Snow White and the Huntsman

[Despanan]

Oh my god FUCK THIS MOVIE.

Snow White & the Huntsman is BAD. Like, comically bad. For this one I'm going to place the blame squarely on the screenwriters. They seem to have no understanding of fairytales, fantasy, or story structure in general, and are just throwing tropes (and shots) they've seen in other movies at the screen to see what sticks. At on point they rip off Miyuzaki's Princess Mononoke shot for shot. Nothing is properly established or foreshadowed, none of the characters plans make sense, you could launch a spaceship through the plotholes and the villains are both complete doddering idiots.

The fun of it is watching the actors stumble around the frame desperately trying to make sense of what they have to say and do, which is downright hilarious.

It's a shame: It would make a good beer movie if it weren't so goddamn long.

if the Queen wanted to rule through the king, why did she kill him in such an obvious manner? If she wanted to kill him and rule by force, why did she marry & sleep with hum? Why did she need a real army if she could make glass soldiers? Why did no one notice the giant foreign army outside their walls? Why did the queen have to only open a door to let an entire army in? Why was she nice to snow white I she's only going to throw her in the tower half a day later? Why did no one know Snow White was in that tower? Why does no one know that there's an empire run by a crazy super-hot youth-sucking witch? - you'd think that something the king would know about.

Why did the Queen have an empire, but only rule that one kingdom? If the queen only wanted to rule one country why did she have an empire in the first place? Why didn't she conquer any other countries?

What exactly did the queen even WANT? She wanted power...but WHY? She wanted to stay young...but only because her beauty was power?

WHY WAS HER BEAUTY HER POWER? I mean, she was a low-class girl being attacked by brigands, beauty in that situation would just just get you *****. They spared her brother, so they were clearly sparing children, so why did she even need the magic beauty power?

Name one thing snow white likes. ONE hobby. One ambition. One activity. Birds...I guess.

Other than killing the queen, name one thing Snow White does that effects the plot in a meaningful way. I mean, she wakes up and gives a speech, but those guys were ready to go to war without that....but other than that she's completely passive the entire movie, even when she's fighting she's passive.

If the queen killed the huntsman's wife, why was he simply surly with her? Why did he work with her at all? If he didn't know, when did he find out? When the brother said that shit? How did he know the brother was even telling the truth? If she did disappear, wouldn't he have known it was the queen? Since those women cut their faces it was clearly common knowledge? Why the hell did that not raise any alarm bells.

Name a scene, which shows the huntsman hunting. Name one thing, other than snow white that the huntsman hunts.

WHY DID NO ONE DIE IN THE FOREST? Not a single guy on either side died in the deadly forest - from the forest.

Why did the brother tell the huntsman he couldn't get his wife back? All he had to say was "We can't do it here, my sister is back at the castle" Telling the huntsman he'd been lied to made no sense there, because that would only cause the worst outcome.

Why was the huntsman so worried about the wood, but then he found Snow White in like, ten minutes with no trouble at all?

What is actually dangerous about the wood? No one got killed by it, and tons of people were running around in it, and all it did was get you high. And there was a single troll.

Why did that Troll just stop? Was he in love with Snow White? Why would a troll be attracted to Snow White? If he was in love with her why did he just let her leave?

Why were those women just waiting for them in the boats? Were they just hanging out? Why keep guard out there anyway? It's the forest, no one goes into the forest. That's an unlikely place to have to guard...and if you did have to guard it, why guard it from tiny boats and not from the opposite river bank?

Why does the brother know where they are? He clearly needed the huntsman to find snow white...but then he just finds them over and over again on his own. If he found some other guy to find them, why did need the huntsman to begin with? they established that he was the only one who could find anyone in the wood. Why go with the drunk, surly huntsman you have to lie to if there are better candidates who will just do it at the drop of a hat?

