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Kit Roberts
The writer behind the new most-watched movie on Netflix has opened up about the meaning behind the film.
Netflix's new movie has offered a fairytale with a twist, beginning where a lot of other fairytales end - with a marriage to a prince.
In a more traditional fairytale setting you might expect this to be the story's conclusion, but not in this case.
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If you hadn't guessed yet, the movie is Damsel, starring Millie Bobby Brown in the title role.
Needless to say, there will be spoilers for the movie in this article.
Everything starts off as you might expect, with a prince, princess, and a dragon.
Princess Elodie, played by Brown, is engaged to Prince Henry. But during a ceremony in the wedding she is thrown into a chasm over the lair of a dragon which had attacked the kingdom.
You might have expected a fairytale ending, but the film quickly takes a turn into something more like Greek mythology, famous for being not full of horrible things at all.
Sacrificing a princess to a monster is not a new trope, like Andromeda being rescued by Perseus after she is chained to rocks and left to be devoured by a sea monster.
But in Netflix's retelling, there's no need for a Perseus to come and rescue Elodie, who has to make her way out of the dragon's lair.
Once again, spoiler alert.
By the end of the film, Elodie manages to get the dragon on side and they team up to overthrow the people who put her there in the first place.
Writer Dan Mazeau has explained some of the meaning behind this twist in the story.
He told Screen Rant: "They have a new relationship. I don’t think they’re necessarily partners in any way, shape or form, but they’re no longer dragon and damsel. It’s an open question what their relationship is going to be."
Mazeau added: "They’ve surpassed what their relationship was, this antagonistic situation that they were both thrust into, essentially. And now, for the first time, Elodie is free in a way that she never has been before, and the dragon is free in a way that it never has been before.
"They both have an opportunity to chart their own course."
Brown has also offered her take on the character.
She told Netflix: “She’s a damsel who doesn’t need to be saved. She saves herself in many ways. It subverts what you expect: You’re expecting the prince to turn around and save her, and… no. Don’t wait for the prince.”
Damsel is available to stream on Netflix now.