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starladySnow White and the Huntsman. Dir. Rupert Sanders, 2012.
I dragged my friend M (willingly) to see this with me for my birthday, and we both enjoyed it. I think that there is a much better movie hidden inside what we saw on the screen, and that the movie on the screen has a lot of stuff in it, not all of which needs to be there, but overall I liked it a lot and I am glad I saw it.
My friend S tweeted me that she thought the movie needed more evil Queen and less K.Stew, which I only half-agree with. I think the movie needed more evil Queen and that K.Stew needed much better (or, in some cases, any) lines - the screenplay is, I think, one of the weakest parts of the movie. I don't actually think K.Stew is that bad at acting, but god does this screenplay not give her much to work with. And as much as I loved Charlize Theron as the Queen, Ravenna (does anyone else remember The Pearl of the Soul of the World?), the screenplay needs to explain her thoughts at a kew fey junctures rather than relying on the bones of the fairytale.
I liked Chris Hemsworth's Huntsman - Hemsworth is good at finding the heart in lovable lug-types, and making them much less luggish thereby - and I thought everyone else was more or less fine, with a special shout-out to the dwarves as a whole for being awesome. (I counted eight dwarves initially. I didn't count wrong.) M and I both went to a Norwegian college, so as soon as we saw that bridge we said "Troll!" and we were not wrong, but overall I liked the fairy-tale elements, heterogeneous as they all were (WTF was with the White Hart!Forest Spirit? I mean, I loved Princess Mononoke as much as the next person, but really, WTF), particularly when seasoned with a few random Christian references. I think the movie would have done much better to stay firmly in fantasyland territory, but so it goes. (Fantasyland is the only way I can justify William, a Duke's son, being such an unapologetically badass archer. Archery is for peasants, remember?)
For everyone who's said that this did feel weirdly like Narnia, yeah, I would totally buy that - the not!White Stag was totally just the icing on that cake. Seebedlamsbard's review for more on that.
I do think this is a fairly feminist retelling, not necessarily consciously on the filmmakers' part, but feminist all the same -recessional's review perfectly articulates basically everything I saw in the movie on that account, and so I shall just direct you there, but again, I was disappointed in the screenplay. At times it felt like Theron and Stewart's performances were from another movie, one that focused much more on their relationship and their similarities and differences and how the Queen's experiences have locked her into a paradigm that upholds the gender binary she deplores. I would rather have watched that movie than the one we got, though I liked this one fine. When else have you heard people shouting "Long live the Queen!" at the end and meaning it?
I dragged my friend M (willingly) to see this with me for my birthday, and we both enjoyed it. I think that there is a much better movie hidden inside what we saw on the screen, and that the movie on the screen has a lot of stuff in it, not all of which needs to be there, but overall I liked it a lot and I am glad I saw it.
My friend S tweeted me that she thought the movie needed more evil Queen and less K.Stew, which I only half-agree with. I think the movie needed more evil Queen and that K.Stew needed much better (or, in some cases, any) lines - the screenplay is, I think, one of the weakest parts of the movie. I don't actually think K.Stew is that bad at acting, but god does this screenplay not give her much to work with. And as much as I loved Charlize Theron as the Queen, Ravenna (does anyone else remember The Pearl of the Soul of the World?), the screenplay needs to explain her thoughts at a kew fey junctures rather than relying on the bones of the fairytale.
I liked Chris Hemsworth's Huntsman - Hemsworth is good at finding the heart in lovable lug-types, and making them much less luggish thereby - and I thought everyone else was more or less fine, with a special shout-out to the dwarves as a whole for being awesome. (I counted eight dwarves initially. I didn't count wrong.) M and I both went to a Norwegian college, so as soon as we saw that bridge we said "Troll!" and we were not wrong, but overall I liked the fairy-tale elements, heterogeneous as they all were (WTF was with the White Hart!Forest Spirit? I mean, I loved Princess Mononoke as much as the next person, but really, WTF), particularly when seasoned with a few random Christian references. I think the movie would have done much better to stay firmly in fantasyland territory, but so it goes. (Fantasyland is the only way I can justify William, a Duke's son, being such an unapologetically badass archer. Archery is for peasants, remember?)
For everyone who's said that this did feel weirdly like Narnia, yeah, I would totally buy that - the not!White Stag was totally just the icing on that cake. See
bedlamsbard's review for more on that. I do think this is a fairly feminist retelling, not necessarily consciously on the filmmakers' part, but feminist all the same -
recessional's review perfectly articulates basically everything I saw in the movie on that account, and so I shall just direct you there, but again, I was disappointed in the screenplay. At times it felt like Theron and Stewart's performances were from another movie, one that focused much more on their relationship and their similarities and differences and how the Queen's experiences have locked her into a paradigm that upholds the gender binary she deplores. I would rather have watched that movie than the one we got, though I liked this one fine. When else have you heard people shouting "Long live the Queen!" at the end and meaning it?
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Date: 2012-06-13 03:13 (UTC)