Snow White and the Huntsman: "The Chosen One" Syndrome

As you can see from the title, I watched Snow White and the Huntsman. I know. I should really stop doing this to myself and just ignore these things, but it did look like it might have some potential - visually and world-building wise and people were saying it was hundreds of times better than Mirror, Mirror. 

*sigh* 

World-Building: rip-off

Characterization: 2D/nonexistent

Plot: Predictable and tedious

I don't think I've ever given such bad ratings to a movie or book on this blog, and I must say that I did at least make it to the end of the movie, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been... I guess. Moving on...

This movie was attempting to "update" the Snow White story into some kind of High Fantasy thing. There were many aspects of the visuals and things that looked really nice, but I still had a problem with them because they were all ripped off. The overhead shots of the travelers walking through the mountains were very reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, for example. The most annoying rip-off, however, was the deer-creature in the forest who stolen right from Princess Mononoke, one of Miyazaki's most famous anime movies. Once the deer came up I began to notice tons of other little things that had been lifted from Mononoke. Just because it is Fantasy that doesn't mean you can steal wholesale from other Fantasy...

Unfortunately for this movie, Snow is nowhere near being a Mononoke. Princess Mononoke is tough, she knows what she wants, and she's determined. She loves the animals and the woods and becomes sad and angry when they are attacked. Snow is just... there. She has no facial expressions, doesn't seem to care about anything much, and doesn't have any purpose other than running away from the queen. This is not only very boring, it also makes it very unconvincing when she suddenly turns into this warrior-leader at the end, supposedly. 

Before I go on to my main criticism I have to mention the accents. They were horrible and jarring. (Also what was up with the Queen's brothers haircut?) The Queen also had this very annoying habit of screeching at the top of her lungs in an insane fashion which I found very annoying. At that level I no longer care what you're saying, I just want you to stop yelling. I know they've watched Lord of the Rings, because they've stolen several aspects of it, but they should have watched the Galadriel evil queen speech... she was frightening, but everything she said was completely coherent. 

So, I would sincerely recommend to whoever is responsible for the wholesale theft from fantasy epics that they pay attention to things like characterization and figure out what makes the things they are stealing from so successful. It wasn't the weird deer dude in Mononoke and it wasn't shrieking in Galadriel's speech. 

The main problem with this story was that from the beginning Snow White was treated by everyone as if she was "The One". Even before there was a queen to defeat and Snow was just a little girl running around and climbing trees she was treated like something special. Which... fine, when she was a kid and the princess I can swallow that. However, the movie did nothing to convince us that this character is in any way special. Everyone just thought she was. 

This is a huge problem and it's not only in this movie. It's become a lazy writing technique: just make the main  character "the one" and then you don't need to do any characterization. I'm sorry, but no. I mean, look at Harry Potter. Yes, Harry was the chosen one, but he actually did many things to make it believable that others loved him, he acknowledged it and struggled against his fame in realistic ways, and it turned out, in the end, that there was a very concrete reason why he had some special powers... 

Or look at the Hobbit. He was just a 50-year old guy who liked to eat a lot and avoided anything that was uncomfortable, but the Dwarves needed a 14th man and he ended up going on his adventure and being pretty awesome at it. The story showed his growth from a hapless hobbit who can't survive without his pocket handkerchief to someone who made some pretty brave and important decisions in a conflict. It made sense and no one was being asked to accept his status as a "chosen one" without question. The Dwarves questioned it frequently, in fact!

I'll conclude this review by saying that this movie had potential, which was wasted because the movie-makers really aren't clued into what makes a good fantasy tale.They were trying to take elements from very successful fantasy epics and put them together in this movie to make it awesome, but they didn't know how to handle these elements and make them work for their story.