Snow White had no agency. She never acted on the world herself, she's only acted upon. She only gets things accomplished via her beauty and in her father's name. She's less of a woman, and more of a living McGuffin.

Why does Snow White not recruit women to fight? Is she the only woman in the kingdom who can fight?

WHY can she fight? WHY can she even ride? Why can she wear armor? She spent the last decade in the tower.

What was she doing in the tower for a decade? Why was she not insane, sickly, and filthy from being confined in a tiny dirty room for a decade.

Why did she charge a castle? Cavalry charges are not effective against castles, when they got inside the castle, they just got off their horses. So why did they need them and where did their horses go?

WHERE DID THE WHITE HORSE AT THE BEGINNING EVEN COME FROM? WAS IT JUST HANGING OUT ON THE BEACH FOR NO REASON? HORSES DON'T HANG OUT ON BEACHES HORSES GRAZE.

Why did they try to time the infiltration with a cavalry charge? That seems like it would be insanely difficult to pull off.

Why is anyone working for the evil queen? Are they in love with her? Then why don't they show any interest? The only person who's clearly attracted to the queen is her brother.

Name one time you see Snow White give the Huntsman a hard time. ONE TIME. All she does is quietly follow him and do everything he says.

Does the queen drain beauty, then why did Gretel get old? If she drains youth, why does cutting your face make you un-drainable. Your age has nothing to do with whether or not you have scars.

What did the Queen even want to do? Be safe? She was already invincible. Rule? Then why did she change kingdoms, she was already a ruler. Become immortal? SHe's not even aware that that's a possibility till like, 2/3rds into the movie.

I could go on for PAGES. Nothing anyone did made any sense at all, the film just pretended it did then and moved on to the next scene hoping we wouldn't notice.

You can dissect any film and ask questions - but I didn't have to
do that to get these questions - these naturally arose because the script is structured so horribly and haphazardly that it's impossible not to wonder what the he'll is going on.

On an analysis standpoint: We need more movies with women at the helm. Unfortunately, that's not Snow White and the Huntsman: both the director and the screenwriter were men.

Throughout the movie, the only female who has any agency is the Queen - and she's evil.

While this film had 1 "good" female role (I'm not counting Snow White, because as I pointed out before, she doesn't do anything) The female characters only gain their power by appealing to men. They are only powerful in ways that men will enjoy.

Snow White leads an army of men, in her father's name. She's only important because of him, and her usefulness to the Queen (which came out of nowhere btw)

Similarly the queen while capable of taking over the kingdom by force, had to marry Snow White's father (even though that was completely pointless, but once again poor screenwriting). When Snow White attacked the castle, instead of doing the logical thing and actively attacking Snow White (cause who cares if she loses the battle if she's immortal) she just sits in the tower and does nothing until SW shows up to kill her.

Why did Snow White drop her shield? Dammit! See, I can't stop doing it.

But there is one good thing about this - America wants more female agency in their movies, we want films with women at the helm so badly we're willing to accept these poor substitutes, so hopefully we'll get a real movie about female power, written by women, that portrays female power in a way that doesn't have the main character fighting to restore the patriarchy.

In fact: I think we can actually rightly call this movie misogynistic. There are only four things which give women value in SWATH:

1) Beauty

2) Purity

3) Their fathers

4) Youth (because women who are old can't be beautiful amirite?!!)

So basically Snow White is dangerous to the slutty evil queen because she's a more beautiful virgin...because you know, virginity is what makes women pure.

TL;DR So, what does Snow White and the Huntsman say about female power? It says they don't have any. It reinforces the idea that female worth comes from beauty, youth, purity, and who their father is.

Who's the Bad woman? The one who is afraid of losing the worth men bestowed on her because they like how she looks; the one who tries to gain power, and DO things, and get what she wants for herself; the one who has had sex, the one who has no father.

Who is the good girl? The one who is young, and beautiful, and super-appealing to ALL the males (even a troll and a creepy albino) the one who has no personal wants, and who's only goal is to help the men. The one Who's a virgin. The one with a royal father.

