22 Brief Reactions to Snow White and the Huntsman

I  saw Snow White and the Huntsman with a friend this evening, and had a number of thoughts about it. Here they are, in no particular order. Be ye warned: spoilers abound.




1) Kristen Stewart's acting... ability... appears to be holding steady. She's still pretty much just confused by everything.

Confused by a horse

Confused by a forest

Confused by battle

Just generally confused

2) Why do so many fantasy characters speak with "English" accents? This country, Narnia, Fantastica, Middle Earth... they can't all be in England, y'all. ENGLAND IS NOT BIG ENOUGH.

3) Charlize Theron is a great actor, and I love her in pretty much everything. She wasn't at her best here, but she definitely had some good moments.

Evil in a bird-skull dress

4) The Queen's creepy brother was... exceptionally creepy, so well done there. (Insert Lannister joke here.) (Haha... "insert"...) His haircut, however, distressed me deeply, and the scar was just unnecessary-- very "Dr. Evil.")

5) I liked the Huntsman. What was his name? Chris Hemsworth? (Yeah, I haven't seen The Avengers.) I thought he was a decent actor.  The "grizzled veteran tortured by the memory of his lost love" trope has been done to death, but at least this was better than Taylor Kitsch's run at that character. I thought the kiss scene was very sweet, and loved the Huntsman's face in the last few frames of the movie. (On the other hand, I just discovered/was reminded that Viggo Mortensen was originally in talks for the part, which would have been leagues cooler. I think hat was why I wanted to see the movie in the first place...)

Should I say "And my axe!" or make a Thor joke?

6) The costumes were FANTASTIC. Well done, Colleen Atwood.  Everything was period-appropriate, but never generic-- there was always a pop of color or texture, or an unusual detail (see the bird skulls above) that caught the eye. My favorite was actually the bizarre bolero... cage... thing... that the Queen wore in her wedding. I thought at first it was made from woven straw, but I think now that it's actually supposed to be animal bones.

What would you call this, exactly?

7) The magic was great. It was kind of old-school fairy-tale storytelling I like: no concrete rules, no explanations, just drama and poetry and mystery and fear. The birds' hearts, the milk bath, the hairy apple (ew!!), the obsidian soldiers, the Queen's Bathorian feasts. I liked that they used a polished-metal disc instead of a glass mirror-- I never even thought about it, but of course it looks much older that way. I also liked that it was left up to the viewer to decide whether the Queen was actually seeing anything or not. The mirror spirit reminded me of a statue, but I can't remember where I saw it-- any thoughts?

8) The Dark Forest was cool. The intro was pretty much the forest scene from Disney's animated Snow White (I mean directly, down to the fainting at the end), but it was also oddly reminiscent of the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride.

Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist...

I wanted to see more of it, and was curious about why it was there. The Queen said she had no power there, so clearly she wasn't responsible for its growth. Was it just the opposite number to the fairies'... Haven, or whatever it was called? Inquiring minds want to know.

9) The village of river women was a nice surprise-- a striking contrast to the other settings in the movie. I did think it was a missed opportunity for diversity-- they were clearly supposed to be part of a different ethnic group, but most of the actresses were white. It was still a cool touch, though.

I did wonder where the men had gone. "Off to war"? War, where? Who were they fighting? Had the Queen conscripted them, or the Duke, or someone else?

10) The dwarves were fun. They were mostly comic relief, and Peter Dinklage would probably not approve, but they were also the only characters in the whole damn movie who had a sense of humor. (I did wonder, though: If Kristen Stewart's very presence was enough to heal injuries, then why couldn't she save Gus?)

11) And about Gus: Okay, Hollywood, listen: If the character's been onscreen for less than twenty minutes, and he's barely spoken three lines in that whole time, and done nothing special except to offer the heroine an awkward dance and a hug? Then I'm sorry, but we are not going to cry when he dies. We're just not. It doesn't matter how many strings you add to the soundtrack as you zoom away from his poor, dead body: if we don't know the guy, and we don't know his feelings except that he's bashful or whatever, and he's never done anything important, then his death isn't going to be a tear-jerker. 

