A 2007 film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book of the same name. While certain liberties were taken, it remains a very faithful adaptation. A young man sets out to find a fallen star for the girl he's in love with, only to find that the "star" has become human...and that three evil witches want to capture her.Starring Charlie Cox, Claire Danes and Robert De Niro, the film is said to remind viewers of The Princess Bride. Although the movie contains a different ending from the book, it's successful at playing straight many of the often clichéd fantasy elements in an intelligent and entertaining way.
Stardust contains examples of:
Abduction Is Love: Tristan starts out trying to force Yvaine to come back to England with him to show her to Victoria, then the two subsequently fall in love.
Yvaine also gives us this gem, about when she's abducted for love...
Yvaine: But of course! Nothing says "romance" like the gift of a kidnapped injured woman!
Adaptation Dye Job: In the book, the eldest of the Lilim has black hair and wears red. In the movie, Lamia has blonde hair and wears green.
Adaptation Expansion: The Lightning Pirates get a brief mention in the book, but have a significant plot in the movie.
Adaptational Badass: Tristan learns to sword fight in the movie, the witches use more combat orientated spells, and Septimus was a poison master in the book, while in the movie, his preferred weapon is a knife (using poison only once), and he fights with blades.
Adaptational Villainy: Septimus and Lamia were both villains in the book, in the movie, Septimus kills more people and is more ruthless, while Lamia is considerably more sadistic.
Alas, Poor Villain: Lamia. Where the book played it straight, it is played with in the film: imagine the scene in the castle of the witches, after Lamia's sisters die, and how the film would have ended if she truly were regretting it.
Author Appeal: The director of the movie, Matthew Vaughn, liked the original story so much that he thought it could be a movie a lot like The Princess Bride.
Awesome Moment of Crowning: Tristan gets the throne and his queen while his mother, father, and Capt. Shakespeare look on approvingly.
Badass Grandpa: The old man guarding the Wall apparently has had a lot of time to practice (having been there for 80 years).
Big Bad Ensemble: Lamia and her sisters are a Big Bad Triumvirate, plus the various competing princes. By the end, though, Lamia is the last villain standing, so she probably takes precedence as theBig Bad.
Big "NO!": Lamia yells this when Tristan and Yvaine escape her, using the Babylon candle.
Blunt Yes: The opening exchange between Dunstan and the Wall Keeper.
Keeper: I'm charged with guarding a portal to another world, and you're asking me to just let you through!
Dunstan:[as-a-matter-of-factly] Yes.
Broken Aesop: You don't have to just be a shop boy, you can go out and have adventures and be a boy momentarily working in a shop! Don't worry if you're not born special! Except Tristan Is the son of a magical princess.
Cast from Hit Points: Lamia. Well, more "Cast From Youth," as each spell she uses drains a little bit of the good looks she got from eating the last of the previous star. This leads to a funny scene where she repeatedly tries to use magic to undo signs of age in one spot on her body only for it to cause signs of age to appear on another spot.
Chekhov's Gun: Loads and loads — the glass flower, the silver chain, the Babylon candle, the tube of lightning, the spell Lamia casts on Ditchwater Sal, and Tristan's mother.
Cowboy Bebop At His Computer: Many reviews of the movie mention the Lightning Pirates as an example of ways in which the movie was different from the book, claiming that they do not appear in the book at all. This is untrue, it's just that what happens on their ship is glossed over in the book.
The film does invent some attributes: the airship crew in the book were not pirates, just fishermen of a sort who harvest lightning. And their captain was not an (admitted) transvestite.
Dance of Romance: Tristan and Yvaine's dance on the ship where Yvaine starts glowing as she's realizing her feelings for him.
Decoy Protagonist: An inversion, a Decoy Villain. Septimus seems like he should become a major problem for the heroes Not only is he actually Tristan's uncle, but the only time he actually meets the two main characters is in the film's climax, just in time to help fight the Big Bads and get killed.
And before, Secundus - he gets a great entrance, only to be pushed a minute latter from the window.
Played straight with Tristan's father at the beginning - although he is important. To get the real protagonist, he and Una go into the back room and have fun...
Deleted Scene: Several that change the tone of the story. A scene at the ending establishes Tristan and Yvaine as a Mayfly December Romance, with Yvaine outliving Tristan by a long time.
actually In that ending, Yvaine and Tristan light the Babylon candle just before Tristan is to die of old age, thus still allowing him to become an immortal star.
Enemy Mine: Sort of. At the end of the film we have a hero / villain team-up (between Tristan and Septimus) to take down a more dangerous villain (Lamia), but the two characters weren't enemies beforehand- in fact, they'd never met (though Septimus did beat up Tristan's mentor, Captain Shakespeare).
Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: The 98-year-old Irish sheperd guarding The Wall is somehow proficient in Shaolin Kung Fu in spite of living in 19th to early 20th Century England all his life.
