Wednesday 6 June 2012

Snow White and The Huntsman : Review


All hail Queen Ravenna. Pertaining to the movie, Snow White and The Huntsman, I will now commence all the bashing of this terrific yet horrendous movie which has been screening for almost a week now. The reason I chose this poster of Charlize Theron posing as the Evil Queen in the remake of our beloved fairy tale, heart-embedded kiddie story back in the 1990s is because she is actually the only one worth mentioning inside this movie.

Why? As you can see, a normal actress like Charlize Theron who have acted in countless opposites of many protagonist movie, it is still quite hard to embody a character which everyone had already had a blueprint for. Especially in the case of the Evil Queen. Why is it so? Because like it or not, portraying an evil, power thirst queen is not pretty easy. The emotions and the character embodiment is dramatic.

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Anyway, before I stray more into the evil queen obsession of mine, let me steer you guys back. Yes, I do love the Evil queen in sense, thus eliminating the needs to feel at awe for the other characters, but that would be unfair. Charlize Theron successfully carried out the darker version of the evil queen. Omitting the recent image of the Evil Queen played by Julia Roberts in "Mirror Mirror", rather a comical and cynical one, Ravenna is a different albeit almost the same Evil Queen in the original Snow White. She thirst for power, but in a different perspective. Back when she was just a girl, she was kidnapped by a tyrannical warlord and she was kept alive because of her enchanting beauty. Before she was taken away, her mother (a sorceress) told her that beauty can rule over men. With that thought in mind, she acknowledges that 'beauty' is a key to power and that is all that matter besides owning an entire kingdom. With each reigning of kingdoms, she exact vengeance against tyrants, those who made her suffer through the years no end.Thus, her journey of attaining neverending power from usurping kingdoms after kingdoms, to maintain her power which resides in her staying young and beautiful.

Charlize Theron manages to capture the hearts, not only the producer and the other actors, but most of the fan worldwide as the evil queen. You could say, she magically 'enchants' them all with her talents in bringing the power driven queen to live through her sharp acting skills. You can see that she tries really hard to act the character as she reaches the highest octave of her voice, time after time, throughout the movie yelling and wailing, that her eyes turn red almost 70% of the movie. 


Now, let's talk about our Huntsman, or as you guys might recognize him as the mighty Asgardian God of Thunder, Thor. But that's about another movie (two, actually). In this recaptured fairy tale however, Chris Hemsworth is actually just another drunk-out-of-his-life hunter who lost his wife and spend the rest of his day, drunk and beaten by others. However that he may or may not have tried, it's hard to shake off the Thor image, even when he's playing another character. But let's not be hasty with the judgement.

He acted surprisingly well from this point of view, but despite it all, he's just another actor to look at in this movie. Not many interesting factor to go on from this movie about him, despite the fact that he is actually the one to bring back Snow White from the deep sleep, but alas, she didn't even know it was him. The producer of this movie however took an interesting turn to develop the huntsman into a far more greater character impacting the story, even more than the prince himself.

Moving on finally, to the alleged Snow White. Or the I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-here-in-this-movie princess which seems to be a bit of a plot turner, and that's it. Let's face it. Snow White is supposed to be pure and innocent, but our Kirsten Stewart's version of Snow is nothing more than a confused and bewildered princess. Well hey, what to expect from a captive in a cell for a long time. But we can't hate Kirsten for the part that she play because that is what the producer of this movie wanted her to portray who this version of Snow White is.

She got locked in the tower, escaped with the help of some birds (which was actually fairies), got lost in the dark forest, gotten acquainted with seven bandit dwarfs, bit a poisoned apple, fell into deep sleep, woke up after being kissed (without knowing who was it), and inspired a band of peasants and farmers to raise up their pitchforks and march for a battle with the Evil Queen's forces, wins the battle, and finally became the queen. I care not about what the plot says about Snow White in this movie that much, but there are a few misdemeanor in her acting in this movie that I would like to point out as dreadful.

Yes, she may have gotten away with it in the Twilight series for being a stiff wall of emotions and expression, but that same image doesn't work as Snow White. She just seemed to pale and uninteresting to even look at. And please, 'fairer than the evil queen'? Yes, she may be fair, but she doesn't act like it. Throughout the whole movie, you might eventually lift your gaze from her to Chris or even the candied Sam Claflin (the prince) because they are much more pleasant to look at. And trust me on that, even Chris is much more 'fairer' than her. 

That wraps up the main cast. What? Why am I leaving out the dwarfs and the prince? Because believe me or not, this is the worst part of the movie. There are tons of bad things to comment on this movie but I will mention about the one aspect of the movie which was spread throughout the whole movie.

OBSOLETE ITEMS

1. The classic Snow White was that The Prince was the one to kiss her and revive her from the deep sleep. But since The huntsman was the one that Snow White had big crush on the huntsman instead, he was the one with the cure to revive her, known as the 'kiss of true love'. And because of this reason, Prince William (Sam Claflin) is no longer an important cast. The producer can cut him off from this movie and it will still makes sense. Through an overall, 'the glass is half full' view, he makes up a good actor, and actually quite an eye-catching prince, though technically in the move, he's the duke's son, not an actual prince.


2. The completely different set of seven dwarfs. Yes, they refused to recycle the old ones, just like 'Mirror Mirror' also strive for, a fresh new aspects. But at the very least those dwarfs are really unique, each and every one of them, and had strong ties to Snow White's growth as a character in the movie. However, in this version, they remain to be a band of misfits that have absolutely no reason to co-exist in the movie at all. Take them out, and you can still enjoy the movie. They don't even bring enough comical point to even save themselves.

3. Snow White is revered as 'a friend of nature' and that trait is unique to Snow White. In this version, they had calming down a troll from killing her and the huntsman (which actually works), and near the end where she met the lord of the sanctuary. And for what? Just to pet him and finally he got shot by an arrow. These two scenes are unlikely relevant at all to the movie. They can omit these part too and the movie should still be working well. Except for the troll part, though.

4. And believe it or not, they could take out Snow White as the main character and the movie it will still be fine. She's there only for one and one reason. To end the Queen's reign. I'm not saying, they should omit her, but put her as a non-lead characters. (And this has nothing to do with Kirsten's acting, which was dreadful.)


Basically, a lot of the scenes in the movie can be added up to be quite useless. The managed to put in a lot of non-story-plot-related and there-for-nothing scenes in this movie. I personally think that they can take those out and the movie should still be fine.

Counting from the other aspects of the movie such as the music, and the action, it was an okay movie along with the great works from both creative and graphic design. I could still rise up and say that this is a great movie, but a lot of flaws can be detected in it. Watching it once is enough for me, even with Charlize's tempting Evil Queen addendum. Honestly, this movie should be called Ravenna (as per to the Evil Queen's name) rather than Snow White and the Huntsman. This is because the whole plot of the story entails to the Ravenna more than it does to Snow White. She's the main character of this movie, the way I see it.


Well, that's what I think anyway. Feel free to disagree. I hold no laws against criticism or hate towards me. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and this is my opinion of the movie.

1 comment:

  1. It is truly a great work from Charlize Theron.It was a lot better than I thought, it looked great and was a pretty engaging re-telling of an old story.

    ReplyDelete

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