Snow White and the Huntsmen says: We can't have femal power, because female power results in everything being made of mud and shit. Everyone being miserable, and all of the good, beautiful, passive girls getting their looks and youth sucked out of them by the woman who is trying to actually change things.

Oh my God, Fuck this movie.

[Murder.Of.Crows]

Damn, this movie looked like it had a lot of potential too. I am seriously disappoint.

[Renatus]

Sounds like a perfect movie for Kristen Stewart's acting skills, and a continuation of her streak of movies that make women look weak.

[Saya]

What were you expecting, dude? Its the director's very first movie, and its trying to redeem a fairy tale that is inherently sexist (also shadeist?).

Originally Posted by Renatus

Sounds like a perfect movie for Kristen Stewart's acting skills, and a continuation of her streak of movies that make women look weak.

She also played Joan Jett and before Twilight she did a film adaptation of Speak, which was about a rrape survivor. To be fair to her acting in Twilight, I couldn't read Bella as acting any other way, that is exactly how she's written in the books.

Mostly I just want her to stick with indie films or just come out of the closet already and do more lesbian films.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Saya

What were you expecting, dude? Its the director's very first movie, and its trying to redeem a fairy tale that is inherently sexist (also shadeist?).

I expected it to suck. I'm just amazed at how fucked it is structurally, and I'm amazed that it's being held up as a feminist movie about female power.

[Saya]

Well, its been the hobby of film for a long time to make fairy tales more palatable to feminist sensibilities, more recent examples are Ever After and Ella Enchanted and arguably Shrek, but I think Disney was even kinda going for it with Sleeping Beauty, yeah the princess is useless but she's not the hero of the film, neither is the prince, its the Golden Girls in fairy form.

But the critique against the "feminist" remakings its the same, is that the powerful, sexual woman is evil (Maleficent, Ursula, the evil stepmother, pick your fairy tale in which she appears). Its an essential part of the story though, unless we do a remake with an evil step father instead, but then people will scream its too PC and the folklorists get their panties in a twist.

I'd also argue I don't really care about the critique of female dictatorships, a dictatorship is a dictatorship. I don't think mimicking male power is feminist since male power is dominating and oppressive. I had to recently rant about the reboot of the Amazons in Wonder Woman because of how they reinvision a whole society of women, from a paradise where the women lived in peace to a barbaric society of rapists and baby killers. Its the society as a whole that's now fucked up, not Hippolyta who's apparently one of the nicer ones because she boned consensually. For Snow White, its about a young woman who's selling point is that she's the whitest white girl in all of whitedom and her stepmother envies her for that. There's little room for feminist retelling, its arguably shadeist in its very name and heteronormative, and while it puts a woman in as a protagonist in a fantasy/action film, which is sorely lacking to the point where Jackson is making up a female character to put into The Hobbit for the sake of it not being an entire sausage fest, its still same old same old and doesn't push to far. But that's to be expected of Hollywood, really, they're not going to make something that points out how fucked up all the other films they make are. V For Vendetta, for example, wasn't ever going to be about anti-capitalism or anarchism despite that being the whole point of the comic.

This reminds me that I haven't read The Bloody Chamber yet, but the only successful retelling of a fairy tale when it comes to making it feminist sensible, that I've come across, was probably the video game The Path, and a lot of people got upset about that because of the implied rrape.

[Despanan]

It's a very bad movie which is under the impression that it's a very good movie.

[Despanan]

I thought I should write a more formal review of this terrible movie.

So I did.

[Saya]

What happened to your beard? D:

[Despanan]

That pic. is from a few years ago, and I can't change it, or update my profile information unfortunately.

rest assured, I still have my beard, though as the summer heat creeps in I will freak out and shave it.

I do it like clockwork, then hate it, and then grow it back in the fall.