What aunt_zelda Thinks: Snow White and the Huntsman

[aunt_zelda]

Ok, before I start, who else is excited for the trailer for Les Misérables? EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee I CAN’T WAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTT!!!

Oh, right, this movie.

(I started to watch Brad and Jillian and Irving’s “Midnight Screening” vlog about this movie, and when they said it was good I decided to go see it, and stopped watching the review. I watched Snow White: A Tale of Terror first, because it was on Netflix Instant Play and I had an afternoon free. And that was a DAMN good movie.)

This movie … disappointed me. I don’t regret going, I only paid $6 after all, but still, it … disappointed me. I’d heard good things. I liked the trailer. So I went to see it.

There are good things about this movie. For example, the first 20 minutes are pretty good. The prologue, the visuals, the fake army, the evil queen, the mirror, the incestuous brother, Snow White in her cell all grungy and trying to make a fire and talking to Greta and escaping and being chased and getting to the swamp/forest and hallucinating awesome special effects … all of that was really really good. I liked her ragged dress, her terror and desperation, how the first thing she did when she was out was try to free Greta … and to be honest, the incestuous brother was probably the best part of the movie. He was so creepy and subtle and menacing and awesome. Total surprise to me, and a great part of the movie. He stole the show for a good chunk of the movie, for me at least.

Then the Huntsman showed up and completely won me over. Everything about him worked, a simple but effective character, a grungy gruff alcoholic widower ax-wielding badass Han Solo if you will. It was kind of fascinating how such a simple character grabbed my interest and held it in all the ways the filmmakers intended to. The film doesn’t utilize him effectively enough, though. The scene in the fishing village should have been a moment where he and Snow could have had a more tangible romantic connection. Maybe a scene where he’s having a bath and she accidentally sees him through a crack in the door, and watches a little bit and gets flustered at these Feelings she’s never really had before, being locked up and all. But we don’t get that. We get some hints, some decent hints, but not quite enough. I’d have preferred more of him teaching her how to fight and defend herself, that first bit about the dagger was great but not enough, there should have been more.

I loved the scene where he’s drunk and talking to her “corpse” and then gives her the True Love Kiss and staggers off and she wakes up. But I would have appreciated him talking about his dead wife and missing her and then feeling reborn by loving Snow … to Snow. When she was awake and stuff. Maybe in the village, if they’d used that lull to build character, she could have told him who she really was and told him about how she found her father dead with a dagger in his chest, and he could have told her how he found his wife dead and then they could have bonded a bit. No kiss, but a brief moment where they connected. Then the village gets stormed and they have to flee and stuff. But that didn’t happen. Unfortunately. What we got was fine, but we should have had much, MUCH more.

(Can I just say that when the Queen yelled for the guards to get the Huntsman “on his knees!” I kind of squeed to myself and thought “I like the way you think, lady!”)

Also, as bad as this movie was, when the Huntsman gave that speech to Snow White’s “dead” body, I almost cried. I was surprised at that. That was fantastic scene there. So there was at least ONE writer in there who wasn’t drunk or high or just half-assing it.

The Evil Queen was VERY GOOD … except when she was screaming. The director should have said “on second though, just be all whispery and threatening, don’t scream or yell or anything. When you do that it’s hammy and silly. So … avoid that. Don’t chew the scenery.” Instead what we get is this fantastic performance that manages to be both menacing and despicable but also pitiable and vulnerable … except when she screams her lines, then she’s just silly. It would have been better in the scene where she’s chewing out her brother if she’d whispered “… you have failed me …” instead of “YOU HAVE FAILED ME!!! EVERYBODY BETRAY ME!!! OHAI MARK!!!” or whatever she said specifically. It was just cringe-worthy. Which was weird, because everything else she did was fantastic. I especially enjoyed her flashback scene. And the motif of three drops of blood. I loved that.

