Snow White and the Huntsman (rant)

I'm a bit late on this one, but I guess it's better late than never. As far as I know, the general word on the street about this movie is that it's "not as bad as it seems". I respectfully disagree.

Well, not so respectfully. By the way, this review is going to be considerably more spoilery than what I usually write, so if you possibly believe your "enjoyment" will be hampered by knowing plot details, turn back now. Know, though, that I have little positive to say about the movie.

Snow White and the Huntsman is damn bad. Really bad. Laughably bad. It's a two-hour fantasy spectacle with next to nothing fantastical or spectacular about it, with some of the worst casting I've ever seen in my life. I don't think I've ever before complained about casting as a part of a movie. Sure, I've done it about individual characters, but never as a whole. I don't think there's a single character in this film who's cast well.

Where do I start? The name of the film is completely misleading. Did you know that the Prince Charming character still exists in this retelling? There's actually a love triangle. The huntsman (who is never given another name in the film, in some sort of attempt at "deep and meaningful"), played by Chris Hemsworth, is really arbitrary to the movie. His relationship with Snow White is barely developed at all, and in the end he just leaves when she's crowned Queen.

Snow White (Kristen Stewart) herself is one of the blandest, least interesting heroines I've seen in a movie in a long time. Her character is so inconsistent it's almost impossible to name any sort of qualities about her personality. They try to paint her as the Super-Good Holy Mega-Pure Maiden of Destiny, but she doesn't really come off as especially pure in spirit at all. She acts like any person who's being first imprisoned and then pursued. Later, before the laughably bad action finale, she suddenly becomes this fierce military leader just because, with no kind of explanation other than "it's her destiny to win". If you're trying to go for the Pure Maiden Who Can Ride the Unicorn and Is Flocked Around By Animals archetype, you are not allowed to make that character a military leader who rides a horse into battle and swings a sword to kill people. Read The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren sometime. In it, the characters discuss this dilemma.

The Queen (Charlize Theron) is one of the few enjoyable things about the movie, in the same sense that Bruce Payne is the most enjoyable thing about Dungeons and Dragons (playing the respectful role of That Blue-Lipped Guy): she is unintentionally hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing almost every time she was on-screen. The completely original character of the Queen's brother Finn is also really funny, which is partly because the character isn't the least bit threatening and partly because he sports the funniest haircut I've ever seen. That hairdo is so silly that there are no pictures of it online. I guess the actor demanded to be kept out of the marketing.

After Snow White escapes into the forest, the bad guys hire the Huntsman to track her. He immediately chooses to save her instead and they run from one horribad action scene to another. The movie tries to justify the Huntsman's presence by saying that he is the only man who has ever went to the Black Forest and returned. Yet, when he guides the villains into the forest, he basically just says: "Wait here, I'll go get her." And then he follows her tracks and finds her nearby. The Queen's men didn't need him at all, it seems, because it's later established they have a tracker of their own. The titular characters then escape through the forest and find this hidden village. The Queen's minions show up there within hours. They followed the heroes' tracks through the forest? I thought only the Huntsman was able to navigate through! Why do you lie to me, movie?

To skip ahead a bit, there's the part with the apple about half an hour before the end. It's established that Snow White is the only one who can kill the Queen, and the Queen can gain eternal youth by killing Snow White. So she poisons the girl and then proceeds to incredibly slowly drain her soul or whatever. The other good guys show up, and the Queen flees. Why? They can't kill her! The only person in the world who can kill her is comatose in the ground! JUST KILL HER FRIENDS AND THEN TAKE YOUR TIME IN FULFILLING YOUR PLANS! AAAARGHBAGFHG!

So here's the very short list of good things: I kinda like the concept of women committing self-mutilation to stay under the Queen's "fairness radar". That was clever, and actually carried dark ideas that could have been explored more if the movie wasn't preoccupied with trying to be super-hip for the young-uns or whatnot. Secondly, the visuals for the fairy forest are initially really cool, and I like the design of most of the stuff. Though that changes quickly with some of the worst CGI magpies I've ever seen. They look like something out of a 90s educational feature with a special effects budget of fuck all. Thirdly, the Queen's glass-shard minion would have been really cool if basically all of its screen-time hadn't been in the trailers already (and if it wasn't basically stolen from Medi-Evil).

It's just a really bland and dumb movie. I only got this upset about it in retrospect, when I realised it had initially fooled me into thinking it was average. Don't go see Snow White and the Huntsman. It has horrible performances (both bland and overblown in nature), incredibly large plot holes, very weak drama and suspense, and insults the intelligence of its audience.

Also, there's eight dwarves. Why?

The Avengers

The huge crossover film which the Marvel movie continuity has been building up to, The Avengers is a Joss Whedon blockbuster about Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) teaming up to fight Thor's evil brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who is poised to take over Earth. However, "teaming up" is easier said that done, and Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has to do a lot of managing to keep the team from tearing itself apart before Loki and his allies from another dimension can.

