Netflix's DAMSEL - An Exemplar of Terrible Writing 

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The whole premise makes no sense. Why wouldn't they just kidnap or lure in women nobody would miss, clean them up, put some royal blood on them, and throw them to the dragon? This whole wedding production is counterproductive.

How were NONE of the villagers suspicious about why the Prince kept getting married, and all of his wives mysteriously disappeared after the wedding?

I thought it was bizarre how they seemed to be suggesting that the problem WASN'T that the dragon was murdering innocent women, but that she was murdering the WRONG innocent women.

You know, if companies want to write a feminist anti-fantasy movie, why don't they just make a male knight a damsel in distress who's saved by a random village girl? That'd be way more interesting

"Anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo" -Knuckles the echidna

I love how the movie ends with our kindhearted heroic Elodie becoming friends with a psychopathic dragon to literally burn innocent people alive. I love being represented like that.

One aspect I can applaud the movie for is by writing the Stepmother sympathetically, and not making her a clichéd Evil Stepparent. She was suspicious of the queen, and tried to warn Elodie. Though, it was a little distracting that Elodie kept addressing her as "Stepmother", rather than her actual name.

> Explicitly declares it will subvert the damsel in distress trope. > Has the protag constantly saved by forces beyond her control. Genius!!

A true subversion of the tropes would've been the damsel and a heroic knight working together to defeat a smart manipulative dragon.

"Who was this made for" you say? Shareholders. With Netflix the answer is always shareholders.

Also would like to add my own inconsistency: Why would the dragon even bother with the whole "3 royal princesses per generation because you guys took my 3 children away from me and... symbolism." when it would have just been easier and more immediately gratifying to burn the entire kingdom from the start. This whole plot point the entire movie is based on is crumbly at best. Like... seriously.

Love how so many terrible movies and TV shows nowadays are basically worse versions of previous successful stories Damsel is basically a worse Shrek

Shrek did the subvert damsel in distress trope better because Shrek has good writing

I’m still confused about the ending. Was the dragon going to live with Elodie and her family? That’s pretty generous to a monster that killed your father.

finding glowing worms in a cave that instantly heals the wounds. Basicly the fantasy version of finding the random first aid kit in a Tomb Raider game.

Also when Elodie found slugs that heal wounds, the slugs healed her leg, but not the cut on her hand, which later on she showed to a dragon. Bruh

Oh right, this one. My mom threw this on because "oh, you like fantasy stuff!" I called every single "twist", and my eyes glazed over the entire time.

Tbh for me, her wearing eyeliner, while living in the middle ages, completely negates whatever attempts at feminism this movie was making. She's been living in a cave for a while, being chased by a dragon, and it's not even smudged? Come on 🙄

Damsels in distress are basically subverted about as many times as they're played straight at this point. So it feels like this film is acting like it's making a totally new spin on this story when they're several decades too late!

The big thing I noticed from your plot summary is the film is clearly trying for a whole 'cycle of violence' arc where healing the dragon shows that some humans are good, actually. However, razing the entire kingdom straight after undermines the whole thing.

The only two times I have been surprised by the subversion of "Damsel in Distress" is in Mulan and Shrek. One because it was an actual showing of the character's intelligence and growth throughout the story, and the other is because it suddenly happened

_If you are inspired by a good story, there’s always the danger of plagiarism, of doing something that is too much like that good story. Whereas, a genuinely helpful reaction to a piece of work that you’re reading is, "Jesus Christ, I could write this shit!"_ *Alan Moore*

Let's praise DAMSEL for making mistake so that we don't have to

"What course shall we steer?" "Home." ............. "WOMAN I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE HELL YOU LIVE?!"

This sounds like a worse version of the 80’s fantasy movie Dragonslayer where a bunch of people fed girls to a dragon, but there it makes more sense because there wasn’t any royal blood nonsense, the girls were chosen by a lottery and the whole kingdom was aware of and in on it.

This story reminds me a bit of that folk tale wherein an infertile queen is told to eat one of two flowers: one will make her carry a boy, the other a girl. However, she changes her mind and eats both flowers which causes her to give birth to a dragon. The dragon then demands to marry princesses, but eats each of them during the wedding night until one of his brides tricks him. That would have made for a far better movie.