Kristen Stewart was … good? Not amazing, but she didn’t annoy me. She carried the role well enough. Her emotions were believable. Her fear when the brother was close to feeling her up in her cell, her terror while being chased, her surprise and interest with the Huntsman, her affection for the women in the village, her anger and determination rallying the people and storming the castle … that was all good. Enough. Could have been better, but it was just fine. I don’t understand the hate she gets. Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen the Twilight movies (someday I shall, I’m just scared to watch them alone and I need to be with friends when I do) but I think she’s a fine actress and very attractive in that pale-skinned-brunette kind of way.

They didn’t even pretend that William was a romantic rival. I got mad when Snow kissed him in the woods, then laughed with delight when it turned out that he wasn’t himself and it was all a ploy by the evil queen. I loved that bit! Mostly I was happy because I thought “well, that relationship is over before it even began!” because no way could they work out after what she thought was their first kiss was her mortal enemy trying to murder her. LOL. That bit was priceless.

I wish we’d seen more of William with the Incestuous Brother’s posse. In fact I wish we’d seen him killing off some of the other posse members and framing another posse member, to whittle down the ranks. That would have shown how as a rebel he’s not that innocent little boy anymore, he’s ruthless when he’s on a mission. Ah well, he’s just the pretty Nice Guys Finish Last dude. Whatever.

I was nervous that they were gonna kill William or the Huntsman in the end, and make her end up with the other guy, but thank god they didn’t! I appreciated that a lot. To this movie’s credit, they handled the romance in subtle and unpredictable ways, which considering I was expecting a forced love triangle was a HUGE relief and nearly made up for the movie’s huge flaws.

The costuming was acceptable to bad. It looked like play in a bad way, or a low budget Ren Faire. The exceptions to this were everything Snow White wore, and some of the Queen’s outfits. Otherwise, it was unmemorable or kinda silly. Like the village of women with scars. These are women who are working every day to feed themselves and support their kids, yet they’re wearing fancy colorful dresses with long sleeves and long veils. That is NOT what they would wear. They’d be wearing simple dresses in browns and grays, maybe some color here and there, but they wouldn’t be wearing the equivalent of prom dresses in their fishing village. I did appreciate how the village had a unique look, though, it wasn’t just a cliché Medieval Fantasy Village template.

Let’s talk about the dwarves. Oh my god the dwarves. Can you say “shoehorned in” much? And they were all pointlessly played by celebrities who were NOT FUNNY. They tried so hard to be funny, and they weren’t. I could tell they were trying to make jokes, but in a movie with brutal fighting, gritty costumes, sucking out lifeforce, scarring children so they’ll be safe, eating bird organs, implied incest and a hinted almost rape scene … the humor with the dwarves felt like something from a completely different movie. It’s not that I think dark movies can’t have humor, they can and some really should, but this movie wasn’t the place for the kind of humor the dwarves were pushing. I did like it when they fought, and sang their songs, and the bit at the campfire where Gus danced with Snow was great, and his death and funeral were very sad poignant moments … but other than that no, no no NO.

Speaking of “completely different movie” … WTF magic woods as directed by Miyazaki? WTF? I mean … it all LOOKED NICE … but it wasn’t blended in with the rest of the movie AT ALL … and it should have been. Like the random bridge troll, that came right outta nowhere and was never followed up on. The Queen’s magic was acceptable, and the mirror thing (so cool! Why did the trailers spoil that?!) because she was from another land and we saw her process, eating bird organs and turning into crows and sucking the life out of girls and giving that guy a heart attack (or something) … it was tangible magic, if that makes any sense. We never saw Snow do any tangible magic. Her mere presence supposedly Cures Minor Wounds, but she never actively uses that. She doesn’t call on the Magic Spirits to help her in the end, like by making a giant tidal wave to wipe the castle’s defenders away, or shake the stones down, or something. A giant white hart gives her its blessing, and that’s that. They don’t bring that up to the people when she’s rallying them for war. It just impresses the dwarves, who were with her already.

