impression.

Well, not that much of an impression, except that I couldn’t help but notice that there sure is an awful lot of “bare feet” stuff going on in this film…

I see you, Mr. Director, Mr. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, coming for Tarantino’s crown…