So the dragon somehow didn't survive its own fire when, just minutes before, it was lighting up the sky it was flying into? How the heck did these seven-year-olds get a position with the writing team and who in their right mind green lit this confusing mess

I believe Alan Moore talked about how it's just as important to read and learn from terribly written stories, as it is to read and learn from well written ones. Because the terrible ones can teach you all the things not to do and which missteps to avoid, and even learn from mistakes we may not even realise that we're making in our own writing.

"This stuff happens in real life." I do remember that time where I was nearly blasted by dragonfire, only to have the fiery beast momentarily distracted by the sound of a nearby ice cream truck, which afforded me the opportunity to make it inside my garage. Damn dragons are really ruining my neighborhood.

I hate that woman have to cut off their hair to be powerful. Why can we not be femenine AND powerful?

Would it really have killed them to have Elodie WANT to get married to a prince? Her town seems very poor so maybe Elodie had to learn skills like horse riding and do stuff like chopping wood not because she wanted to but because she had to, because she is the oldest child of the leader of the town and maybe she was being prepared to lead the town so she needed to earn the respect of the citizens so they would obey her despite her being a woman. And maybe, just maybe, she would like to find a husband to share the burden with, someone that she doesn't need to prove herself to, maybe she was looking for a husband that would accept somebody like her who didn't have a typical female upbringing, the royal family was saying they were gonna give money to the town, wouldn't it make elodie at least curious to find out what type of person the prince is? I think that if she genuinely wanted that marriage, if she wanted somebody to stay by her side trhough thick and thin, it would have made the betrayal all that more heartbreaking.

Me after seeing Damsel, please God don't ever let Netflix make a live action adaptation of Dragonlance. Just give it to a Japanese or South Korean animation studio.

The fact that this dragon was fooled into thinking that all these women were royals by them having the prince's blood pressed against their own/wound for a few seconds/minutes, as if the rest of them/their blood wouldn't still very much smell like themselves/their real family. Heck, main character little sister gets offered up instead after main character escapes, and the dragon keeps her sister alive, cause she can smell that the two are siblings, but she apperently can't smell that they don't have any blood ties to the royal family apart from the small amount of blood from the very "front" of their cut! Also, the only reason she, the independent, I need no man/I'm not like other girls character, was able to get out of the cave, was due to the previous actions, of one of the male characters.

Every fairy tale adaptation thinks it’s the first one to try making a feminist fantasy story

When I heard the voice actor of the dragon for the first time, I was genuinely so disappointed that they were wasted this badly. Sohreh deserves better.

It's so strange to me that a movie so said to be feminist relies on the hysterical woman trope to be correct for the arcs of Elodie and the dragon to make sense (where they're just acting emotionally and erratically, in the dragon's case until physical violence is administered against them), which seems very reductive to women. I liked the characterization of the evil queen, where, despite the obvious answer to the blood feud just being to continually breed and toss your babies down there, she couldn't be bothered and contrived something else to rid her family of the responsibility (even if the method of sourcing sacrificial royals was incomprehensible)

Elodie : your evil for sacrificing all those innocent girls also Elodie : lets burn the entire castle and all its hundreds of innocent servants, then walk away like a boss

Another thing that pisses me off is how she wants to disregard the traditional role of royalty, she is a princess, she has a DUTY to serve her kingdom and choose what is best for her people and that includes political marriages to strenght relations between two kingdoms, a thing her own people obviously need as set up by an early dialogue by the king. But I guess, the safety of her people is not important, it is all "me, me, me".

They could've at least done the hair thing better by having her cut it off to start a fire, instead of two mcguffins of glowing beetles and weirdly flammable rocks. Have her tear of pieces of her dress and wrap it around a stick (more plausible to find in a cave than the bugs), and it would be a decent explanation for a torch and showed that she was resourceful.

Wow this is SUCH an amazing premise with the potential for several twists and it was completely wasted... The Black Phone is a story about a young boy kidnapped by a serial killer who gets help from the ghosts of his previous victims in order to escape and manages to tell this so much better. Imagine how great a story THIS could've been if they'd bothered to do it well.