The funeral song was lovely, though.

12) I ADORED the fairies. (For some reason I can't find a picture of them, but they were basically wingless, fur-covered pixies.) Very cute, probably dangerous when provoked, and able to ride around inside of forest animals-- thus allowing for a "magical helpful animals" plot thread without being schmaltzy and twee. And I thought it was nice that someone made fairies without wings for once.

13) When the stag-thing came out, was I the only one who thought of both Bambi and Princess Mononoke?

14) The "resurrection" scene was probably Kristen Stewart's best work in this movie. She seems to do "raving visionary" very well. Maybe she should audition to play Joan of Arc someday. I also just though that the white dress/pale fur/white room combination was pretty.

Not a great picture, but whatever

15) So... is there just a rule here that the good guys aren't allowed to use infantry? In the beginning the King rides out against a field full of foot soldiers without any infantry at all, and then at the end Snow white attacks a castle the same way. Where is the cannon fodder? That is what starving villagers are for, Snow White. Clearly you do not understand the whole "Queen" thing very well yet.

16) Furthermore, what, exactly, has the Duke been doing for the last ten years or whatever? Just sitting in the castle with the gate locked? Seems like you'd want to, like, contact your allies or something-- surely there's someone else the Queen has pissed off who might be willing to help you? I think he's probably just lazy.

17) Sending a small force in through the sewers to open the gates for you is a great idea, but why stop at only six? Why not have a few groups in reserve in case something happens to your all-dwarf gate opening force  that might, like, doom your entire mission or something?

18) Re: Peter Dinklage: You know that move Tyrion uses in the Battle of the Blackwater (screen version, of course), where he takes his axe to a guy's leg and then bashes his head in when he falls? That is apparently the standard move for little people armed with axes, because the dwarves in this movie used it to great effect.

19) Kristen Stewart in metal armor. Really? The girl weights about 100 pounds. It would squish her. On the other hand, at least it was sensible armor.

(P.S. The Huntsman does not actually "train" Kristen Stewart for battle, no matter what the promotional materials say. That was just a cruel, cruel lie meant to spike my interest in the film.)

20) Speaking of unlikely people in plate armor, the whole battle sequence reminded me a lot of the (awful, but very pretty) Tim Burton Alice & Wonderland.

And now that I think about it, you could argue that the Huntsman has more than a few things in common with Johnny Depp's (horrifying) Mad Hatter. I wonder how Chris Hemsworth is at the futterwacken?)

21) The throne-room scene at the end reminded me a lot of the final fight in Stardust. The "youth-stealing witch" plotline had a lot to do with that movie, too, and several of the dwarves reminded me a bit of the cross-dressing airship captain. I wonder if the director was a fan?

22) I was going to say something about the unresolved love triangle at the end of the movie, but apparently they've decided to go ahead with a sequel. We all know that Kristen Stewart is going to end up with the Huntsman, of course-- his name's in the title, after all-- but I'm glad I'll be able to make all the Twilight jokes that were running through my head in the last ten minutes of the movie.

Will not make "imprinting" joke... will not make "imprinting" joke...

So: On the whole, this was actually a really enjoyable movie. There were a lot of things that strong echoes of earlier movie moments, but to be fair there are a lot of things in fantasy settings that do get repeated over and over again, and at worst this was a very pretty collage. I would have liked to see Kristen Stewart's acting improve a little more, and I would have loved to see Viggo Mortensen in the role of the Huntsman, but of course you can't have everything you want. On the whole, I'd recommend this as a fun movie to watch if you're fond of fairy tales.

So: have you seen Snow White and the Huntsman? What about that other movie? If you've seen both of them, how do they compare?