The Princess review: a different, bloodier kind of princess wedding fantasy

Fairy-tale conventions dictate that a princess in distress will likely get rescued by a dashing man — except in more modern cases, where she might instead smack the man she once wanted to marry, get rescued by an ogre, start a fashion empire, or any of the many contemporary iterations that subvert the damsel-in-distress trope.

Live-action movie about martial arts The Princess could easily just be another story about one more headstrong princess who doesn’t want to wait around to be rescued. Its fairy-tale tropes could make it look like a Disney film from a distance — and the fact that Disney acquired it, and is releasing it on Disney Plus outside the U.S., doesn’t dispel that impression. But it’s actually a 20th Century Studios title, an R-rated killer-combat film that lets the unnamed princess at its center do serious, bloody damage. Le-Van Kiet is an action director. The PrincessPlays into genre subversions well-known, but sees them through for a satisfying result.

[Ed. note: This review contains some slight setup spoilers for The Princess.]

Image: 20th Century Studios

The PrincessIt begins with Joey King (the titular princess) awakening handcuffed to the top of the tall tower. There she takes out her guards. A series of flashbacks reveal that she was supposed to enter an arranged marriage, but left her would-be groom, Julius (Dominic Cooper, a recurring MCU player as Tony Stark’s father, Howard), at the altar. Julius took the royal family hostage and forced the princess to wed him in order to take the throne. But he doesn’t realize the princess has trained in hand-to-hand combat since early childhood. With her family being held at sword-point, it’s up to the princess to fight her way down the tower and rescue them.

Julius wants the throne, but why? He feels the current monarch is weak. When he is able to seize control of the throne, why does he require the princess to be his bride? Because the royal family doesn’t have any sons, and this is the sort of generic fantasy kingdom that requires a male heir from the monarchy’s bloodline and can’t even consider options that might give women more agency. In one of the flashbacks, the princess marches into the throne room, interrupting her father’s plans to marry her off, and begs to be trained as a knight instead. He’s horrified and disgusted at the thought of his daughter fighting. It feels more mature than the original. Brave’s Merida shooting fer her own hand.

These flashbacks and the motivations that they present for the hero and the antagonist are the most vulnerable parts. The Princess — It’s a simple and uninteresting plot point that is cleverly and inexplicably inserted. Thankfully, they’re just a small part of the overall experience, which focuses more extensively on sick fight sequences. The sometimes gory violence the princess visits on her captors is so extensive that Julius and his lackeys spend much of the movie assuming there’s a vigilante guard in their midst. They’re surprised to find out that no, it was the princess all along! Although their shock at the thought of a woman fighting alongside a man seems a little excessive, the brutality she displays in her fairy tale story makes it all the more powerful.

Image: 20th Century Studios

It’s intrinsically satisfying to see a fantasy princess in a ripped, bloody wedding dress, stabbing the men who seek to control her. Princesses and other wealthy women shedding their constraining dresses and corsets for more battle-ready looks isn’t new: See again, Merida’s dress bursting at the seams as she readies her bow, Elizabeth trading her gowns for more practical fighting attire in Pirates of the Caribbean, or more recently, Grace battling her predatory new in-laws in Ready or not.

Because princesses tend to get stuffed into the family-friendly category of movies, it is rare that they are able to look like real action heroines. In this case, the princess does — and it rules. Kiet doesn’t hold back from brutality, as the princess hacks, bashes, and burns her way through her enemies. She doesn’t hesitate to plunge her sword into her assailants, and she doesn’t mull over whether killing makes her just as bad as her captors. She’s on a mission to save her family, and she’s allowed to be completely ruthless to get there. And while she certainly struggles, the movie doesn’t weirdly glorify her pain or show it in excruciating detail, unlike so many other action titles centered on women.

The side characters — particularly the princess’s enigmatic trainer, Linh (Veronica Ngo, star of Kiet’s terrific 2019 film Furie), and Julius’ right-hand woman, Moira (Olga Kurylenko) — are far more interesting than the main players. Linh is a formidable warrior, a foreigner whose trainer and uncle is one of the king’s advisors. But because this isn’t her story, we never find out anything more about her past, how she got so skilled, or how she and her uncle came to a land where the king (Ed Stoppard) is the only thing standing between them and the xenophobic locals.

Simon Varsano/20th Century Studios. Photo.

Similarly, Moira, a whip-slinging femme fatale, is a sharp and capable combatant who is romantically entangled with Julius, but can’t be with him if he wants to further his political ambitions. Both of those characters are worlds more nuanced and interesting than the headstrong princess who doesn’t want an arranged marriage, but they’re relegated to background roles.

Then again, the headstrong princess who doesn’t want an arranged marriage is a genre staple, and The Princess This finally gives the princess her full emotional release, allowing them to stab their enemies and throw them out of windows. Every other princess version has been restrained in comparison. This is likely due to the fact that the films were trying for family-friendly ratings. However, every version of the trope was able to go on a brutal rampage. Shrek’s Fiona split-kick the Merry Men so the star of The Princess could slice someone’s head off. This story is very simple and most of the characters are just generic archetypes. This is a story that seems like it’s been done before — but not to the glorious bloody extent that The Princess indulges.

The Princess Hulu now streams the show, as well as Disney Plus in non-U.S. countries.