You know Netflix, anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo

The dragon actually speaking English just makes the movie a little bit ridiculous. Having a dumb and incompetent antagonist adds nothing to the nonsense that we call 'plot'.

Damsel is another example of Netflix making movies with negative charisma. They just thought "fairytale movie" and didn't allow anybody involved, the screenwriter or director to put in a lick of personality. It could have been a Ready Or Not/Shreak type of movie.

The stupidest thing with the plot in this is that the story seems to think i would be justifiable to be killing daughters of the king for generations after just because they were related to the king, at no point does the hero pont out that these people would have been innocent regardless or whether they were royal descents or not. The royals were wrong for sacrificing girls yes but they were only doing this out of fear for themselves or the kingdom it wasn't there choice where as the dragon chose to kill for centuries yet the story suggests this is ok. WTF.

Some simple questions that I would like answers to: Why did they never try to kill the dragon again? That was the whole reason why this mess started, because the old king tried to kill the dragon and killed the babies instead, you know what they say if at first you don't succeed. Get some more soldiers, maybe some dedicated dragon killing weapons, and keep persevering. They could even send out word to any errant knight that would like a handsome reward that there's a dragon bothering the kingdom, so they could try their luck if they wanted. Why did the old king not pack his bags and left with his family and his subjects? Why insist on keeping the kingdom right next to a dragon cave? Location, location, location. Do the blood hand thing with some people who agree to be decoys and most certainly die at the claws of the dragon so the king, his family and his subjects have time to escape. Why not get a trained female soldier, do the blood hand thing with her, and throw her in the cave with a few weapons hidden in her huge cumbersome dress so she can try to kill the dragon? If the first one fails they can just keep doing this for eternity until one succeeds, this wouldn't strain our disbelief that none of the girls thrown in the cave before elodie tried to explain to the dragon that they weren't part of the royal family, cause the soldiers would know what they were getting into.

Each time the writing on the cave wall is shown, I just laugh because all of the handwriting is way too nice to be written realistically by someone facing death 😂. Unless all of them happened to have a piece of chalk on them when they were thrown down, that should look like scribbles. And who the hell takes the time to scratch their name when the dragon could kill them at any moment?! Just that moment alone ruins any immersion.

There are 3 things I find hilarious. 1: It's no longer a fire breathing dragon, its a Lava vomiting dragon. WHO thought this was a good idea? Oh, plot convenience since fire would have completely incinerated our hero while lava slowly incinerates. 2: Just how dumb is everyone? Smell of royalty from a small cut is enough to convince a dragon that said lady is from a royal blood line? The dragon never questions if the ladies are from royal blood line, it just ASSUMES they are? No one questions why the prince gets married every year? Everyone has like 12 IQ. 3: A dragon's hatchlings are killed and it doesn't burn the kingdom down? What? It's just okay with the royal family sacrificing ladies to it? What a great parent.

There is a novelization of the script. While it has a cheesy ending even worse than this one, it makes a bit more sense of the plot. The dragon is looking for the blood of a particular strong female to revive its line. Why human and dragon blood should be compatible aside, it gives the dragon a reason to covet royal blood, no matter the origin. It actually is aware that the victims are bought and taunts Elodie’s father with that knowledge. It talks much more with the heroine so she can piece together the mystery. Elodie does quite more exploring in the caves and has some close calls with the dragon. When she finally climbs out of the mountain only to realize it is a dead end, it is a deserved and impactful moment of despair for her. One criticism that comes up again and again is that the dragon is not fireproof on the outside. I have no problem with this. I have quite aggressive acid in my stomach that i would not fancy on my skin, so it is no big stretch for me to accept that the dragon can spit fire and would require only certain parts inside the mouth and throat to be resistant to fire.

This makes absolutely no sense. Why didn’t the dragon just burn down the entire kingdom to begin with?! That would make a lot more sense than this whole sacrificing thing. Well I guess this movie needs a plot… or does it?

