Inigo Montoya is a character driven by his own mourning over his father’s death. Revenge fuels him and when he finally comes face to face with the six-fingered man he knows to be responsible for the murder, he essentially tells him that the man can offer him all the things he wants in life but he doesn’t care because it won’t bring his father back—”you son of a bitch.” It’s pretty straightforward and makes it very clear what Inigo Montoya is saying.
The iconic role was played by Mandy Patinkin in the film The Princess Bride and is a character that fans around the world love very dearly. And yet somehow, Elon Musk watched that movie and completely missed the entire point of that specific moment in the movie.
During an interview with CNBC, Musk was asked whether he was worried that his tweets might be bad for business, Musk responds by comparing himself to Inigo Montoya. Already, annoying. For some reason, the people who think they’re the most like characters from The Princess Bride are consistently people who misunderstand the movie and its characters.
But this is just really pathetic when you look at it because it shows that Musk really has no ability to understand anything. “There’s a scene in The Princess Bride,” Musk says before he and CNBC’s David Faber both say “Great movie.” He continues: “Where [Montoya] confronts the person who killed his father. And he says ‘Offer me money, offer me power. I don’t care.'” And then Faber confirms that what Musk is saying is that he doesn’t care if his businesses are affected by his own terrible tweets. And this is a thing, remember, that he’s comparing to a character’s lifelong quest to avenge his father’s murder.
Cue Mandy Patinkin himself with the only appropriate response:
Media literacy is dead
That scene is literally the most obvious scene to unpack. Inigo Montoya says to the six-fingered man that to offer him money, offer him power, and then when the man says he will give him all he wants, Inigo says “I want my father back you son of a bitch.” So there’s no “I don’t care” even in the scene! Elon Musk just literally made that up. But even if we excuse the paraphrasing (which I do not!), it’s such a gross misreading of the point of the whole character and that scene in particular.
As Patinkin tweeted, “I don’t think it means what you think it means,” Elon. Because the point of Inigo’s fight is that no matter what the six-fingered man does, it will not bring home his father. Elon Musk’s tweets—his little poop emojis and his support for transphobes and white nationalists—are not comparable in any way. If he thinks they are, that’s … troubling.
(Featured image: 20th Century)
