{"id":7616,"date":"2012-06-24T20:30:49","date_gmt":"2012-06-24T10:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7616"},"modified":"2014-05-02T08:55:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T22:55:06","slug":"snow-white-and-the-huntsman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7616","title":{"rendered":"Snow White and the Huntsman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"snowwhiteandthehuntsman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Given the saturation of Hollywood blockbuster films that are based on super hero licenses, I hope that Snow White and the Huntsman<\/em> does well enough to get producers onto the fable bandwagon instead.\u00a0 There is an absolute goldmine of material with fairytales and fables that I think could be well served with a big screen adaptation.\u00a0 The tale of Snow White is not a bad place to start.<\/p>\n

Snow White and the Huntsman<\/em> is made by first-time director Rupert Sanders.\u00a0 It is a bold and ambitious film for a directorial debut.\u00a0 In many ways, I can’t believe Sanders landed this gig.\u00a0 A quick glance at his IMDB page shows that he has no prior connections to Hollywood, no foot in the door as an actor or a producer.\u00a0 Here he is, a guy making his first film and its a project worth $100,000,000 and has some of the biggest names in the industry attached including Chris Hemsworth and Kristen Stewart.\u00a0 In an interview with the Guardian he cited Christopher Nolan as his biggest influence for doing a blockbuster film ‘right’.<\/p>\n

The film starts at a brisk pace.\u00a0 Snow White is a princess and daughter of King Magnus, a benevolent ruler.\u00a0 When his Queen passes away during a particularly harsh winter, he engages in a war with an invading army of otherworldly soldiers that appear to be made of glass.\u00a0 He rescues a prisoner during one campaign – a beautiful woman named Ravenna.\u00a0 Unfortunately for Magnus, Ravenna’s arrival is a trojan horse.\u00a0 She marries Magnus, kills him on the night of the wedding and takes over the kingdom, ruling alongside her brother Finn.\u00a0 All of this happens in about four minutes.<\/p>\n

Ravenna’s primary motivations are punishing men for their treatment of women and maintaining her fragile self esteem as the fairest lady in the land.\u00a0 To that end, she uses a magical mirror which conjures a humanoid form covered in cloth.\u00a0 She seems to get faulty intel from this Magical Mirror Man.\u00a0 He tells her with a straight face that Kristen Stewart is a more beautiful woman than Charlize Theron and that Ravenna must consume Snow White’s heart if she is to maintain her power and attain immortality.<\/p>\n

All these years, Snow White has been imprisoned in Ravenna’s keep.\u00a0 When Finn is sent to kill her, she escapes Harrison Ford style, by dashing through the sewers and leaping out of an aquaduct.\u00a0 On the other end, she is introduced to some villagers as a ‘Fugitive.’\u00a0 Heh.<\/p>\n

Ravenna begins to realize that Finn is about as helpful as Skeletor’s henchmen and sends for The Huntsman to track her down instead.\u00a0 The Huntsman is a drunkard, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife.\u00a0 He reluctantly agrees to help Ravenna when she offers to resurrect his wife.<\/p>\n

From there the pieces are place to tell an interesting and bombastic adaptation of the Snow White fable that includes dwarves, poison apples and a fight for the kingdom.\u00a0 Rupert Sanders wears his inspiration on his sleeve, with many shots directly lifted from The Lord of the Rings<\/em> and Princess Momonoke<\/em>.\u00a0 There is also an unexpected and curious Christian subtext to the film.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe the film ever explicitly states where the events are set but Snow White says the Lord’s Prayer, bringing a ‘real world’ element to the film.\u00a0 For whatever reason, Snow White is Catholic.\u00a0 As she gradually comes to understand her destiny as a saviour to the people, her dwarves become more like disciples, she heals the sick, she walks on water and then momentarily dies, only to be resurrected days later.\u00a0 Kristen Stewart transforms into Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

I’ve got to be honest and say I didn’t enjoy this film very much.\u00a0 Snow White and the Huntsman<\/em> is certainly not the worst film of the year but it is probably the most wasteful.\u00a0 The special effects in this film are fantastic.\u00a0 The foundations of the storyline are full of promise.\u00a0 There is a cast assembled that any production would be envious of.\u00a0 You’ve got two bona-fide A-Listers in Hemsworth and Stewart and then you have a supporting cast of wonderful character actors like Toby Jones, Nick Frost and Ray Winstone.\u00a0 How could this possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n

A turgid and lifeless script for starters.\u00a0 The film is all exposition and no character development.\u00a0 The whole thing is just people reacting to whats happening around them without giving us any reason to care.\u00a0 The Huntsman should be a far more entertaining character.\u00a0 He should have some cracking one-liners, some chemistry with Snow White and some eye-catching moves with his axe.\u00a0 Sadly, he is given none of these things.\u00a0 You can tell what Sanders had in mind for the character – he initially attempted to cast Johnny Depp in the role.<\/p>\n

Consider the scene in which The Huntsman teaches Snow White how to use a short-sword to kill someone.\u00a0 This scene is just crying out for a lingering moment of contact between the leads to tease a romantic development.\u00a0 Or a chance to show some swagger from The Huntsman.\u00a0 Or a witty retort from Snow White to show that she’s no pushover.\u00a0 Instead the scene plays out as a perfunctory way of showing the audience how Snow White will kill someone later in the film.\u00a0 It is purely instructive and an opportunity wasted.<\/p>\n

This absense of charm carries on right through the film and taints virtually all the cast who are given next to nothing to work with.\u00a0 Charlize Theron was apparently instructed to do nothing but shout her lines of dialogue.\u00a0 The dwarves lurch awkwardly between solemn warriors who want to restore order to the kingdom and comic relief.\u00a0 Rupert Sanders clearly has seen some great ensemble fantasy films like The Lord of the Rings<\/em> series but I don’t think he quite understands why<\/em> they work so well.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Snow White and the Huntsman<\/em> is a gorgeous-looking film with top shelf special effects but it ultimately disappoints.\u00a0 The ingredients were there for something special but it just didn’t quite come together.\u00a0 I think as a directorial debut, Sanders has put together a great concept here and he may well be someone to watch out for with his future projects if they continue on this scale but as it stands, his first film is a bit off the mark.\u00a0 Keep the effects guy, find a new writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Its snow very good but it thor has great special effects<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[875,1301,1300],"class_list":["post-7616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-chris-hemsworth","tag-kristen-stewart","tag-snow-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7616"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14262,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions\/14262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}