Funny Background Event: When Tristan touches the ruby and becomes king the dead princes are set free. Then they turn into white balls of light and go up, the looks on their faces a split second before they go is pretty funny if you hit pause at just the right moment..
After he's changed into a woman, Bernard spends most of his screentime staring at himself or staring at Yvaine.
Gag Boobs: Lamia's breasts suddenly deflating after she uses too much magic may count as this.
Game Between Heirs: Before he dies, the king of Stormhold announces that his heir will be the one who manages to obtain a ruby he threw into the sky. But it all gets complicated when it crashes onto a star...
Gender Bender: The goatherd chap gets this treatment. At least Lamia was good enough to give him a decent rack.
Animorphism: Gets this as well - although maybe both at the same time.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: The director even admitted that he wanted to create a movie for kids that had a heavy dose of Parental Bonus. For example, this scene with Primus talking to Yvaine:
Primus: [sitting in a bathtub] "... and it is the largest in all of Stormhold-" [flicks water with a smile] "-so they say."
Hero Tracking Failure: In the movie, during the final Boss Battle, Lamia hurls spells and makes rows of windows dramatically explode one after the other but seems persistently unable to hit the protagonists who are running away in a straight line, staying just in front of the explosions. They don't even get a scratch from the flying shards.
Arguably Fridge Brilliance. During that scene, when Yvaine and Tristan run away from the exploding windows, they run back towards the witches and away from the only door that they can escape through. So instead of hurting them, the witch just cuts them off and drives them back. Also she needs to cut out Yvaine's heart and eat it, and killing her with broken glass before it's cut out would probably reduce the quality. She' not trying to hit them, shes just terrorizing them For the Evulz.
Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk: At the end, Lamia nearly kills Tristan and Yvaine, but stops when she sees her sister's bodies, and then let's them go, as immortality means nothing without them. When they leave, she shuts the door, and reveals that she was kidding, to lure Yvaine into a sense of security (happy stars give more years).
Magical Underpinnings of Reality: On this side of the Wall, a star is a giant ball of gas and a falling star is a lump of rock and metal, but on the other side of the Wall stars are immortal women who float in the sky and shine at night (unless someone hits them and knocks them down). A fallen star crossing the Wall turns into a lump of rock and metal.
Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Michelle Pfeiffer's English accent often slips and sometimes completely vanishes.
People Puppets: Of the corpse kind. Septimus is animated by one of the witches to engage in a sword fight with the protagonist.
Phosphor-Essence: Yvaine glows more brightly the happier she is.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Captain Shakespeare's Lightning Pirates don't actually pirate per se, but make a solid living poaching lightning from thunderstorms, so they may be merely The Pirates Who Do Something Else. The career paths of Shakespeare and crew still offer plenty of opportunities to evade the law (Lightning-Marshalls at that), to mass fortunes on the black market and for combat badassery on the high seas in the wild blue yonder, so their Pirate work resumes are still quite aglow.
Playing Against Type: Robert De Niro playing a cross-dressing, gay pirate captain?
Pragmatic Adaptation: Presumably the book's Tristran was changed to the movie's Tristan because the latter is simply easier to say.
Prophecy Twist: Everyone knows that possessing the heart of a star is the key to living forever. Turns out it works just as well metaphorically as literally.
Reality Changing Miniature: Lamia is able to use a voodoo doll to kill Septimus and then puppet his corpse to fight Tristan.
Secret Secret Keeper: It turns out Captain Shakespeare's entire crew was this, regarding his cross-dressing.
Old Pirate: It's alright, Captain! We always knew you was a whoopsie!
Shout Out - In the montage of Tristan and Yvaine's time on Captain Shakepeare's ship, there's one scene where she plays the piano with the Captain. A reference to her previous piano-playing role in Little Women?
Soundtrack Dissonance: Seen in the scene where Septimus and his men ambush Captain Shakespeare's boat, in a massive fight, to the tune of the Can-Can.
Spoiled Brat: Victoria. In the original book, she was actually Spoiled Sweet, whereas here her only sweetness is that she's nice to Tristan out of pity, and stops being nice the minute she actually expects something of him. Otherwise, she only thinks of herself.
Stars Are Souls: When Tristan and Yvaine die they become Twin Stars.
Stealth Pun: When Primus is killed his blood is blue. Whether or not this is true for all natives of Faerie is never addressed, so it counts.
Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Prince Septimus effectively lobs a sword near the end of the film during the big battle, which hits and kills one of the Lilim.
Title Drop: Tristan brings Victoria a lock of Yvaine's hair, which has turned into stardust after crossing the wall. This does not happen in the book.
Too Dumb to Live: After discussing that his brothers will try to kill each other for the throne, Secundus doesn't see anything suspicious about his father asking him to stand with his back to his siblings, next to a large open window. Septimus then pushes him to his death.
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