Made back in 2014 but only now being dumped in cinemas, this bizarre adaptation of an acclaimed novel is destined to be forgotten
From its title alone, you may be forgiven for thinking that The King’s Daughter is a film about a king’s daughter. It isn’t. It’s about Pierce Brosnan’s berserk quest to achieve immortality by stabbing a mermaid through the heart. True, there is a king in it; and, yes, he does have a daughter. But I have to make this perfectly clear, it’s actually a film about Pierce Brosnan trying to murder a mermaid through the heart.
Clearly, there have been meetings about this. The King’s Daughter is an adaptation of Vonda McIntyre’s 1997 novel The
moon and the Sun; a novel that, it must be said, won the Nebula book award ahead of A
Game of Thrones on publication. But you can’t call a film The Moon and the Sun, because people might inadvertently think they’re going to watch a film about the actual moon and the actual sun. My instinct, given the subject matter, would have instead been to call it Pierce Brosnan Stabbing a Mermaid Through the Heart. This is partly because it is a precise description of what happens in the film, but mainly because who wouldn’t want to watch a film called Pierce Brosnan Stabbing a Mermaid Through the Heart? Only the very worst kind of idiot, that’s who.