“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
– Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya) in The Princess Bride
While living in Honolulu in 2012, the Consolidated Theaters in Ward Entertainment Center hosted a Throwback Thursday event where they showcased a classic film each Thursday night. One week was Jaws, and another was Pulp Fiction, and so on. As you might imagine, I was curious which film they would show next. An opportunity to see a movie in the theater I never had the chance to see when it originally premiered was an opportunity I welcomed. Every month, the theater unveiled its schedule for each Throwback Thursday, but I was rarely motivated by the selections. It’s not that those they showcased didn’t deserve the “throwback attention.” Of course, each film did!
Several months into the event, the theater announced a movie I was eager to see. The scheduled film included themes of true love, inconceivable moments, fire swamps, miracles, pirates, and revenge. The Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorite films. Sure, I have spoken of nostalgic films and use these terms liberally, but while countless movies have provided me joy, there is no film like The Princess Bride. But it premiered when I was too young, so I never saw it in a theater, only on VHS. When I asked my wife if she would join me to see The Princess Bride, she said, “sure, I have never seen it anyhow.”
In shock I quickly bought tickets and remedied one of the biggest surprises of our relationship. My wife had never seen The Princess Bride. Somehow, I had missed this terrible truth. At the beautiful theater in Honolulu, I finally watched a beloved film on a screen far larger than my family’s television of 19 inches in the early ‘90s. So, let me rewind the VHS, press start over on my Disney+ account, and scan your ticket to a conversation about a movie that made masks cool, rotten miracles acceptable, and other narrated films bend the knee. We are “stormin’ da” castle… The Princess Bride.
The Wicked Traveled Historian 