The Princess Bride is one of the classics of 20th-century cinema. Although the film was only a modest success at the box office, subsequent years have turned Rob Reiner's tribute to fantasy storytelling into one of film's most memorable adventures. So much of the film has become a part of the shared pop-culture consciousness that, in theory, it should be hard to relate to for new audiences. But viewers young and old can find that same sense of fun, whether it's their first or hundred-and-first viewing.

This is because the film quietly but specifically embraces a childish tone that carries throughout the story. No matter how potentially dark, scary, or specific it can become, The Princess Bride is firmly rooted in being told from the wonder-filled perspective of a child, very much by design. The Princess Bride -- now available in 4K UHD/Blu-ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection -- has become timeless through this element above all else, and will likely remain as such because it fully embraces being childish in its presentation.

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How The Princess Bride's Opening Minutes Define The Entire Film

For all the cutthroat swordplay and near-death encounters that occur across the course of the film, The Princess Bride works largely due to a consistent light-hearted tone. Even as characters are tortured to near death and perilous monsters rush to attack the heroes, there's a soft tenor to the dialogue that keeps the adventure from ever feeling too intense or perilous. The visuals are always bright, even in their darkest settings. The secret to this tonal balancing act can be found in the film's opening moments before a single blade has been drawn. While much of the film follows the wayward but heroic Westley (Cary Elwes) and his attempts to be reunited with his love Buttercup (Robin Wright), it's all quickly established in-universe to be a story within a story.

In reality, "The Princess Bride" is a book being read by a Grandfather (Peter Falk) to his Grandson (Fred Savage) while the latter is sick in bed. The film occasionally cuts away from the fantastical plotline to revisit the pair of them in the Grandson's bedroom, where he complains about plot-turns, comments on developments, and steadily becomes enamored with the story. This is the secret trick to The Princess Bride and is what makes it so timeless -- it's a film that's told from the imaginative perspective of a child, imbuing it with an authentically sweet and innocent tone throughout.

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Why The Princess Bride Never Becomes Too Dark

The childlike sense of wonder allows The Princess Bride to be self-deprecating without ever turning into parody, funny without ever becoming a full comedy. The Princess Bride wears its emotions on its sleeves and always goes big on its emotional beats. What separates The Princess Bride from other entries in the fantasy genre is the way that the childish approach to the material allows the characters to go big in a very likable way that nevertheless doesn't lose sight of the drama, tension, and romance inherent to the story. The characters -- potentially more vivid and darkly specific in their full writing -- become more broad and silly in the mind of a child. The grim circumstances of Inigo's (Mandy Patinkin) and Fezzik's (André the Giant) backstories give way to cheery rhyming games and quick asides.

Proclamations of vengeance are delivered with righteous determination rather than grim resolve. Characters like Prince Humperdink (Chris Sarandon) and Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) may have dark motivations and cruel sides, but they converse in a typically cheerful manner that's full of wordplay and snark. They chat in a way that a child could understand, replacing specific terminology and deliveries with more universal dialogue like Vizzini ordering Fezzik to "grab the thing" or Humperdink threatening Buttercup with a repeated curt "I would not say such things if I were you." Even the visuals are a clue to this interpretation of the film, as the bright colors and beautiful landscapes are the product of a vivid, almost clearly childish imagination. Each setting is bright, especially in the new updated version of the film featured in the Criterion Collection re-release. The grim-sounding Thieves' Woods is recast as a more benign place, more akin to a Renaissance fair than a typical fantasy hive for scum and villainy. Even Wesley's torture is shown to be through a cartoonish medieval device that doesn't draw a single ounce of blood from the victim. Even the darkest elements of the film are lightened in a way that fits within the childish perspective -- something that William Goldman, the screenwriter of the film and the author of the source material clearly had in mind.

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The Princess Bride Was Always Meant To Be Childish

Logic throughout the film follows this track, with simple solutions presenting themselves to all the story's challenges. This sentiment can also be seen in the novel that inspired the film. William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" presents itself as a unique work of fiction, an "abridgment" of the fictional author S. Morgenstern's story of the same name. Within the book Goldman's "commentary" notes that Morgenstern's original story was one full of political satire that was lost in the translation, and that his own father telling him the story as a child specifically cut out all the material that a child wouldn't find exciting or entertaining. This is represented in the film with an embrace of the whimsy and wonder in Wesley and Buttercup's story, but with little specific satire or exploration.

This lends itself to the film being a truly timeless piece, one divorced from any specific era of politics or society. It doesn't try to embody the mentality of young people of a certain age at a specific time, but rather be the liberalization of all children's perception of adventure. It's the visualization of a child's wonder at an exciting tale, and is content to play out as the largest-scale version of that imagined adventure. This is what makes The Princess Bride an undeniable piece of the cinematic canon, and arguably the most likable fantasy epic in a medium that has some serious contenders for that title. It's a film that recalls the feeling of being a child and hearing a fun story, doing everything it can to bring the viewer back into that mindset with a plot that focuses on sweet charm and true love over more complex satire or in-depth character exploration. Those are exciting elements to see in many films, but aren't at all what The Princess Bride is aiming for. The film is focused on allowing audiences to relive the excitement they felt as children hearing a good story. Any viewer, of any age in any year, can see themselves in Fred Savage's Grandson, an innocent whisked away to an astonishing place of true love. It makes the film plainly straightforward but immeasurably charming, and is a major element of what makes it so timeless.

The Princess Bride is now available in 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD from the Criterion Collection.