The Princess

Its fairy-tale tropes could make it look like a Disney film from a distance — and the fact that Disney acquired it, and is releasing it on Disney Plus outside ...

Both of those characters are worlds more nuanced and interesting than the headstrong princess who doesn’t want an arranged marriage, but they’re relegated to background roles. Why does he need the princess to marry him, when he has the power to just seize the throne? It’s intrinsically satisfying to see a fantasy princess in a ripped, bloody wedding dress, stabbing the men who seek to control her. She doesn’t hesitate to plunge her sword into her assailants, and she doesn’t mull over whether killing makes her just as bad as her captors. As revenge, Julius captured the royal family and locked the princess in the tower to force her to marry him so he can take over the throne. But it’s actually a 20th Century Studios title, an R-rated killer-combat film that lets the unnamed princess at its center do serious, bloody damage.

Bloody Hulu original "The Princess" rejects the idea that medieval heroines need a man to rescue them, kicking back at the Disney formula.

By the end of the first scene, King’s as bloody as Bruce Willis was in “Die Hard,” which is this by-no-means-dainty movie’s way of saying that she sustains damage but doesn’t let that slow her down. But now that his kingdom has been invaded by the brutal Lord Julius (a dastardly Dominic Cooper) and whip-wielding right-hand woman Moira (Kurylenko), he will be glad the princess took “Atomic Blonde” lessons instead, learning how to dispatch a stairway full of goons in a single take. She’s kicking back at the entire medieval patriarchy, such that the movie’s idea of a happy ending isn’t a royal wedding but a gigantic funeral. A smarter script would’ve found ways to work a historical critique (or some “Shrek”-like satire, at least) into its relatively brainless string of set-pieces. Played by “The Kissing Booth” star Joey King as an anything-but-passive heroine, the movie’s anonymous eponymous protagonist isn’t a proper character so much as a one-dimensional empowerment symbol: “The Princess” represents the antithesis of every fairy-tale damsel who sat around waiting to be whisked away or married off. The rickety old Brit could barely throw a punch, and half the time, when Moore was supposed to be sky jumping or skiing, he was clearly pantomiming against a rear-projection screen.

This week sees the premiere of The Princess, the “Rapunzel meets The Raid” action film starring Joey King on Hulu, as well as the streaming premiere of ...

On a moral level, however — and this is very much a morality play in the guise of a contained, pressure-cooker thriller — it’s about weighing your responsibility to yourself and your family against your responsibility to society. The film follow three distinct eras of Jane’s life as an unexpected turn of events sets her on a journey to become a writer. Re-edited for television in the 1960s by Roger Corman, and infamously riffed on in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this new version of the original film has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm negative. Akin to Edgar Wright’s 2013 film The World’s End, Blasted appears to tackle similar subject matter with regard to its themes of lifelong friendship, maturity, and arrested development. This is certainly Edgar Wright at his Edgar Wright-iest, but even as he’s arguing against celebrating the past in Last Night in Soho, he’s celebrating it himself, in ways that are hard to escape, and at times, harder still to enjoy. Joey King (The Kissing Booth) stars in Le-Van Kiet’s “Rapunzel meets The Raid” action movie as a strong-willed princess who, after refusing to marry the cruel suitor to whom she is betrothed, is abducted and locked away in a remote tower of her father’s castle.

Joey King is credible and compelling as a vengeful would-be princess bride in this over-the-top action fantasy tale.

Long takes highlight both King’s gumption (as when she somersaults back and forth over a card table to dispatch a trio of goons) and the admirably creative fight choreography by Stanimir Stamatov and Samuel Kefi Abrikh, which emphasizes quick-thinking defensive moves that make use of found objects — hairpins, pearls, heads of lettuce — to parry swords, axes, chains, whips and helmets with sharp horns. Her highness must fight her way downstairs to defeat her naysayer, including a tyrannical fiancé (Dominic Cooper), his cruel consort (Olga Kurylenko) and the princess’s own father (Ed Stoppard), a hapless weakling who believes he can combat fascism with calm and sensible reason. Clearly, the classic genre that galvanizes Kiet and the screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton doesn’t hark back to ye olde European fairy tales but rather to the feminist revenge thrillers of the 1970s: works of exploitation and wuxia cinema where warrior women stuck it to the man.

