Episode 10: *Replay* Binger's Opinion - Damsel

Replay: Damsel

The Promise of a Hero... Carried by Everyone Else.

A replay from the original archive! This episode was lost when our early catalogue was removed, and we’re bringing it back for everyone who missed it. 

Same take, same chaos, just freshly reposted.

Transcript

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How could they mess this up so badly? Welcome to another episode of the Binge Alert Podcast, the show where I talk about things I love, things I hate, and everything in between when binging on anime books, movies, and TV shows. If you're not familiar with the format, the show will be split into five categories, which are Binge's Opinion, Is the Book Better, Movie vs. TV, Originals versus Remake, and Roast the Characters. For today's episode, the category is Binge's Opinion, where I'll be discussing the 2024 Netflix original movie Damsel. A quick synopsis: Damsel follows a young woman who agrees to marry a handsome prince only to discover that it was all a trap. Now she must rely solely on her wits and will to survive against a dragon. I'll be honest, I was really looking forward to this movie. I had watched the trailer and I felt like the premise was really good, so I was like, okay, I'm ready for this. I'm gonna enjoy it. Two hours later. I'm gonna go right in and give a summary of what happened, and then I'm gonna tell you why I hated it. Let's discuss. But before I continue, I just want to give a quick spoiler alert. I will be talking about all the plot points. So if you haven't watched it, don't waste your time. Just listen to my recap and you'll be fine. You have been warned. So the movie starts off with the prologue. A king and his guards are charging on horses towards a mountain. They find some eggs and destroy them. Turns out they were dragon eggs, and the mother dragon isn't too happy that they've killed her children. So she kills the guards with quick effectiveness, but takes her sweet time stalking the king. He begs for his life and she decides to strike a deal with him. But we don't learn about the deal until much later. A thousand years has passed, and our main protagonist, Elodie, is chopping wood to take to her town that is struggling to make ends meet. Her father, the lord of the town, gets an offer for Elodie to be married in a kingdom far, far away. Elodie accepts this to help her family and her people, so her and her family head to the far, far away kingdom that they've never heard of. And the only one questioning this is Elodie's stepmother. But Elodie doesn't like the stepmother much, so she tells her to mind her business. Then she meets the guy that she's going to marry, they hit it off, and she has a good feeling about the union, and then they get married. After the wedding, the family are sent away while Elodie has to go up some mountains to do a traditional ritual. They cut her and her husband's palms and mix the blood together, and then he carries her as though he's taking her back to the castle, but instead he throws her in a hole where she goes tumbling down. And this is where we find out about the deal that was made between the dragon and the old king. The dragon asked the king to sacrifice three of his daughters to represent the three that she lost. But what the dragon doesn't know is that the royal family got around this by marrying random women, mixing their blood together, and then sacrificing them, which apparently has been working since. And the girl that Elodie saw in the tower earlier was sacrifice number one, and Elodie is sacrifice number two. So now it's about her surviving in the cave where the dragon is taunting and stalking her to her death. And Elodie is trying to explain that she's not part of that family, but the dragon isn't having it. However, Elodie finds a place where the previous girls have all stayed and finds a map that shows girls planning their way out. So she sees that there's one path that seems to have an outing. Fast forward about 10 minutes, she makes it out of the outing only to find that it's like a hundred-meter drop and the dragon is there waiting to fry her. Back to square one. However, three minutes later, her father, who was told beforehand what was going to happen to her, felt so guilty and didn't want to let her die. So he and his men go to save her. This distracts the dragon enough for Elodie to escape, but it ends with all the men and her father dead. When the dragon realizes that she has escaped, the dragon leaves the mountain and starts torching the lands, indicating to the queen that Elodie has escaped. So the queen then goes to take Elodie's little sister to replace Elodie as the second sacrifice. So now Elodie has to go back and save her sister. And instead of just killing the sister, the dragon uses her as bait because somehow she knows that Elodie will come to save her. Okay. Then there's a fighting showdown, but not really, because Elodie is struggling to even hold her sword up. She manages to get the dragon to throw fire on herself, and while she is wounded, only then does the dragon really listen to Elodie when she tells her that the royal family have been sending innocent women and she hasn't been killing anyone of the royal bloodline. So the dragon is angry about being duped and now wants to team up with