I think Doug Walker of all people said it best when he talked about Enchanted: At this point making a big deal out of subverting cliches just informs people of cliches they didn't even know about before.

I'll just keep rewatching Barbie in the Three Musketeers like god intended

Annoys the shit out of me that they cancel things like Lockwood and co but will pump money into some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard

The moment I first saw snippits of Damsel, I immediately thought to myself “this is one of those straight to streaming AI written movies designed as background noise isn’t it?” (Similar to things like Ghosted) I haven’t seen the movie but I can’t imagine that being too far off from the truth.

To paraphrase YMS: When every performance is bad, that's usually the director.

God, imagine if she WAS the daughter of that royal family. Imagine hundreds of years of a culture where the king had multiple wives for the sole purpose of ensuring he had at least three daughters every ten years to sacrifice. And people just assumed they were becoming, I don't know, Priestesses or Nuns or some shit.

It's a shame because I do think Millie Bobby Brown has potential to be a respected actress, but if she doesn't get a new agent soon, she's going to be thought of as a one hit wonder from Stranger Things. Also, I'm not inherently against a strong female lead in a movie or a TV series. Ripley is still one of my all time favorite protagonists in fiction. The difference between her and someone like Damsel, however, is that Ripley had help from other people (not just men but other women as well) and she had to learn new techniques to deal with the Xeno-morphs, or just to survive. Also, even though she was able to deal with the Xeno-morphs (primarily in the first film), she still had some fear when dealing with them. However, the fear and tension of the film made us root for her even more and made us feel happy when she was able to survive. Yes, Ripley needed help and was scared at times (like anyone would when dealing with those creatures), but it never took anything away from her. She is still considered one of the best characters of all time by many people (men and women) and has become a classic icon in cinema. I would argue that that's one of the main problems with films like Damsel. When you take away any tension and depth with your character (male or female) and just show them being able to do all this stuff with no established reasons as to why or how they do it, you lose any audience that you thought would see your story. If they had shown more of how Damsel was able to do the stuff she did (maybe show her learning to sword fight when she was younger), maybe it would be more credible. Also, don't make it that it was only men trying to hold her down, and that some of the women in her life tried to hold her back as well. Maybe that could've made her more jaded by other people around her and that she had to realize that not all people are like her messed up family? It's tragic that while we are getting stuff like Blue Eye Samurai (which did a much better job explaining how Mizu acts the way she does and felt more genuine with its story) we still get junk like Damsel. I would also argue that films like Damsel and Madame Web are going to make it that no one is going to want to make or see any film or show that has a strong female lead for many years. It's gotten so bad and people are so jaded by all the bad films that any film they see now that has a female lead is automatically going to be woke/SJW garbage, even when they're not. My motto is this. I'm not against movies with strong female leads, I'm against the bad ones.

The signs from previous victims could be great if the story was framed as years of victims fighting to survive and if not survive, help the next one. Show the main character also adding things like 'clean water in this location' 'this hiding spot' and show her sister using them as well to help survive until the main character can get her.

I think this whole story is not well thought out because they were going for a "fairytale/folktale" style. Most folk tales have giant holes in them and can be very contrived. But you know why we don't demand the same level of storytelling from a folktale? BECAUSE IT WAS MADE UP BY A VILLAGE AND COST NO MONEY AND PROBABLY VERY LITTLE TIME TO THINK OF. You can't waste all this money that could've been spent on a better project and then handwave it as "well it's meant to be a fairytale".

Hey CJ. Looking forward to the video. Thank you for making it. Also I am sorry that your lady Baillers review was removed by the Daily Wire. I know some of their defenders will twist themselves into a pretzel to rationalize/ defend this but it is really hilarious how a new organization who preaches about freedom of speech and being against cancel culture; removed CJ’s review. It really shows how hypocritical they are and a lack of self awareness.

