The Princess (2022)
Starring: Joey King, Veronica Ngo, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, Ed Stoppard, Alex Reid, Katelyn Rose Downey, Kristofer Komiyasu
Director: Le-Van Kiet
Action Director: Kefi Abrikh, Younes Boutinane, Jean-Adrian Espiasse, Radoslav Parvanov
Glib summary: Pixar’s Brave by way of The Raid.
Things aren’t going well for the “Kingdom.” The King (Ed Stoppard, of “Knightfall” and “Europe’s Last Warrior Kings”) has not had a male heir. His oldest daughter, known only as “The Princess” (Joey King, of The Conjuring and Bullet Train), was betrothed to Julius (Dominic Cooper, of Warcraft and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), a nobleman of good birth. The Princess did not like the idea of her destiny being chosen for her—see Brave—and rejected the marriage in the middle of the ceremony.
You see, she spent her life being trained in the fighting arts by Linh (Veronica Ngo, of Clash and Furies), the niece of the King’s most trusted advisor, Khai (Kristofer Komiyasu, looking like the non-union Mexican equivalent of Hiroyuki Sanada). So, the princess wants to become a knight instead of a Queen Consort with no say in her destiny. Her dad is obviously against this idea, but there isn’t a whole lot he can do about his headstrong daughter.
As it turns out, the ambitious Julius will not take that insult lying down. Moreover, he is a bit of a brute and is not above using force to take the throne. So, he hires a mercenary army, storms the castle during the dead of night, and quickly takes the king hostage. The Princess is locked in a room at the top of the tower and will soon be forced into a marriage with Julius, who plans on murdering her family after he is crowned king. So, the Princess must fight her way down the tower against an entire army of knights and mercenaries in order to save her family and establish her path against the patriarchy…yadda yadda yadda.
That is the entirety of the plot. The backstory is told via flashbacks, as the film starts off with an action scene of the Princess waking up at the top of the tower and fighting off some goons while her hands are shackled—it seems she is skilled enough to temporarily dislocate her wrists in order to slip free from them. From there on out, the film is a succession of fights against common enemies and mini-bosses (eg. a trio of acrobatic thieves, golden-armored knight, hulking guy wearing a horned helmet like Death Adder from “Golden Axe”, and Julius’ whip-wielding lover, Moira [Olga Kurylenko, of Hitman and The November Man]).
The Princess is very much a medieval action flick tailored to what the Critical Drinker refers to as “The Modern Audience.” The general idea behind that is that producers and writers—presumably indoctrinated toward Progressive ideals through college and living in Hollywood—think that audiences “expect” movies, even those set in period, to adopt 21st-century values regarding feminism, sexual orientation, and even gender ideology. As a result, women are often portrayed as physically on the same level as men and quite frequently as always being in the moral right. On the other hand, men are either portrayed as weak and ineffectual (if they are protagonists) or stupid brutes—i.e. “toxic masculinity”—if they are antagonists. These sorts of movies often portray the fantasy world as being ethnically diverse, with no internal logic as to explain the why’s and how’s of these different groups are interacting.
You can check off almost all of these boxes (and more!) for The Princess. The King is a physically weak man and a pushover, while the villain is all for rule by force and fear. Giving the film a bit of a “Brexit” feel, Julius is also an overt racist and literal colonizer: he accuses the King of being unworthy of his post for dealing fairly with other races instead of conquering them. Since “colonizer” has become an insult for people identifying with the Left (or at least the more Progressive wing), the characterizations feel like some Marxist writer vomiting his ideologies on paper instead of writing something that feels period authentic. And then I see that writers Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton are both working on an upcoming Final Fantasy series, so expect more of this in the future.
Much like Brave (and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and probably lots of other films and series), this film is very much against the idea of arranged marriages, despite the fact that the success rates (i.e. divorce rates) are more favorable than that of love marriages. The film does have the Princess question her actions—would her accepting her lot in life saved her a lot of death and drama—only for Linh to assure her “no.” That is funny coming from a character whose name and actress are both Vietnamese. I know that arranged marriages in Vietnam were still being practiced as recent as the late 1970s. So there’s an anachronism for you. But the film ends with everybody being enlightened with 20th/21st century ideals: no more arranged marriages, women can have the career they wish, etc.