Elodie to get revenge. So Elodie turns up at the third wedding sacrifice, and everyone is shocked to see that she's still alive, and then she goes to threaten them, and then the queen laughs, and then the dragon turns up, and then everyone dies. Fast forward another two minutes. Elodie, her sister, the stepmother, who she now calls mother, are heading back to their land with no money, no guards, no father, and a dragon. The end. Issue number one. Why did this dragon even consider a deal with this man? You had no problem killing everyone else two seconds ago, and the king was the one who gave the order. But now innocent women must die. Issue number two. If just a little bit of blood is what it takes to dupe this dragon, why go through all the trouble of finding a girl to marry? Like why all of these theatrics? It's a bit pointless, to be honest, because you could just find a girl, slice her, mix the blood, and push her down. And by the logic of this movie, the girls don't have to be royalty, right? So this is literally proven to be a fact with Elodie's sister because they don't even go through all the marriage facage. They just slice her and then push her down. Issue number three. No one outside of this castle is thinking that it's a bit weird that the women that get married into this family are never seen again. Like I get that the fathers know, but no one asks questions. Issue number four. You're telling me Lodie's father was the only parent to feel some kind of guilt about sacrificing their daughter for money. Issue number four. We have the premise versus what they actually gave us. So the trailer gave the main twist away, i.e., the betrayal of some sort. So I thought the majority of the movie was gonna be about following her journey to freedom. It didn't last more than 30 minutes, and it's a two and a half hour movie. Huh? Issue number six. She is a damsel indeed because everyone else did the work for her. The girl was saved by plot armor, by her father, by the girls who died before her, by convenience. Like she was the definition of a damsel. Every time she came to an obstacle, something was right there to get her out of it. She didn't have to use her brain, she didn't have to fight, not really. And the only thing that really saved her was the truth that the dragon had been duped into killing the wrong people. So you made no effort to make this hard for her. Like you handed her freedom on a platter. So what is it about her that didn't make her a damsel? Issue number seven. What a stupid, incompetent dragon. So because I have a smudge of someone's blood on my hand, now I'm their relative. Are you kidding me? So you're telling me that you can smell a specific bloodline, but you couldn't tell that the women sent to you were not from said bloodline. So when you killed those girls before, you didn't smell that the rest of their blood didn't smell like that of the royal family. This makes no fing sense. If you're trying to dupe a human, okay, maybe. But a dragon, I can't believe she had to explain this sh to a dragon. Issue number eight. For Elodie and her sister to be okay with this dragon at the end, I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna be buddy buddy with a dragon who killed my father. So she's not gonna pay for any of the crimes. The countless women who died for no reason, get them off my screen. Like, why would I be cheering for a dragon to get a happy ending? I don't care if she was duped. That's on her. It's her own fault. If she took 10 seconds to even deep that all of these girls looked different, probably smelled different, like, don't fiss me off. I don't understand who this movie was for, if I'm gonna be honest. Because if you're not giving us what you're advertising, i.e., a woman who defies the meaning of the word damsel, then what are we doing here? Why is this a movie? Final verdict. I was just so disappointed and deflated after watching this. So if I had a rating less than background noise, I would give it. Because I don't even think it's worth putting it on to fill the room. And just for Bance, here are my thoughts on two ways you can rectify this movie that's trying to make a badass heroine. One, make the way the dragon is duped be more believable. This is literally the biggest issue because without this, you have no movie. A slither of smudged blood to the palm does not make someone become part of that bloodline. So find a way to change their DNA. You're supposed to be in a fantasy world, so just add some magic that can change DNA or a potion or something. Number two, remove the map, or at least like give her half of the map, and then she can add on to it. Like, let us see her go through the roller coaster of emotions when she thinks that she's made it, but it's like a dead end or something. Like, we want to see her be anything other than a damsel, which is kind of the point. That's all for today. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the show. Let me know what you think of Damsel if you watched it, but please don't watch it yourself if you haven't. Also, if you have any requests or suggestions on anything you'd like me to watch or read, please be sure to hit me up. You can find me on Instagram or Twitter at BingerLuck Pod or on my Facebook page, the BingerLuck Podcast. I'm out and I'll catch you in a sec.