Review - Snow White and the Huntsman

Grade: B-

Comic book fans of a certain age--as if there are that many fans that aren’t of a certain age--will remember the late 80s to early 00s as era where “grim and gritty” trappings became de rigueur for comics. It was a time when Superman died, Batman was paralyzed, and big guns replaced big hearts. Comic scholars claim this “dark age” was as much a response to the cheerful superheroics that marked the 60s and 70s as it was an attempt to grab a more “adult” audience. 

Like the comics industry, this year’s two Snow White movies have faced a similar identity crisis in trying to escape the fairy tales kid-friendly image and reach the 18-35 demo. Back in March, Tarsem Singh delivered a whimsical, snarky re-imagining of Grimm’s classic tale; now, Rupert Sanders offers a grimmer, grittier Snow White with style points lifted wholesale from Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. How timely.

Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman (SWATH) focuses mostly on the evil queen, Ravenna, played with ridiculous over-the-top aplomb by Charlize “I like getting ugly and naked on camera because it shows I’m serious” Theron. Ravenna is a post-feminist evil queen who believes she is striking back at men for discarding women once they pass an “expiration date”. Ravenna comes across one such man, a king no less, who has just lost his wife and remains the sole comfort for his daughter, who will grow into the informed beauty Snow White, played with the drowsy red-eyed awkwardness that is to be expected of Kristen Stewart. Ravenna proceeds to kill the king and take the kingdom while the sheer toxicity of her reign brings only decay. During such time, Ravenna, who has a taste for milk bathes and draining the youth from nubile peasant girls, wisely locks Snow White away, on the word of the liquid metal Mirror-Mirror-2000, for fear of the cursed/blessed by birth Snow’s ability to destroy her.

When Snow escapes, thanks to the horniness of Ravenna’s creepy wannabe pedophile brother with a dopey squire cut (Sam Spruell), Ravenna dispatches a drunken Asgardian...er...Huntsman, Chris Hemsworth playing up the Han Solo angle, to retrieve Snow from the mystical, hypnotic Black Forest. Meanwhile, the remnants of the old kingdom--including seven grumbly, battle hardened dwarves (played by such genre vets Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, and Nick Frost) and  Snow’s childhood friend and second coming of Will Turner/Legolas, charming “Prince” William (Sam Claflin)--are mobilizing against Ravenna. As Snow journeys to side with the resistance and witnesses the damage of Ravenna’s grip, she must embrace her destiny as “the one” and garner the love of her people, especially that of her two hunky would-be suitors.

The love triangle that surfaces by the tail end of Sanders SWATH is only one of many curious spins on the Snow White tale that make SWATH such an interesting exercise. Visually, it is fairly stunning, despite being bogged down with a cloudy gray palette. The whole Game of Thrones aesthetic at play grounds this fairy tale and allows for some adequate fight scenes that recall the smaller battles from Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy, but it also makes the proceedings dishearteningly dour in the midst of some high fantasy ridiculousness. Sure, the dwarves bring a little comic relief, as does Hemsworth with his Harrison Ford impression and Theron’s unintentionally comic scenery chewing, and there’s fairies and trolls and the like, but generally, this is a pretty joyless affair. Even the performances do little to relieve the seriousness of the proceedings. Stewart seems ill-equipped to lead anyone into a battle that doesn’t involve pouting, and Theron prefers to be a preening cartoon rather than a three-dimensional character. Thankfully, Hemsworth brings some of his Thunder God presence to bear to balance Stewart’s languor and Theron’s melodramatics. 

From Stewart’s conflicted Bruce Wayne-esque arc to Theron’s Joker-esque megalomania to the Game of Thrones militarism, Sanders was clearly aiming for the crossover audience by melding the classic princess narrative with the amped-up fantasy and action elements, but in doing so he lost the core of the tale. In SWATH, the Snow white tale is no longer solely about the fear of aging and society’s obsession with youth; it is a feminist spin on the Hero’s Journey with a dash of Twilight--albeit with much more worthy suitors--and a smattering of the style and storytelling from everything from Star Wars to the latest Alice in Wonderland adaptation. That said, SWATH isn’t terrible, and in fact, has a number of solid moments that will make audiences recall their first time seeing Star Wars or LOTR, but it does so in such an alternatively melancholy and melodramatic manner that it is hard to view this as a worthy successor to those film’s legacies.

The Yin and Yang of it

Yin: Dour re-imagining that rips off some of the most popular epic fantasy films of the past thirty years to mold Snow White into a post-feminist hero’s journey. Stewart plays to type while Theron goes beyond over the top.

Yang: Decent action and a some solid visuals help to spread the appeal of a tale unfairly tagged “girls only”. Occasionally recalls the best qualities of Star Wars, LOTR, and Game of Thrones all wrapped into a gloomy package.

In-Between: Chris Hemsworth’s Huntsman sports a silly Scottish accent. In one scene, the accent drops and his native accent, the one he uses for Thor, surfaces, and I could not help but think how he would crush every villain if he called for Mjolnir.