Snow White and the Huntsman
Jun. 6th, 2012 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nessaniel
Ah, God damn Hollywood. You and your cheap rip-offs and your boring remakes of stuff that’s been done over two hundred times now (yes, I am looking at you “Elementary”, although I will fall in love with Lucy Liu).
And now Snow White.
First of all, I have to say that I really wanted to like this movie: it looked gruesome enough in the trailer and I’m all in for cruel, dark and even twisted adaptions of fairy tales. The costume and set department outdid themselves, stuff was mostly nice to look at (especially Chris Hemsworth, JFC, he is soo good looking dear God O_O) and things like the mirror looked convincing and stunningly new and creative.
But the rest, aka story and character development or NON-BORING plot??? Nada, zero, gar nix.
What I got was a mix of stolen scenes from LotR, the Disney-Snow-White, Animals of Farthing Wood (for God’s sake...) combined with the pacing of a really awful Disney movie (“You have known her the longest, Hunstman!” – “Uhh, two days and I wanted to kill her most of the time?”) without any of its charming characters (Huntsman was bitchy, Jesus fucking Christ on a stick! How the fuck did he survive that long? O.O), a bazillion misogynistic comments and story tropes and way too many loose threads and story lines that didn’t get resolved in a satisfying manner.
I don’t want to go into detail too much in case you want to see the movie for yourself so I’ll talk about my biggest pet peeves:
- Too many unnecessary characters: the Queen’s brother e.g. Why was he there? What was his motivation? And who was his hairdresser?
- Huntsman not getting a name. Firstly: THAT’S NO FUCKING WAY TO TREAT YOUR MAIN CHARACTER especially when you are not an ArtHouse-movie! It was especially unnerving because the German dubbing kept the English title (for whatever reason) and referred to Hemsworth as Huntsman (or Hans-män. As in Hans Wurst xD) which was just silly. But oh well. It’s Chris Hemsworth wuhuuu!
- Too many stolen scenes: the kingdom’s coat of arms was an almost exact replica of the White Tree of Gondor. Hell, they even had a tree in the court that bloomed one single white blossom to announce the return of the King... I mean Queen. -..- The shots on the mountain: almost exactly like the Fellowship-trailer. AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON THE DWARVES OH MY GOD. Or the design of that one troll: Pan’s Labyrinth anyone? (AND EVEN THIS TROLL’S STORY WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE INTERESTING THAN THE PLOT)
- The pacing: oh my God. It was just awful and as uncreative as human possible. Bext example: Snow White saves the Huntsman once and suddenly she is precious to him.This might work for a Sunday-morning cartoon where hero and foe must absolutely bond over the course of twenty minutes BUT THIS IS A TWO-HOUR MOVIE SO TAKE YOUR GODDAMN TIME and have the characters TALK to each other.
- The way the female characters were treated: Okay, this is just a very very personal pet peeve because if the director intented to keep the silly kissing and the apple and the queen only motivated by her desire to be young forever (although the latter could be doubted, they vaguely alluded to her wanting to take revenge for... well something. As I said: vaguely) that's solely his/her decision. But why make it so boring? So completely cliché? Why not using the fight scene between Theron and Stewart to make it epic and edgy and brave and not just... blergh (it looked good, choreography seemed nice enough but one didn't care for the characters at all...) Why make Snow White the...Chosen One who is so pure and innocent because of God knows what qualities? What ARE her qualities? Why is she so awesome, what makes her special, why can only Snow White be the heroine? WHY MOVIE WHY? HELP ME TO GET INVESTED INTO YOUR CHARACTERS!!! Apart from those obvious flat character faults (I felt genuinely sorry for Kristen Stewart, the script really wasn't that good for her. I don't know whether she can act or not but in this piece, she cannot (although she seems to be a decent human being - watching her and Theron's interviews or snippets on tumblr were responsible for making me excited for this movie in the first place) there was also a very cringeworthy line: Huntsman and Snow White stumble through Fangorn...I mean Dark Forest. Snow White in her long, impractical dress stumbles a bit less gracefully, causing Huntsman to come up to her and rip off the lower part of her dress. Snow White shrieks because she is afraid of him and looks up incredulously. Huntsman grins: "Du bildest du zuviel ein" ("You imagine too much") and although the German dubbing allowed for a double meaning (as the Dark Forest makes everyone have crazy halluzinations) the intention for this line to be somewhere among the lines of "Please, as if I'd rape you, PUHLEASE!" were pretty obvious. If Huntsman had been somewhat hurt after Snow White looking completely shocked it would have been somewhat good for character development. But with his smug smile and his dislike for Snow White (which gets completely redeemed just two minutes after this scene xD) it just comes across very wrong ("As if I'd rape you, you ugly thing."). But okay, this might be me reading too much into it.
- EDIT: The original quotation would be "Don't flatter yourself." I KNEW IT. BASTARDS. GOD I HATE YOU!!! This entry from feministdisnyey.tumblr.com is especially heart-warming. ARGH OH GOD ARGKAHJSKH!!! Thank you, German dubbing studio: for trying to amend this movie... HASHAKJH!!!
- Another pet peeve but that's just me being picky: I wasn't overly fond of making Snow White the "Chosen One" that apparently everyone had waited for. That's just a very cheap method of character development imho. (Or maybe I'm just incredibly jealous because I cannot walk around getting rescued by Chris Hemsworth)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 10:18 pm (UTC)