The Princess Bride movie and book

If there's anyone out there who hasn't seen The Princess Bride movie, I highly recommend it. To those who have seen the movie, I highly recommend the actual book. The book is flat out phenomenal. All the humor of the movie is really in the book, plus a whole lot more. Certain things make a lot more sense, especially the war that always seems to be somewhere in the fringes in the movie.

The Princess Bride book has a huge amount of details that never made it into the movie, as is the case with most book adaptations. But, one scene actually got rewritten to exclude my absolute favorite scene. When the heroes go into the Pit of Despair, the movie shows them finding the entrance and skips right down to the interior. However, in the book, there is a wonderful scene as the heroes go through the front entrance and through a series of traps. The final trap is so marvelous that it's tough to describe how much I wanted to see it realized on screen. Read it, and you'll understand.

I think there's something magical that happens between audiences who love movies and books together. Think of the recent storm of books into movies: Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, and the upcoming Divergent. There's a sort of fairy dust that covers such things, and I believe it's because the audience is embracing their imaginations. There's more life to these things because of it. I hope and pray that the magic never ends.

- M