Imprisoned by an evil suitor, a princess fights her way down a castle tower in a Hulu Original that will have you racing to your local AMC.

Joey King isn’t quite up to snuff with Keanu Reeves (and the brief scenes where the rookie is asked to fight side-by-side with Ngo are borderline cruel), but she gives it her all; every swing feels telegraphed well in advance, but you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of them. That approach might appeal to some tweens who are eager to take advantage of the fact that the MPA can’t enforce its ratings in their homes, but anyone intrepid enough to seize control of their parents’ Hulu account shouldn’t have to settle for this (psst, kids: try clicking on that button that says “Demolition Man”). The Princess brawls her way down the tower one indistinguishable level at a time, with each floor interrupted by an eminently skippable cut-scene in which Cooper screams about leading the people with fear and/or makes sex eyes at his leather-clad enforcer (a whip-cracking Olga Kurylenko, whose role is essentially just eye shadow in search of a character). This fable isn’t about a princess fighting back against her jailers, but rather about the princess — a dainty and helpless trope who’s desperate for a man to save her — rebelling against those expectations. While survivors of Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth” trilogy may be conditioned to expect as much from the latest Joey King vehicle (though she hardly feels responsible for this mess), anyone familiar with Le-Van Kiet’s bone-crunching “Furie” is liable to feel let down by the talented Vietnamese director’s anonymous first swing at a Hollywood action film. There’s something kind of remarkable about watching a 90-minute film that only has a single idea spread across its entire running time — “what if ‘The Raid,’ but about a fairy tale princess trying to fight her way down from the castle tower where she’s been imprisoned by an evil suitor?” — but my awe at what passes for a movie these days was no match for my disappointment in this one.

The action here, directed by Le-Van Kiet, is reasonably entertaining, but everything that's hung on that skeleton feels remarkably thin.

Kiet makes a drastic structural mistake in “The Princess” by intercutting between his title character’s bloody rampage and flashbacks to how she got there, including training in the martial arts and swordfighting. If only this film was confident enough to really give her one. The King, Queen, and most of the citizens of the Kingdom are being held captive by Julius, his partner Moira ( Olga Kurylenko), and their incredibly incompetent soldiers. A script like this needs to either set things up with rich, detailed characters or ignore that altogether and focus only on action. That’s the basic theme of Hulu’s “The Princess” spoken aloud by its villain, a monstrous figure named Julius ( Dominic Cooper). The script here by Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton has a habit of speaking its own themes aloud with blunt dialogue that’s often so on-the-nose that it verges on parody. (I did wonder if there's a more pure version that isn't written by two men and directed by another.) The action here, directed by Le-Van Kiet, is reasonably entertaining, but everything that’s hung on that skeleton feels remarkably thin.

Director Le-Van Kiet delivers a forgettable film whose single distinguishing characteristic is a total lack of distinguishing characteristics.

The movie instead relies on editing and manipulated frames-per-second sleight-of-hand (never quite slow-motion, never quite hyperkinetic) to sell its physical confrontations. The tale of a princess called or pushed to action in defense of her younger sister might be interesting, and even carry with it some additionally heightened emotional punching power in a post-Roe world. There are signs early on that The Princess, written by Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton, lacks some of the resources to bring their grand vision to life. A yawningly simplistic and roundly inconsequential action movie, The Princess lacks, on a narrative level, the certitude and clarity of purpose of its title character. After she escapes and initially hides, the princess fights a lot of marauding mercenaries, even teaming up with Linh for a moment. Flashbacks show the princess leaving Julius humiliated at the altar, and also training with Linh (Veronica Ngô), an ally and friend of her parents.

For anyone wondering why "The Princess" is premiering on Hulu in the US, not sister service Disney+, the movie answers that in the first five minutes, ...

In that sense, it has the look of another Fox release that corporate parent Disney (understandably, in this case) didn't quite know how to handle marketing-wise. The only other significant part belongs to Veronica Ngo ("The Old Guard") as her tutor in the fighting arts -- lessons conducted without the knowledge of the King -- which only modestly bolsters the story's feminist sensibilities. The film does represent an unorthodox stretch for King, certainly compared to her last prominent work for Hulu in the limited series "The Act."

