BEFORE: Since I already covered Thumbelina, 3 Cinderella movies and 2 Peter Pan films, I might as well knock off these two Snow White films before I run out of slots. Jamie Blackley carries over from "Irrational Man", where he had a large role as Roy, the boyfriend character, and he has a much smaller role in this film, but it still counts. This film kicks off my mostly-Hemsworth week, with 6 out of 7 movies having one of the Hemsworth brothers in it. First four with Chris, then 2 with Liam.
THE PLOT: In a twist to the fairy tale, the Huntsman ordered to take Snow White into the woods to be killed winds up becoming her protector and mentor in a quest to vanquish the Evil Queen.
AFTER: I suppose it shouldn't be shocking, when you consider how much money the two "Lord of the Rings" trilogies brought in, that there would be a lasting after-effect. This revamp of the Snow White story seems quite Tolkien-ized, from the trek through the "dark forest" (Mirkwood) to the banding together of feisty little people (dwarves/hobbits, same diff, right?) to defeat the evil power and its black army. The Huntsman isn't given a name here, but it might as well be Schmaragon or Schmoromir.
Though it's an interesting twist to a Tolkien-like tale to have an evil queen, obviously that's retained from the original Snow White story, but I can't think of one evil woman in Tolkien stories, they were always benevolent elf-queens or noble female warriors. But women deserve equal time in both the hero and villain roles, no? So we've got both here tonight, with Snow White and Ravenna. Ravenna's clearly got an axe to grind (figuratively) against all men, it seems, referring to some string of bad relationships that presumably drove her into sorcery, while the Huntsman axe to grind is much more literal.
Actually, now that I read the plot summary it seems that Ravenna's mother cast a spell on her, allowing her to retain her youth and beauty by draining the life-energy from other women, leaving them old and desiccated. Once she seduces the king and takes over as queen, the land also seems to suffer, becoming dark and diseased. She leaves only Snow White alive from the old regime, just in case she needs her royal blood for something - and then, sure enough, she learns from her Magic Mirror that she can stay young forever, just by eating Snow White's heart, instead of the ones she usually eats from live birds. (Ewww....)
But Snow White escapes into that Dark Forest, and in a twist on the original tale, where the Huntsman was assigned to bring her into the forest to kill her, here the Queen demands that he navigate the Dark Forest to bring her back. Together they encounter a village full of women who have disfigured themselves so that the queen won't try to drain their beauty, so it seems there's always a loophole on a lot of these fairy-tale rules. The Mirror's prophecies are equally enigmatic, since it tells the Queen that Snow White is destined to be both her salvation and her ruin. So, it's not much better than a Magic 8-Ball in that sense. Answer hazy, try again later.
They then meet 8 dwarves on their journey - that's right, 8 - and they don't have the traditional Disney names like Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey and such. Here they're named Beith, Muir, Gort, Nion, Duir, Coll, Quert and Gus, because that makes SO much difference. There's an appearance by a magical stag that goes absolutely nowhere, and then there's a twist on that whole poisoned apple thing. There's something of a love triangle that develops between Snow White, her old boyfriend William and the Huntsman, and it's sort of left open as to which one she belongs with, because there are probably people in the audience rooting for each of them.
I'd like to know what technique was used to make full-sized actors appear to be the size of dwarves - it wasn't the same stuff that they did in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, which was allegedly just shooting angles and perspective tricks. Some other special effects trickery was involved here, but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Maybe they had all of those actors kneeling down, with phony shoes on their knees, and the bottom parts of their legs got green-screened out? Just a guess.
Also starring Kristen Stewart (last seen in "Into the Wild"), Chris Hemsworth (last seen in "The Heart of the Sea"), Charlize Theron (last heard in "Kubo and the Two Strings"), Sam Claflin (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"), Sam Spruell (last seen in "Legend"), Ian McShane (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Bob Hoskins (last seen in "Sweet Liberty"), Ray Winstone (last seen in "Noah"), Nick Frost (last heard in "The Boxtrolls"), Eddie Marsan (last seen in "Concussion"), Toby Jones (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Johnny Harris (last seen in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"), Brian Gleeson, Vincent Regan, Liberty Ross, Noah Huntley (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Lily Cole (last seen in "The Zero Theorem"), Rachael Stirling (last seen in "Centurion"), Hattie Gotobed (last seen in "World War Z"), Raffey Cassidy (last seen in "Tomorrowland"), Xavier Atkins (last seen in "Philomena"), Mark Wingett (last seen in "Mr. Turner")
RATING: 5 out of 10 shards of black glass
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