The Princess MacGuffin

The Princess Bride is a much better silly medieval buddy/caper movie if you fast-forward through all scenes containing Buttercup.

It's not just that the movie badly fails the Bechdel test. It’s that the sole woman character is not a person but a treasure to be heisted, first by kidnappers and then by rescuers. She hardly gets to say anything, other than the line about Westley. She is unfortunately not a character. She's a MacGuffin.

By fast-forwarding, you’ll avoid most of the weird dated misogyny, too. I am not sure why we all need to sit through the diatribes about her “purity” delivered by multiple people throughout the movie - including her supposed true love, who feels authorized to administer a vicious loyalty test before rewarding her with his identity. It's no great loss if we skip over his immortal line, “Where I come from, there are penalties when a woman lies,” which he delivers with his hand raised to hit her.

#theprincessbride #macguffin #robinwright