[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is a podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. And in this episode, I wanted to give a review of the new Netflix streamed film, "Damsel," starring Millie Bobby Brown, and then widening that out into discussion of these fairy tale type heroines that are becoming, I guess, the new cliche of films. Anyway, so just first of all, starting with the film. So it's obviously a streamed film. So it's supposed to be a family film. I watched it feeling a bit under the weather, as you can hear from my voice. And I found it thoroughly entertaining. But I was also thinking how some of the things they're saying in the promotion for this film, like on the posters, it says, this is not a fairy tale. Actually, we have seen quite a lot of what's happening in this film already. So it's as though there's a new shorthand for this is the right kind of fairy tale heroine. So no longer do we have a sort of Buttercup style heroine from "The Princess Bride." We have LOD, the girl who picks up her father's sword, literally, and becomes the hero. Very much a hero rather than the old traditional heroine, waiting for the hero to come and rescue her. It's written by a man called Dan Mazzo and directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. That did make me think about a film which is all about women's empowerment. I wondered where the female voices were at the very top, other than Millie Bobby Brown herself. So that was just a little question I had for the filmmakers. Maybe there were layers below that with more women present. But I did wonder if it's almost a shorthand now for a more feminist flavored film. OK, yeah, we must do this. And don't actually look at who's behind the camera. That was one question I had. But also, when I was talking about the new cliches, they do abound. So basically, all the male characters are terrible. Everyone, everybody. I'm trying to think of a redeeming male character. No, even the dragon turns out to be a female dragon. So yeah, so there's that. And I do think that poor old men do need positive role models as well. The other cliche that's in it is how her dress kind of breaks apart. So gradually, she gets dressed up to be married. And this isn't a plot spoiler because it's in the trailer, is cast into a ravine to be killed by the dragon. And gradually, as she fights for survival, her dress gets more and more broken down till it becomes a sort of Baudisier style armor and short skirt thing. Or Roman gladiator, maybe. So I've seen that before in other films. There is plenty of them. One area where I'm thinking of it is I've seen it in Pirates of the Caribbean, where the sort of heavy costume gets kind of taken away. But I'm sure you can think of your own cliche in that area. And another place where I've seen the cutting of the hair, which is another move she makes to make her weaponry. Yeah, so the cutting of the hair, I've seen that in Tangled, which was a reimagining of Rapunzel, the animated film from quite a few years ago now. So yeah, it's packed full of the new cliches of the feminist take on a fairy tale, but oddly written by what, from the names suggest, men. And starring, obviously, one of the best young actors of her generation. But it is enjoyable. So there's me griping away. I don't want you to go away thinking, let's not bother. I actually think it's predictable but enjoyable. And looking at how it's been received on Rotten Tomatoes, it's got just over 57% positive reviews. But the audience approval, as is often the case, is up at 72%. So yeah, popcorn movie stuff, it certainly works. And also just thinking about it in terms of what does it do differently? I think there are several things here which I wanted to say, well done. That was great to the filmmakers. One is, I think it's got some beautiful cinematography and striking images. So we obviously take a while to meet the dragon. You don't want to spoil your best, most vicious monster right at the beginning. And there's a moment where the dragon's arrival is heralded by burning bats. And it was hauntingly, morbidly beautiful with these bats that have been caught fire, flying through the cave. And I thought that was very good. The other thing I really appreciated about it was that the injuries hurt. So early on, there's quite a lot of Millie Bobby Brown very convincingly looks as though she's both bruised and battered, but also burned. And that is often missing from fantasy films. That it's all about sword fighting and maybe a sort of artistic cut on the cheek or something. She looked really hurt. And that was great. And it didn't just get forgotten by the next scene. It stayed with her. And it felt, in that sense, more realistic and less fairy tale. So I thought that was a really good innovation. And there were some very nice things about the way the script was constructed, which I don't want to spoil here. But there were some small details, for example, glow worms, which then have several points where they come into having more meaning. I love this because I've just been to New Zealand and seen some glow worm caves. So it was lovely to find that the filmmakers were using the idea of glow worms in the cave in such interesting ways. Amazing creatures. So yeah, The Damsel, a really good family film. A little bit scary, so not for the very, very young. For example, quite shockingly, one of the-- a poor white horse gets fried. So if you've got sensitive children at home, probably best just to skip that bit or prepare them for it. No animals were really hurt in the making of this film. But I thought that, yeah, it's not bad. However, I think there are a few things that widen us out here in this fairy tale world of the new kind of heroines. It kind of sets itself up as saying this-- there are no damsels in this movie. But of course, there is. Her sister becomes a damsel in distress. So there is a little bit of damseling, if that's the word, in this story. But also, it's not new, is it? And that got me to thinking about when did we start to have princesses-- I suppose, because she's a princess-- who are not victims. And so I think this has been around since at least the first Star Wars, with Princess Leia turning out to be the most competent of the three in the dream team, plus Chewbacca, and her running a rebellion. So already, she started that pattern. And I think that if you go forward, we've got plenty now of heroines of-- basically, it's women who make decisions and actually drive the action. That's what we're looking at. And so we've got heroines like Wonder Woman. We've got Katniss in The Hunger Games. We've got reworkings of fairy tales, like Snow White and the Huntsman. So it isn't particularly new what they're doing in this film. It's almost more shocking now to choose to make a film where the princess is the damsel. That's probably going to be the rebound, isn't it, where that happens. And what is going on here? I think it's-- actually, people have forgotten the origins of a lot of these fairy tales. Because when you read the original fairy tales that underlie our understanding of fairy tales, very often, spoken fairy tales, the heroine is active. They are taking decisions. They are standing up against oppression, in the case of Cinderella. They are going to grandmother's house on their own, Red Riding Hood. So they're not sitting in a castle waiting to be rescued. I remember when I watched Shrek, they had a lot of fun with that idea that in some way, Princess Fiona needs a rescue. But it turns out that actually her solution isn't being a princess. It's turning back into an ogre. So we've been actually riffing on this idea for some time. And I think maybe that this idea that heroines are passive is more of a Victorian and 20th century idea, particularly the sort of Disney films of the kind of the sleeping beauty sort, which is the most passive heroine you can imagine. And so White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Cinderella in that one, so the sort of dainty lady stuff, was probably more an accretion later on, rather than something from the original source material. So when people go about rewriting the damsel, it might be they're actually not creating something new, but going back to something that was already there at the root of a fairy tale. So looking at the poster for damsel, I will take issue. This is not a fairy tale. Yes, it is a fairy tale. But it is a fairy tale of the sort that we had forgotten existed because we had followed a Disneyfication of the role of the female heroes in these stories. So that's my little review of Damsel. Yeah, rainy day or when you're feeling a bit under the weather, not a bad film. Yeah, so it is worth watching. Some of the locations look terribly CGI'd, but the caves in particular, where most of the film take place, actually are convincing. There's some fantastic places in the cave, and it's well set out where they're going. So there's a crystal sort of passageway she has to climb up, which I loved. It felt hard. It felt sharp. It felt dangerous. So yeah, I really enjoyed that side of it. Less impressed by the castles outside. They all look like something from a computer game. But I guess that's kind of the way things go these days. I found where she came from, this sort of northern kingdom, was much more convincing of its harshness. Could have preferred to stay there, really, rather than this impossibly beautiful, iconic castle thing, which, yeah, it didn't feel real. But anyway, I would think not a bad thing to watch. But don't go in expecting to find your world shaking. So that was Myth Makers Review. Thank you very much for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast, brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe, wherever you find your favourite podcasts worldwide. [MUSIC PLAYING]