Now, history and legend are full of powerful women, warrior queens, and females who pull the strings (even if they must create strings with their own pubic hairs). In the earliest annals of British history and legend, you have Queen Gwendolen, who ruled Cornwall and Loegria after killing her ex-husband in battle. You have Messalina, the Roman empress, who exercised all sorts of power thanks to (according to historians) wanton use of her sexuality. Queen Boudica famously led her tribe in a historic revolt against the Roman Empire. And don’t forget Artemisia, who was an excellent military strategist during the Persian invasion of Greece. So, having the Princess be a powerful woman is not unheard of, but I can’t believe that one powerful woman could ever completely overthrow an entire cultural paradigm overnight, as this film would have us believe.
Speaking of “overthrowing,” as this is an action movie, let’s talk about the action. I mentioned the Critical Drinker in a preceding paragraph. Both him and many of his Open Bar guests—and subscribers—are very gung ho in their criticism of Hollywood making “girlboss” movies that place women on equal physical footing with males. This isn’t to say that women shouldn’t fight men in action movies, but a traditional mano-y-mano throwdown is something they cannot suspend their disbelief on. In their view, if a woman must fight a man (especially one who is ostensibly physically superior to her), then she should best him using her agility, strategy and trickery, as opposed to pure brute force.
The thing is, I have been weaned on martial arts films from a young age. The internal logic on those films is that a sufficiently-trained woman can throw down with men. Moreover, China/Hong Kong has been making movies about wuxia heroines from almost the earliest days of filmmaking in East Asia. And even when martial arts cinema entered the “modern age” in, one of the first “modern” martial arts films was Come Drink with Me, which starred a female: Cheng Pei-Pei. The 1970s was filled with high-kicking heroines, like Angela Mao, Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng, Kara Hui, Chia Ling, Doris Lung, and more! And then you have the Girls n’ Guns era, starring the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan, Moon Lee, Yukari Oshima, Sharon Yeung, etc. And all those films were full of women who threw down with men who were physically their superior. So, I have long been able to suspend my disbelief on that front, even if my contemporaries cannot.
So, the fight scenes were staged by Kefi Abrikh, best known for working with Veronica Ngo on both Furie and Furies. Joining him on the choreography front is Bulgarian fight choreographer and stuntman Radoslav Parvanov, who has an extensive résumé in Hollywood (especially those that film in Eastern Europe for budget and tax reasons). The action is a bit odd. The fact that the Princess learns the fighting arts under Linh’s tutelage assumes that she will be trained in Asian martial arts. But the fight sequences themselves are more of your typical medieval swordplay variety, with a few sweeps and jump kicks thrown in for good measure. So it’s like making a movie where the hero is given a Shaolin manual, only to find out that it was written by Johannes Liechtenauer. The exception is Veronica Ngo, who gets to fight with a katana and a pair of curved knives that she can join into a Cicada’s wing broadsword. The film needed more action from her.
Going back to the debate on how fights between men and women should play out in order to be realistic, the film sort of jumps back and forth between what I would call the “Girlboss” approach and something that the Critical Drinker would approve of. In the first half, the Princess’s first encounters are very much the sort of battle where she is at a definite physical advantage and can only win through a mixture of agility and improvisation. This goes especially goes for fight with faux-Death Adder. The fight with the Golden Knight also plays her agility, cleverness and willingness to use trickery to her advantage also demonstrates that. The fights in the second half step over the line and place her on equal physical footing with her opponents, even when they outnumber her. So, that may anger those who prefer “realism” when it comes to fight sequences. That said, I like how the fights are often filmed from the side, giving the action a video game feel. As someone who grew up on hack ‘n slash games, the framing of the fight sequences in that way made the little kid in me happy.
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| This review is part of Fighting Female February 2025 |
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