Finally, we get a movie that depicts superhero comics accurately: you need to know the central characters and premises of about half a dozen different stories to understand anything that's going on. Yay!

I was kind of wary about this film because of two things: The trailers mostly focused on a huge metropolitan battle that was cut so that it looked like it was taken right out of Transformers 3, as well as Robert Downey Jr. doing his thing, which I feel is starting to get old. Well, screw marketing, because once again it has done a great job at making a good movie look bad. Not only is that action scene they hyped way better when you don't have to butcher it to keep the invading army from appearing on screen, but they picked the worst jokes in the movie for their adverts. Not only does Downey get a lot of good lines, but everyone does. There's a surprising lot of comedy, and every character gets to crack jokes, not just the clown.

Thor and Captain America both had pacing as their biggest issue. Cap had way too little stuff happen in between his becoming a superhero and the final battle. Thor took its sweet time starting, and then had way too much build-up to a way too small climax. Avengers gets this just right. We already know these characters, there's no need to establish them any more. Let's just start off with the crisis presenting itself, then get the characters together, and then see what we can make happen with them. I'll admit I was getting worried about a quarter way in that the movie is going to suffer from having too many subplots, but thankfully most of them are resolved by the way the final action climax hits home. The movie is two hours and a third, but it accomplishes so much that you'll swear there's no way they fit all that in one hundred and forty minutes.

The performances are really good. I never saw Ed Norton's Hulk for comparison, but Mark Ruffalo is a fantastic Bruce Banner. He has the body language of a person who's trying really hard to keep themselves in check. All the returning cast keep up the high quality up, but to my surprise the standout star of the film was Tom Hiddleston. I was kind of indifferent toward Loki in Thor, because he was way too obviously evil but they tried to play him as this tragic character. Here, he's past being sympathetic, so Hiddleston gets to be a straight-up villain, and it works greatly. He does his slimy villain speeches, he addresses the people he wants to rule, he gets arrogant and he gets furious. It's just a really good basic evil villain, who is still kept fresh with expert writing.

The action is really well-done. All the characters get to shine, and their individual superpowers are used well together and never conveniently discarded to fit a scene better. The big battle scenes flow well, and you can keep track of where everyone is and what they're doing. There's this really great sweeping battle shot that I can't really describe to you all: it has to be seen to be believed. I think that Loki's evil army allies are maybe a little bit too... Stormtroopery, though at least unlike Stormtroopers, they don't get taken down by teddy bears (who would be the New York police department in this allegory, I guess).

The 3D was... okay, I guess. There was one scene early on where I had trouble telling what was happening because it was so dark, but other than that I was never bothered. There were a couple of cool 3D shots, mostly having to do with Hawkeye's crazy arrow skills, but I doubt you'll be missing much if you see it in regular 2D.

Overall, it's just a damn good film, with a tightly packed and well-crafted plot, lots of interesting and memorable characters, some good humour, great action and superhero goodness. Dark Knight Rising has to work its ass off to surpass this for the best superhero film of the summer.

The Cabin in the Woods

This is gonna be a tough one to review, because I honestly don't want to spoil anything. I went into this movie without so much as having seen a trailer. I knew from other sources that it's a Joss Whedon film, that twists are a huge part of it, and that it's about a cabin in the woods. Honestly, I think it benefited me to go in blind. If you have seen the trailers, you can probably tell whether you'll like it or not. If you haven't, please don't watch them.

You know, I think I have to confess right here and now that I this is the first Joss Whedon product I've seen. Well, aside from the ones he co-wrote (Titan A.E., Speed, Captain America) or originally wrote but had his script basically rewritten entirely (Alien Resurrection). I have a bunch of friends who watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer religiously, though, so... whatever.

So, Cabin in the Woods is about five teenagers (played by Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz and Jesse Williams) who go to the countryside for a camping trip. While there, they awaken something evil, which tries to kill them... but all is not as it seems.

Yeah, that's all you're going to get from me.

As you might have guessed, Cabin is a parody of horror films. It even becomes a satire at points. However, its particular brand of satire never has the characters be meta-aware. Scary movies are never mentioned in the film, and the heroes never say "This is like a crappy horror movie!" only to have the film follow the conventions anyhow. I can see why some people have criticised it for being less clever than it thinks it is, but I really liked the humour here, and the third act is so completely out of control, I'm not sure if it's awesome in a hilarious or badass way.

The actors all do a great job, though Kranz's take on "the stoner" is especially memorable. I think that the other character pool, whose existence is a spoiler, is a little bit too excessive. They could have done it with fewer people there, but it's not really a flaw that hurts the overall product much. The special effects are fantastic. There are a few too many jump scares, in my opinion. If you're going to assault and destroy one overused convention from modern horror, then please kill jump scares.

Anyways, I think it's a fine, fine film. I dunno if I can call it game-changing, visionary or masterful, but I really liked it. Please keep this pace up, Joss Whedon, as The Avengers gets nearer and nearer.