YMMV / The Book of Masters

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Why does the Princess want the diamond tears for herself? Does she want to destroy them and ruin her last chance to return to goodness? Or does she have some lingering bit of her past self in her and wants to keep them as a reminder of what she used to be?
• Angst? What Angst?: Ivan and Katya both are as emotional about Katya getting killed and brought to life again as one would be about a twisted ankle at most.
• Badass Decay: Ivan starts the film as a plucky quick-thinking lad who first tries to save Klava from the ardars and then helps her escape Baba Yaga's hut, outwitting Katya in the process. However, after that he morphs into a Pinball Protagonist who gets easily tricked by the Princess and whose real moments of awesome (becoming a master stone-cutter, bringing Alatyr to life, adorning Alatyr with the diamonds) are barely given any screentime. Moreover, starting from when he is recaptured by Baba Yaga, the plot only happens because everyone else gives Ivan hints and directions, and he only survives at all because others make sure he does.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Katya's death. It happens due to a huge Contrived Coincidence, lasts exactly one minute and a half, serves no purpose at all in terms of plot, doesn't seem to have any impact on Katya herself and Ivan, let alone anyone else, and only makes Ivan Unintentionally Unsympathetic thanks to his indifference about it.
• Broken Aesop: The Power of Love is the best thing there is. If you fall in love, slowly admit your feelings to yourself, gradually realise your beloved's happiness is more important than yours, and finally make a Heroic Sacrifice for your beloved's sake... you'll be promptly forgotten and never mentioned again, let alone brought back to life (even though it is shown that Death Is Cheap, twice).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Yangul only has about a dozen lines and ten minutes of screentime in a hundred-minute movie. He is the character everyone remembers. The fans adore his tentative attempts to express his love for Katya (as a Living Statue, he isn't used to having feelings) and his character development for her sake, going from "You will be mine" to I Want My Beloved to Be Happy. Many have stated Katya has better chemistry with him than with her official Love Interest.
• Franchise Original Sin: The film is not part of any franchise per se, but it clearly presents itself as following in the footsteps of probably the most prolific Soviet fantasy film director Alexander Rou. While people accused it of heaping up allusions, especially to modern realities, and it really does overdo it sometimes, Alexander Rou played with the trope as well. His Barbara the Fair alone includes horses with reaction engines, characters singing modern songs, the use of terms "prestidigitation" and "hypnosis" etc.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why does the sympathetic magic mirror even tell Katya that she's not the Princess's biological daughter but rather a kidnapped human girl? It doesn't reveal anything else about her origins or advise her to search for her true parents. Of course, it's mostly for the audience to get some foreshadowing about Alatyr needing a human soul. However, in terms of plot it also makes sense: Katya must have obviously wondered who her father is, and there are only two men (not counting the hardly human-looking ardar common soldiers) who have been in contact with the Princess over the past couple of decades – Ivan's father and Yangul. The mirror wants to assure Katya neither of her suitors is related to her.
  • During her first appearances, Katya wears her hair loose. Roughly after the first third of the film, she is shown with two braids and always keeps that hairstyle afterwards. The last time she has loose hair is when the mirror tells her she isn't really the Princess's daughter, so it means Katya has an Expository Hairstyle Change and stops trying to copy her supposed mother's looks.
  • Why do Ivan and Katya bump into Yangul almost immediately after Katya's soul is saved from Alatyr? He was also going to Katya's rescue after finding out what the Princess had planned, it's just that Ivan got there first by a very small margin.
• Narm: The narration stresses how dangerous and evil the ardar army is... but it's shown that the villagers can escape the ardars by simply hiding inside their houses. Even though the buildings are made of wood while the ardars are made of enchanted stone, not a single one of them thinks of at least breaking into a house, and the only captives they take are Klava who didn't have the time to hide (or was Too Dumb to Live and didn't hide in time) and Ivan who attempts to rescue her.
• Strangled by the Red String: Katya and Ivan's first romantic moment comes when she takes his hand while leading him to the Book of Masters. The problem is that she is merely fascinated that his hand is warm, as befits a human, and she seems to fall in love with him at that point. This led some fans to assume she's not as much in love with Ivan as she's desperate to escape her mother's domain.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Alatyr, the magical stone which sets the plot in motion. We never learn who or what made it, why it was just lying around in a meadow and who and why thought up the Princess's elaborate curse.
  • The reveal that Katya is a human and not the Princess's biological daughter only becomes important when it turns out Alatyr needs a human soul to grow fully alive. Other than that, it is just used once for a throwaway line when Katya quarrels with the Princess, and then it's immediately brushed aside. Katya never suffers a crisis after being kept in the dark about it and never wonders about her real parents and origins. Not a single other character cares a straw either.
• Uncertain Audience: One of the main criticisms directed at the film is that it doesn't seem to know who it's for. Reviewers noted that the filmmakers tried to appeal to older audiences by evoking the feel of classic Soviet fairytales (e.g. Morozko) while adding Parental Bonus humor, and to younger ones by making a fantasy film in the style of The Lord of the Rings. The result is often viewed as too kitschy by old movie fans, too simplistic (with an underdeveloped plot to boot) by fantasy fans, and So Okay, It's Average by kids.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • For the better part of the movie, Ivan (and the narration) says his main motivation is to become the greatest stone-cutter of all. Even when the Princess promises him Katya's hand, Ivan refuses to trust Katya when the latter warns him he is being tricked and says, again, that everyone will know him for the best stone-cutter in the world if he brings Alatyr to life. The viewers have pointed out this made him look like a non-military version of a Glory Hound.
  • Right after Katya takes the bullet for him and dies, Ivan is shown anxious whether the diamond tears will work as Baba Yaga told him they would, having apparently forgotten about Katya. It has earned him quite a few haters (it doesn't help that his romantic rival values nothing above Katya's safety and happiness and proves it). Granted, Katya is brought back to life a couple of minutes later, but Ivan doesn't know beforehand that it would happen.
  • Katya isn't so blameless either. She does everything to make Ivan read the Book of Masters and try bringing Alatyr to life, and then she acts as if it's all his own idea. Even if she wasn't firmly on the side of good back then and tried to lure him to Alatyr, she doesn't acknowledge it. We are at least supposed to see that Ivan's an idiot to believe the Princess's promises and work on Alatyr, but, apparently, we have to forget that it's Katya who dragged him into the mess in the first place.
  • Even fan favorite Yangul isn't immune to this trope. Viewers have pointed out that his Let's Fight Like Gentlemen moment with Ivan isn't as honorable as it's probably meant to look: with Yangul's own invincibility and three centuries of battle experience, giving a sword to his opponent clearly won't make it any less a Curb-Stomp Battle, even if one is charitable and assumes that Yangul is unaware that Ivan is an average fighter at best.

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