Damsel

You'd think Millie Bobby Brown would have had enough of dealing with scary creatures in her Netflix day job on Stranger Things. And yet here she is, back at it with an entirely different type of beast – she's facing off against a dragon…

Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown) agrees to marry a handsome prince, but the nuptials don't go according to plan when she's betrayed in order to pay off an ancient blood debt. Thrown into a cave against a fire-breathing dragon, the new bride is forced to fend for herself as she fights to survive.

Anyone who has seen the trailer or has even a passing understanding of the plot will find that the opening thirty minutes leading up to the wedding "twist" feel particularly drawn out. Shock! When Elodie is Thrown into a cave rife with dragons, it's almost a relief. Director of 28 Weeks Later Juan Carlos Fresnadillo provides some powerful visual effects, and the dragon (voiced resentfully by Shohreh Aghdashloo) is portrayed so vividly that you truly feel Elodie is in danger all the time. However, it appears that other world-building components, including some dubious wigs and rather traditional production design, were cut from the budget in order to make room for that.

“Traditionally the princess is always the victim, all the way through,” Damsel director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo tells Empire in the 2024 Preview issue. “But here she has to save herself; no-one is coming to help her. I always had a strong connection with medieval fantasy stories, especially the ones with a fairy-tale aspect. But this one literally turns those upside-down. I love this dark take on these stories, and how it makes them into a contemporary adventure.” Upside-down, you say? No surprise that it’s Brown in the central role, then.

If Elodie is rewriting the traditional damsel in distress script, so too is the flame-breathing foe she’ll be facing off against. The plan is to create a dragon unlike any you’ve seen before. “The benchmark of dragons is so high,” admits Fresnadillo. “We worked hard on a new concept, a really great meeting point between fantasy creature [and] real. The dragon in this movie is a character, not only a beast but also something else.” Flame on.

Fresnadillo said that he loved Dan Mazeau’s script for Damsel, which embraced the idea of a fantasy adventure and a princess and dragon story, but turned it “into a place [where] it’s completely upside down.” The Spanish filmmaker told Tudum, “It was a very intense journey that I was so excited to design and to develop. At the core, this is such a beautiful story about a young woman becoming a strong, independent, and empowered adult. Elodie doesn’t have any kind of support. It’s a real survival experience.”

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