For me, The Princess Bride isn't about Buttercup and Westley. Does that surprise you? It's about little Billy, struggling through pneumonia and having a story read to him by his father, and their finally forging a connection. It's little Billy taking that experience, realising that he truly loved stories, and growing up to write and create his own. As an adult, he tries to use that original story to forge a relationship with his own son, and then with his grandson. The story that's being shared is the one about Buttercup and Westley, and I don't want to give the wrong impression; that story is told in full. But in-between that story, in the imaginary 'boring bits' that first the fictitious Goldman senior and then the semi-fictitious William Goldman cut out, is this story, about how we relate to stories, how we love them, and how we share them with others.
The movie then, isn't a remake of the book. It's a different version, a different grandfather sharing the same story with his grandson. You can almost view it as a sequel to the book, another story about how we interact with stories.
I first read the book fifteen years ago, shortly after the 30th anniversary edition was released. That edition has more than the original book, in an odd blend of fiction and reality. While William Goldman is real, his father isn't Florinese, and he doesn't have a son. Nor is Stephen King Florinese...but the story about casting Kathy Bates in Misery and her asking if she could tell her mom is true. And so is all the little trivia about getting the movie made, and the rehearsals. Like Mandy Patinkin slapping Andre the Giant across the face and saying "faster, Fezzik!", or the director recording all of Andre's lines for him verbatim, so he could try to lose his French accent before filming. I feel like William Goldman is really interested in showing the man behind the curtain, especially in light of his work, Adventures in the Screentrade.
There's also a little more to the Princess Bride story, including a little bit more about Inigo Montoya's past and the time he found true love, but gave it up because he was still in the middle of his revenge quest. I love Inigo's story, and I'm sad that Domingo's part is so cut down in the movie.
I feel the same way about Peter Pan, though for different reasons. Some of the movies do have the events of book in full...but they still fail to get across the darker, sadder undercurrent of children being "young and cruel and heartless". Peter doesn't know how to care about anyone else. Every single woman in the book is in love with him, and he doesn't comprehend it at all, but that's more to it than that. He forgets Hook and Tinkerbell and even Wendy for a while. He 'thins out' the Lost Boys when they get too numerous; for Peter, nothing has consequences and nothing really matters, and there's a certain horror in that that I've never really seen in the movies. Lost Boy by Christina Henry takes it and runs with it, in a way that really works (though, I don't really recommend Alice and Red Queen by the same author in the same way; they're less about finding what was originally in the story and bringing it out, and more "how can I make every single element a metaphor for rape and/or torture?").
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