Continuity

We've all heard about keeping story continuity, so I won't be talking about that. Perhaps a better title would have been tightness...I digress.

I was watching The Princess Bride, a triumph of media, and for the first time I started noticing how little wasted space there is in that movie. Now, I'm a hideous lech and haven't read the book, but in the movie they waste nothing. From moment one we're introduced to the running line, "As you wish." It grows from there. I won't cover everything, but at the end, we see the six-fingered man that Inigo was searching for ftom the beginning, and they finally ahve their duel, the turning point of the entire movie for me--it's also one of the best examples of this tightness I've seen.

We know, from the start, a few things about the relationship between Inigo and the Count:

The Count killed Inigo's father.

Inigo inherited his father's sword.

The Count left scars on Inigo's cheeks.

Inigo will say "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." when he meets the six-fingered man.

By the end of this battle, everything has been touched upon:

Inigo killed the Count.

He used his father's sword to do it.
He left matching scars on the Count's cheeks (not to mention giving him all the same wounds he received in the course of the battle.).
That phrase (see above, as I don't feel like retyping it.) drives the Count mad during the battle and empowers Inigo.

And that's a small portion.

It all seems to be so very tiny, a thing here or there, but isn't that what separates good from great? Great from classic? Classic from Don Quixote?

Feeling tight,
Voss