The Princess Bride

Prince Humperdinck tortures Westley to death in the Zoo of Death after Buttercup taunts him with her unbroken love for Westley and reveals that Humperdinck never sent ships to search for him. Inigo and Fezzik, who have been searching for the man in black to help them storm the castle for Inigo's revenge against the six-fingered Count Rugen, hear Westley's dying screams and find his body. They carry him to Miracle Max, a disgraced former palace miracle worker, who determines Westley is only "mostly dead" and revives him with a resurrection pill, though Westley remains largely paralyzed and very weak.

Westley, still unable to move much, devises a plan to storm the castle during the rushed wedding ceremony that Humperdinck has moved up to counter the commotion outside. While Westley bluffs his way through obstacles despite his paralysis, Inigo pursues Count Rugen through the castle, finally defeating him in a sword duel and killing him, avenging his father Domingo Montoya's murder.

Buttercup, believing all hope lost and intending to kill herself rather than consummate her marriage to Humperdinck, is stopped by Westley, who reveals himself alive. Westley confronts Humperdinck in a duel, and though still weak from paralysis, bluffs the prince into surrendering by exposing his cowardice, since Humperdinck has never actually risked his own life in a fair fight. Westley chooses to spare Humperdinck rather than kill him.

Westley, Buttercup, Inigo, and Fezzik flee the castle together on stolen horses from the prince's stable, escaping into the night. The book closes with the narrator noting that the group faces further mishaps and pursuit on their journey away from Florin, but strongly implies that they ultimately get away and find happiness together.

Goldman wrote both, and the story ends the same way: Inigo kills Count Rugen, Westley — still barely able to stand — bluffs Humperdinck out of a duel and spares him, and they ride out of the castle on the prince's horses.

What differs is the frame around it, and how much it promises. The novel's conceit is that Goldman is abridging a much longer book by an invented author, S. Morgenstern, and it ends by putting the characters straight back into trouble: more mishaps, more pursuit, and only the author's suggestion that they got away in the end.

The film replaces Morgenstern with a grandfather reading to a sick grandson, and closes on the certainty the novel withholds — Westley handing Inigo the Dread Pirate Roberts name, the two of them kissing as dawn breaks, and the boy asking for the story again tomorrow.