It’s the 30th anniversary of the modern classic, The Princess Bride. And while there is so much good stuff packed in that film, two characters managed to steal our hearts in just a few minutes of screen time: Miracle Max and Valerie.
Now it seems that not only is there enough backstory to create a spin-off focusing on the two, Billy Crystal himself would be game for making it happen. Crystal was keen to pitch the idea for a Max and Valerie spin-off, saying the two characters should have their own film. “Start a Twitter thing,” Crystal instructed Entertainment Weekly. “We want more Max and Valerie.” And what better time to “start a Twitter thing” asking for more adventures with Max and Valerie than the 30th anniversary of The Princess Bride? While some of us might have a bit of remake/reboot fatigue, it’d be rewarding to see another story in The Princess Bride universe, following the incomparable Max and Valerie.
If you haven’t seen The Princess Bride in a while, Miracle Max and Valerie are the two grizzled miracle workers who bring the film’s hero, Wesley, back from being mostly-dead-but-still-slightly-alive. Max and Valerie are easy to love and hard to forget, and according to EW, that was intentional.
A lot of their lines are ad-libbed like “have fun storming the castle” and ” don’t go swimming for an hour–a good hour” (and several that didn’t make it to the big screen like “true love is the greatest thing in the world — except for a good BM”). However, despite their on-set quick thinking, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, the actors who brought the two characters to life, took quite a while in creating the Max and Valerie we all know and love today. And with all that history, it makes them perfect for their own spin-off film.
Kane explained to EW that she and Crystal worked for quite a long time, going through the book, underlining portions that were pertinent to their character’s story, and adding their own bits of backstory to the lives of Max and Valerie. As Kane said, “there’s supposed to be a long history — who knows how many hundreds of years Max and Valerie have been together?” That fastidious work and elaborate planning is what made those ad-libbed lines so funny, because that they’re constantly harkening back to the decades the characters spent together.
Would you be excited for a Max and Valerie spin-off? What other characters from The Princess Bride would you like to learn more about? Tell us in the comments!
Feature Image: MGM
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