In fact, another thing that bugs me about this movie is the confused magic and religion relationship. The first time we see grown up Snow White, she’s reciting the Lord’s prayer. Later we get references to Heaven and angels. But also references to an ambiguous afterlife, whatever the Magic Mirror is, the spells and magic the Queen uses, and the Forest Spirit and faeries. There’s never a conflict addressed here. No priests calling the Queen a witch, no pagans welcoming and worshipping Snow, no moment where Snow tries to maintain the Christian teachings of her childhood while wielding the power of the Forest Spirits. Maybe that was too controversial a subject for a PG-13 movie trying to cache in on the Twilight fanbase, but I don’t know, you’ve got implied incest and hinted rape and onscreen murder, why not go for the religious dilemma of Snow White? Maybe have a priest who was her confessor while she was in prison who brought her extra food, or even helped break her out, and having her flash back to him while being faced with a pagan priestess telling her to fight the Evil Queen?

I’ll leave that for now, let’s get to something else that annoyed me. In fact, it enraged me.

Snow White threw away her shield before facing the Queen. I got so mad at that. So during the whole climax I kept thinking “now would be a good time to have the shield, dumbass!” ARGH! That is STILL bugging me! SHE THREW AWAY HER SHIELD!!! DUMBASS!!!

In fact pretty much the whole climax of fighting and siege stuff was terrible. Just plain terrible. Someone clearly read “siege weapons 101” but only skimmed and didn’t read the sequel. They had a sneaky way into the castle and only used it to open the gates. They didn’t sneak in guys at night to sabotage the weapons or set fires or poison food or anything. They just … opened the gate. With six dwarves. These people have been waiting for more than a decade to take down this castle, and that’s their strategy?

The only part I liked about the climactic fight was when the Huntsman and William were fighting back to back and kicking ass. THAT I loved. I wanted more of that, all of the sudden. I wanted a completely different movie.

And it would have gone like this: the Evil Queen kills the King on their wedding night and frames the Duke for the murder. The Duke and William must flee for their lives. The Evil Queen takes over, lets Snow grow up, but watches her and plans to kill her when she comes of age in some “accident” as soon as the people grow accustomed to the new Queen. Through Snow’s resourcefulness and some help from the Huntsman (whose character could maybe be merged with the Queen’s brother?) they flee to the woods, where they find William and a small band of rebels. Together they travel the land, rallying the people, teaching Snow to fight, and vying for her affection. Then they take down the Queen. And they all lived happily ménage a trios after. The end.

That would have been a much better film, I think. Or at least take some elements from that and put it into this movie, and you would have had a much better script and story and ARGH this movie could have been so GOOD and it WASN’T!

I loved how it didn’t end with a wedding. But it ended abruptly. I heard other people in the audience going “what?” and “that’s it?” and I concurred. I liked how it didn’t end with a wedding, but it should have had an epilogue to bookend things, like how the prologue was narrated nicely by the Huntsman. The epilogue could have shown her growing old and ruling well and had him narrating “and she ruled for many years, the land prospered, the dwarves returned, the darkness faded, and life returned to the earth. Also I banged her a lot, these are our kids, aren’t they adorable?” And maybe it could have shown him dying and her holding his hand, old but not quite as hold as him obviously, and him looking at William and telling him to “take care of her” and Snow White saying “I don’t need taking care of anymore” and the Huntsman saying “I know …” and dying and it would have been sad and beautiful and wonderful and WHY DIDN’T THAT HAPPEN?

The script kinda sucked. The script needed help. A lot of help. A lot of things felt forced or shoehorned in. The apples were nice and subtle, the dwarves came right the fuck outta nowhere and tried too hard to be funny …

There were good bits. The fighting was good (except for the siege.) The costuming was fine I guess. The actors were all good. The incestuous brother of the Queen was FANTASTIC. The Huntsman was the perfect mixture of gritty and dreamy, and he almost made me cry during his speech to the “dead” Snow White. The visuals and landscapes were great and beautiful and all that good stuff. The effects were badass and awesome. Most of the fight scenes are good to great, except for the finale which is AWFUL.

But it wasn’t … good. Some bits were good, but overall it was passable at best and a failing grade at worst. Which is disappointing. I had high hopes.