This review of the Hulu film The Princess (2022) does not contain spoilers. Joey King is a young actress with a built-in audience, and for the most part,

(Like most of these films that lock away women, they make sure to lock her away with only the best views the kingdom has to offer). From there, it is a chase to escape the clutches of the evil heir and save her family. This is a function of the writing that I like to classify as a videogame script. With the approval of her mother, the Queen (Alex Reid), the Princess refuses to marry Julius, which causes him to lock her at the top of the remote tower. Her trainer is Linh (Ngô Thanh Vân), who teaches her how to fight with a sword and her mind. King plays The Princess, an unbreakable young woman who is trying desperately to fall hardbitten to male toxicity. Her hair is matted, she is sweaty and bleeding, and according to a simple Google search, she did 85% to 90% of her stunts.

This dumb elevator pitch gag of a Hulu movie — starring Joey King and Dominic Cooper — has the aura of an intrusive thought.

Or, in the case of The Princess, it can be turned into an affirmation of the current order, which is apparently perfectly fine aside from the need for a lady royal atop the throne of whatever theme park monarchy the movie’s barely managed to come up with. The Princess would clearly like to be seen in the bruising recent tradition of David Leitch-adjacent movies like the John Wicks, Atomic Blonde, and Nobody, but is more slapdash in its construction, striving for longer takes while pulling its punches in combat. Our attachment to this increasingly vague concept, fueled heavily by Disney’s branding and the eternal appeal of a flouncy frock, has landed us in the empowerment dead-end of The Princess, whose main character attempts to prove that women are just as deserving as men when it comes to inheriting power due entirely to the circumstances of their birth.

Joey King stars as The Princess in Hulu's new action film about a nameless heroine that has to fight her way out of a dangerous situation.

Maybe The Princess could have been the battle cry that people need right now to fight against patriarchal oppression, but alas it has no idea how to shed the narrow-minded ideas of how to flip the script on all of these tropes. If you’re looking for a shallow action film with some vague notion that it’s a historical fantasy, that sees a nameless heroine behead toxic masculinity incarnate, then The Princess is the film for you. Despite the shallow chaos that serves as a plot, Joey King delivers a solid performance with what little she is given to work with. Every character in the film is given a name, except for its supposed heroine who is just “The Princess.” Many well-meaning writers presume that by opting not to name their female protagonists, they are somehow calling attention to and underscoring the importance of a name. Ultimately this misplaced white knighting of the female empowerment fantasy is likely due to The Princess being penned by two men and directed by a third, Le-Van Keit. It’s frustrating that the screenwriters seem convinced that this is the answer to a long line of badass Disney princesses that weren’t badass enough in their minds. After decades of moviegoers begging studios to create female characters that were afforded the same well-rounded storytelling as their masculine counterparts, Hollywood finally answered the call by creating the caricature of personality that is now known as a “strong female character.” These characters don’t necessarily seek to defy the binary in any meaningful way; they still actively lean into the stereotypes that have grated on nerves for years.

Hulu's 'The Princess' Follows a “Badass” Version of Rapunzel on a Quest for Vengeance · Joey King plays a “beautiful, strong-willed princess” with a plight ...

In a recent interview with Screen Rant, Ben and Jake explained that they were inspired by the idea of Rapunzel as an action star. Turns out, Joey King’s character in the film, simply called The Princess, is inspired by a fairytale character, not a real-life figure. The new movie is a royal mess, critics say.

The Princess is a change of pace that builds upon the recent trend of having princesses picking up a sword to fight for their land and family.

Linh joins in on the action part way through the film, but there is no doubt that The Princess could have discarded this habit. All in all, The Princess is a bloody good time. There are sequences featuring the vindictive and scorned suitor Julius ( Dominic Cooper), all of which are eye-roll inducing. That is, until two thugs from the invading party stumble into the room and the Princess promptly kills them both with moves unbefitting of a delicate lady. Technically, the film checks off all the right boxes to create a princess fairy tale that takes its inspiration from single-location actioners. The Princess follows an unnamed princess (King) in an unnamed fictitious kingdom who finds herself trapped at the top of a tower in her family’s castle.