Dragon: this is my favourite part; run!” Me: “oh so we’ve established that the dragon is evil and takes pleasure in cruelty. I hope it dies…” 30 minutes later… Me: “wow it killed 3 more people. This dragon is pretty evil…” Protagonist: Let me help the dragon. Me: WHY? Also, the dragon has fire inside itself but can get burnt by its own fire? One of many plot holes…

I think a horror movie where the protagonist has to survive a dragon's den seems like it could've been fun

You know the previous princesse leaving notes on its own is actually a pretty sweet idea it just needs a few tweeks. Like have most of the solid good notes be at the start giving our character some footing in this new situation. However change it by doing 3 things. 1. Have less notes as she moves forward because less girls reach that point to leave a note. As her journey continues have less and less names maybe a few sticking out till they meet ther end. Stuff like Brittney giving a tip on drinking water and latter having another girl leaving a note like "i think Brittney died to this clif i..i see some bones im gona try with my equipment to climb up hopefully i succed and its still ther for you". Make the audience feel the impact of how many girls died carving a path foward make that feel like it means something. 2. Make it so latter on some of the notes are wrong. For instance maybe a map wrong cause ther a cave in or a dead end now has some herbs or food growing in it. We can even have the character comment on how long it takes for these fruits/herbs to mature leaving us the audience going oh....this has been going on for longer then that if the note wrong! Making some of the notes untrustworthy thru no fault of the girls leaving them. This helps with both the stakes and means our MC still has help but she now has to not rely on only the notes slowly coming into her own. 3. Make it so at the end where ther no notes left our MC actually fricken writes some notes herself! Heck as a heroic moment when originally our dragon is busy and she has a clear shot she actually backtracks to fix all the notes that were incorrect in 2. This does 2 things it shows us she isint sure she will survive and that she is in fact heroic herself since she feels indebted to the advice she recived that she now is unknowingly or knowingly sacrificing her chances just in case she fails. (Heck that could be the or one of the reason the dragon starts lissening to her since she's proven she not selfish like that bloodline) Like the idea just needs a few tweaks to be really really good!

This is basically "You 'member Daenerys? You 'member dragons? - The Movie". That scene of her walking across the bridge with the dragon's shadow overhead was pretty much ripped straight out of Game of Thrones. Also, Millie Bobby Brown was an Executive Producer on the film. That pretty much answers every question regarding Elodie's failure as a character. Sad really; I had hopes for her after seeing her in Stranger Things. Instead she's turning out to be just another "attractive* female actress who can't act" like Kristen Stewart. * Personally I feel they both fit the mainstream definition of such. Obviously this is all up to individual interpretation.

As a feminist, I feel insulted and misrepresented by this movie. The premise/original concept and intention of a damsel saving herself and becoming the hero of her own story had so much potential, but the execution was so disappointing. Come on Hollywood, in the words of Falcon/New Captain America: "yOu nEed tO dO bettEr!"

I don't see many people say this so I give the flowers right now. These videos are extremely well put together and I can tell a lot of time and thought was put in them. The editing, wording, humor, and even criticisms are extremely satisfying to listen coming out of his mouth. I don't see many people in the comment section give the praise you deserve so I'll give it to you right now! Much Love and Blessing from ❤Texas!💙

Gathers wonder worms for the dragon but not for her father 😅

The map thing was the worst for me because that means someone got up there, most likely V, went back to the safe spot to draw a map, went back, wrote not safe at the exit, and then died, potentially leading dozens of other girls to danger for no reason

At least you had this on the side when the lady ballers got canned lol, sorry for youtube being a pain with your review

Add a few good jokes and it could have been a brilliant satire of the "Not like other damsels" trope

Is it still a sacrifice if the princess falls and dies on the way down question?

It's honestly a shame, I really want a cool story with one or multiple dragons that does more than just making them a "Final boss" for the main character to kill. I always through it would be cool if they told a story from the dragons perspective or gave them a much deeper motivation other than "It's a dragon, it burns things and takes gold." Currently one one that we have like that is How To Train Your Dragon but that's one series when so many other amazing story's could be told with dragons. For example for this movie, what if the dragon was actually the princes first wife who got cursed and now must feed on human life to avoid becoming a savage beast? Or what if the dragon did the normal Damsel thing of kidnapping the princess but did it for a greater reason? Like using her as a bargaining chip to stop the slaughter of there own kind? There's so many ideas for this one concept alone.

