Snow White unleashes her inner action hero
Michael Ordoña
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Kristen Stewart plays Snow White as an action hero who trades in her crown for armor and a sword under the tutelage of a huntsman, played by Chris Hemsworth, in "Snow White and the Huntsman."
Once upon a time, it seemed not every Hollywood movie was based on a story for kids - a comic, a book series, something out of Grimm. But if, as some believe, there really are only seven or so stories in the world, even that belief was a fairy tale. Still, the familiar complaint that movie plots are too ... familiar is hard to rebut when the redoubtable Snow White falls on TV, direct-to-video and cineplex screens five times this year.
Why the fascination with a character best known as Disney's second most inactive princess (Sleeping Beauty retains that crown)? Since the Brothers Grimm collected it among other tales in 1812, her story has been retold in more forms than an Evil Queen can disguise herself in.
There have been more than 30 films, shorts and TV shows; essays and novels (A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter); short stories (Neil Gaiman); songs (the Cure, Rammstein); video games; and an anime ("Mario OVA" with Princess Peach as Snow White and King Koopa as the Evil Queen). There are even poems by Alexander Pushkin, Roald Dahl and Anne Sexton ("Beauty is a simple passion/ But, oh my friends, in the end/ You will dance the fire dance in iron shoes"). And as San Francisco theatergoers know, Snow is cool in the as-much-a-fixture-as-permafrost "Beach Blanket Babylon."
In the Christopher Booker reductionist view that only seven plots exist, her story best fits the "Overcoming the Monster" category. If the Snow White name conveys anything, it's purity. That's also purity of character design; she is traditionally uncomplicated. She is passive and good and eminently rescueable.
She's the one the serving suggestion says you're to root for even if her primary attributes are inertia and gullibility - in the original Grimm version, she gets tricked not once, but three times by the Evil Queen's prank gifts. "Fool me once, shame on you ... fool me twice, shame on me ..."
Interestingly, early versions of the tale have her at odds with not her wicked stepmother but her murderous mother - quite a different, more horrifying message. The heroine we all know has no such stain of insanity in her genes, nor such deep psychological scars.
Yet here Snow is again, and there, and there. It's practically a blizzard.
In ABC's "Once Upon a Time," Snow, Prince Charming, Rumplestiltskin and others populate the suspiciously named community of Storybrooke. If you've seen "Once," you may have seen it twice: Stipulated, "Once" is a supernatural soap opera in which many of the fairy-tale characters are unaware of their magical lives, but ABC also had a late-'80s series called "The Charmings," in which Snow and Prince live out a wacky modern suburban existence.
And that's without noting NBC's "Grimm," a police procedural in which fairy-tale refugees commit lots of crimes in Portland, Ore., which smacks a bit of "Night Stalker" and "X-Files."
Four new Snow White movies
Apart from the ABC show, there are no fewer than four new Snow White movies this year: April's "Mirror Mirror" and June's "Snow White and the Huntsman" in theaters, plus two direct-to-video extravaganzas, "Grimm's Snow White" and "Snow White: A Deadly Summer," which seems to exist, although there's precious little evidence of it.
According to Horror News.net, "Grimm's" features a blond Snow White, ravenous lizards, "giant hyena-dog-things and elf ninjas." And it was made by the folks behind "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus," who clearly belong in a cinematic asylum. It has to be good.
"Deadly Summer" apparently has little connection to the fairy tale beyond the protagonist's name and a mean stepmother who has psychotic episodes involving a mirror (Maureen McCormick marshaling her inner evil). It's a slasher flick that looks from its trailer to be shot through egregious blue filters. Perhaps that's the filmmakers' clever, meta way of saying this is a metaphorical filter revealing the deeper meanings of ... no, actually, it just looks like an excuse to chop up teens at a discipline camp during fake nighttime.
The new theatrical features, however, refract the story through the lens of a more modern view of female strength. As if the studios had anticipated the current brouhaha over a "war on women," they magically have on their hands two movies about women who wage war in return. Here come the conspiracy theories!
In the beautifully designed "Mirror Mirror," the Audrey Hepburn-esque heroine (Lily Collins, daughter of Phil) meanders prettily through the Evil Queen's oppression of not just her but her entire kingdom (the 99 percent). Then she experiences a Buddha-like awakening to the plight of the poorest around her when finally free of the hypnotic trappings of palace luxury.
A band of diminutive, bullied outcasts teach her to fight back. Her transition from rose to thorn eventually means freedom for her people and acceptance for the dwarves. So for them, it gets better. And the film grossed more than $150 million worldwide in its first six weeks, so those on the business end lived happily ever after.
"Snow White and the Huntsman" did not screen in time for advance press, but from all indications depicts the heretofore inactive princess taking arms against a sea of troubles, on an epic scale. Kristen Stewart goes from vampires (in "Twilight") to witches (Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen) and a Thor-oughly hunky Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) in another envisioning of Snow as warrior princess.
Evil Queen-slaying arts
Advance materials play up the action and remarkable visuals, with Snow escaping from prison and not being killed by the Huntsman, but being trained in the Evil Queen-slaying arts by him. This Snow White ditches the princess dress for black armor and sword.
If even this passive-figure-becomes-warrior-princess twist sounds familiar, it is: "Huntsman's" producer, Joe Roth, recently struck the billion-dollar bell with the "Lord of the Rings"-ish Tim Burton "Alice in Wonderland." It also resonates as another in Booker's handful of plots ("Voyage and Return" or "Rebirth").
Perhaps there really are only seven stories in the world.
Snow White and the Huntsman (PG-13) opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.
To see a trailer, go to snowwhiteandthehuntsman.com.
Non-crummy fairy-tale movies
Disney's animated stable contains some of the best-known fairy-tale movies, but here are others of note.
Classics
Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et La Bête" (1946) and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Red Shoes" (1948) are considered by some to be the greatest live-action films based on children's stories. The Cocteau placed No. 26 on Empire's 2010 list of 100 best films of world cinema. "Red Shoes" won two Oscars amid multiple nominations.
The five-film "Shrek" franchise is justly adored for marrying kids' excitement with sly humor for adults in its reimagining of well-known stories from other points of view.
Fractured, in a good way
"Freeway" (1996): Reese Witherspoon is a runaway teen stalked by Keifer Sutherland, a serial killer (Bob Wolverton), on her way to Grandma's house. Yep, it's a twisted twist on "Little Red Riding Hood": violent, sexual, weird. Two thumbs up! It's wickedly funny.
"The Company of Wolves" (1984): More shades of "Little Red Riding Hood," this time using wolves and transformation as metaphors for sexuality. It's as dark as the woods, and full of frightening creatures - and its intelligence is thick as the trees. Highly recommended.
"Pretty Woman" (1990): It has its charms, although a more realistically cast hooker-as-Cinderella tale would switch Julia Roberts and Richard Gere with Juno Temple and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Their own stories
"The Princess Bride" (1987): The most quotable film on this list also may be simply the best. Rob Reiner's film of William Goldman's book captures the wonder of bedtime stories at their best, with a great script, top-notch cast (including Mandy Patinkin, Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest) and superb sword fighting. A classic.
"Legend" (1985): Ridley Scott, unicorns, Tom Cruise, the lovely Mia Sara and Tim Curry in awesome demon makeup. Looks great; that's about it.