My biggest problem with the film is that it starts from nowhere and ends nowhere. I don't know who Elodie is, I don't know what I was supposed to learn "don't get married to people you don't know...?"

Gotta love how this movie pretends to be fresh with its subversion, forgetting that subverting the damsel in distress cliché itself has become a tired cliché. ...In the early-2000's.

I just want to see a story about a female knight saving a prince from a dragon now, a simpler and more concise story.

This is still a story about a damsel in distress. She just gets rescued by the writer instead of a knight.

If they explained that the main character was secretly an entitled psychopath then her teaming up with dragon in the end to torch that kingdom would be a dark twist.

Darn it! The idea of a dragon the demands blood sacrifices as penance for it’s dead children is such a cool idea! So much could be built up on that! I’m just gonna ‘take inspiration’ from it for myself.

What I wanna know is why didn't the royal family just kill the dragon, it's not like the thing was undefeatable. It got taken down by a solo lady with no real skill (and if they said it's not defeatable and she did it that makes the coincidences even worse) then just releave yourself of the annoyance and don't have to deal with it every generation. One less hassle.

I just watched Hundreds of Beavers and despite how silly the comedy is, the character progression is some of the best I’ve seen in recent memory. Jean Kayak starts out with absolutely nothing, gets put through a gauntlet of miscalculations, mistakes and grievous injuries, only after struggling the entire winter does he end up becoming a master traps-man, strategist and escape artist all under 2 hours. Seriously check out Hundreds Of Beavers, it’s amazing what they were able to pull off on a budget of $150,000

the sad thing is, is that this is a fucking brilliant concept, a story of a princess fighting back against the one who's attacking her but they clearly didn't care.

It might have been fun to see this story from another perspective, perhaps Millie Bobby Brown's character is brought to the castle to be married and it is a legitimate wedding. They will eventually need a new Queen after all. The real twist is that royal family intends for her to take the Queen's place as the one who lures in girls from lower families to be fed to the beast and its up to her to prove whether she has the chops to fill that role. They picked her from her humble origins because they wanted someone who knows the desires of young women of lower standings and now to manipulate them, a perspective the royal family are too detached to understand. She can't run away because her town and her family needs the financial support and she can't fight back or she will be quietly sacrificed and swept under the rug. From there it becomes a survival story about being trapped in this castle with a family that will feed her to the dogs if she doesn't step in line, having to navigate their egos while also trying to come to terms with being part of a system that sacrifices innocent people to retain power. She is essentially a damsel trapped in the grips of a monster but there is no one coming to save her and there is no slaying the monster. What happens when you put a character who is stereotypically pure of heart, selfless and proactive and put her in a situation where she has to become the opposite: passive, corrupt and willing to sacrifce anything and anyone to survive? And ultimately you have to ask is the Queen really evil or is she too trapped in this system where any ounce of good is punished? From there, you can take it in any direction, maybe have her be fed to the dragon only to then rise up and take control or have her settle into that role and end the film years later with her getting ready to find a new Queen in her stead, repeating this awful cycle again. Damsel stories are all about female agency so why not explore that idea through the lens of those women who game the same social structures that ultimately oppress them.

I have a question, how did they not just kill the dragon in the first place? That thing was stabbed through the chest by the protag, a scorpion bolt would wreck it.

My biggest problem was characteristisation of dragon . She didnt have any issue with killing innocents but only with killing wrong type of innocents

But there already is a movie Damsel subverting the trope! It’s 2018 comedy with Robert Pattinson and it is hilarious

The screenwritter gave his script to a writter named skye and dear God this woman turned trash into gold. She gave elodie home a name Inophe with a culture.She made elodie a flawed person who uses her linguist skills to decipher the dragon language and leave clues in case she dies. Skye also explains the kingdom and why the even hold a wedding for the girls. As a way of dealing with guilt well we have to sacrifice them but at least we gave them a awesome wedding. And explains the ghost princess that wlodie sees in the cave. I cant believe how much better the story is just read the book guys.

Bro I didn't even think about the fact that she didnt think to leave any messages or items behind to help the next girl in case she died. That might have actually been a strong character moment for her and a cool moment for the plot.

Plot twist, it's a prequel to Skyrim about how Auduin became such a crybaby because his baby dragons died and it lead to a crappy divorce.

Y'know what would have been an easier solution for the evil kingdom's problem? Have the king or prince father a lot of bastards and toss them down to the dragon. Boom. Now you have an army's worth of those who easily can't escape and are of royal blood to sacrifice without raising the alarm of other kingdoms.

I loved that the moment she torn any of her shiny plush clothing it magically transform to dull bland rags

When I heard the opening, "There are many tales of the damsel being saved. This isn't one of them." I was all, 'yeah, no sh*t. That's pretty much all the stories these days featuring women." At this point it'd be much more subversive if a movie came out about a woman that needed saving or maybe even something simple as accepting help from a man.

The thing about expensive Streaming movies: there are always some old gouls with big pockets occasionally dropping by the writers room trying to show that „they they still got it“, drop a nonesense note or two - then go right back to playing golf, leaving the actual writers trying to puzzle together a co-hesive story…

thing is: people always blame feminism or "woke"-culture (still don't know what this is), but it's just godawefull writers. beeing it games or movies/series. like Horizon 1, it had decent writing (not great mind you), but part 2 is just incredible bad (in this aspect). you notice this a lot, across the board. there's just a lot of shitty writers around nowadays.

The premise isn't that bad imho. Nothing Oscar worthy, but not bad either. The execution ruins anything good about it though. Makes me think of that extensive review of Lightlark, where I really enjoyed the overall plot but it all looked like the writer published the first draft without even rereading it, let alone review and fix continuity and logic mistakes. If they wanted the noble blood thing and the wedding they could've at least gone with the "need to have the first night of marriage", or better, lat her get married, have a kid and she sacrifices herself instead of her daughter, and have the betrayal be something else. Or what if the sacrificed daughters were not eaten but instead taken away and raised by the dragon and she didn't know that so that's why she fled the dragon on sight (need her to not try to kill the main character). Maybe the dragon's motivation in the beginning was revenge but then it died out but the sacrifices kept coming when she expected them to stop, especially because she (the dragon) hasn't been seen for generations, but she never revealed she didn't want sacrifices anymore because she pitied the poor girls sent to die without their family fighting for them. So when the protagonist finally have a chat with her and convinces her to come out and put a stop to everything. Maybe add that the king and queen were some kind of immortals due to the sacrifices (a ritual before the death? The girls are "dead to the world" so it still counts?) or still getting something selfish out of the whole deal so dragon&protagonist team can burn everything down and sail into the sunset. But I realise I'm puttin much more thought into this than the creators did.

There’s tons wrong with this film’s writing, but hear me out - what if the dragon was blind and mute? If the dragon and Ellodie (?) had more interactions based around escape, hiding, observing, and overcoming an enemy’s weakness, a la Alien, this could have held up slightly better. Maybe the dragon was blinded in the initial encounter with the kingdom when its babies were killed - that’s why it sees little difference between the damsels offered to it. Making the dragon mute others the dragon, until a moment where we have to sympathize with it, despite fighting against it all the while - save the dead hatching reveal till later middle or near the end. Basically, change the slow cave crawling bits for more cat-and-mouse shit. Dragon should be blind and mute - remove its ability to differentiate friend and foe.

The fact that the women of color left clues behind for the white girl to use without she herself doing the same is such a funny commentary on white feminism I know it wasn't on purpose.

Oh, this movie. From the synopsis I was hooked because I’m into dragon/princess stuff (seriously, the dragon’s VA is awesome and they wasted it on this) and it sounded good on paper, then somewhere along the writing process somebody decided to turn it into a Girlboss ‘Tude movie from 2013 and my excitement *popped* like a balloon.

I'm honestly glad _Damsel_ exists, because it falls apart in so many interesting ways that I can't help but want to write just so I can do one better than it.

I wish they spent the money for this movie on another season of dark crystal age of resistance. I will never forgive Netflix for not finishing that series.

Netflix made this and cancelled Inside Job before we got a proper finale. 🤦🏽‍♀️