Flights of Fancy That Invite You to Glide Along
Review by Ken Burke
Snow White and the Huntsman
The well-known fairy tale
adds some twists to give more presence to the wicked queen and more agency to
Snow White with captivating visuals and a lot of decent action.
Men in Black3
The complications of time
travel and historical manipulations plus an outstanding job by Josh Brolin add
interest to an otherwise not-so-necessary franchise extension.
All
the pieces are in place to allow easy recognition of what the vast majority of
us would understand about this latest version of the old animation classic
(Disney’s first hand-drawn feature-length movie, debuted in 1937) in the
bombastic new approach of Rupert Sanders’ Snow
White and the Huntsman, which connects with the presence of the princess and her wicked
stepmother being very active throughout the culture over the past few months in the critical
and rating success of (Disney-owned) ABC’s Once
Upon a Time (giving the following hour’s Desperate
Housewives a run for its coveted Sunday night audience, even in the
latter’s finale season, although the troubled ladies of Wisteria Lane ended
strong anyway) and the spoof of the Disney heritage with Mirror Mirror (Tarsem Singh) earlier this spring (see my review in
our April 12 posting, the multi-movie critique cluster that begins with Jean-Pierre
Dardenne’s The Kid with a Bike), but
this current version of the old Grimm fairy tale is a bit more successful
conceptually than Mirror Mirror and
will easily outpace it financially,
taking in about $56 million in its first weekend compared to the Julia Roberts/Lily
Collins version which has rounded up only about $63 million after 10 weeks. We’ve got everything we expect here in
terms of a beautiful, pure of heart maiden in conflict with her conniving,
regal step-parent; a supposed assassin who doesn’t choose to fulfill his task;
support from some forest-dwelling dwarfs; a poison apple from the Queen that
almost brings the story to a ruinous end; the revival of the princess via true
love’s first kiss; and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
(All illustrated and foreshadowed
visually as the horrors Snow White encounters in the Dark Forest transform into
the magical realm of the fairies, reminiscent both of the fairy worlds of the Lord of the Rings trilogy [Peter
Jackson, 2001-2003] and of the dream-like inhabitants of the Tulgey Woods in
Disney’s 1951 animated version of Alice
in Wonderland [Clyde Geronimi,
Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske; see http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/pictures/tulgey-wood-pictures.html
for images from this film]—and one could certainly note the similarities of
this current Snow White in armor attacking her stepmother to how Tim Burton
also turned Alice [Mia Wasikowska] into an armored, Jabborwocky-slaying hero in
the 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland,
but as we’ve seen in the Shrek films [2001-2010]
and Once Upon a Time it’s not unusual
for these various fantasy characters to interact with each other, nor is it
strange for fantasy to be a trendy topic today given how successful
computer-enhanced fantasy films have been at the box-office over the last few
decades [see specifics on the U.S. and Canadian champs at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm
and the planetary totals from all markets at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/
where you’ll find little else but variations on fantasy in the All-Time Top 20
lists] ever since George Lucas first took us to that unnamed galaxy long ago
and far away [OK, 1977 isn’t all that distant, but his Jedi galaxy is).
Mirror Mirror worked with most of the
traditional Snow White elements as well—except for her biting the
apple—and even featured an actual prince rather than the disappointed Duke’s
son, William (Sam Claflin) in Snow White
and the Huntsman, who has pined for the hand (and quite a bit more, I’m
sure) of the radiant girl for years but loses her to her intended killer, a
gloomy, semi-suicidal widower (Chris Hemsworth—maybe you’ve seen him as some
obscure thunder god in a little fantasy world of his own in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, or maybe you can’t really
see much of anything about that movie because it’s completely covered with the
green snowfall of money; however, in another harmonious reverberation from
other similarities, Dukie-boy William here is a fantastic archer, not unlike The Avengers’ Hawkeye [Jeremy Renner]
which helps Hemsworth make a smooth transition from one fantasy era to the next,
so I’m surprised that they didn’t round up Shrek to do a guest spot as a
medieval Hulk), who has a change of heart rather than bringing Snow’s heart
back in a box to the villainous Queen Ravenna (a very effective Charlize
Theron, clearly more of an accomplished actress than Twilight-phenom Kristen Stewart as Snow White). The subdued romance between these two
unlikely compatriots is the chief new wrinkle here, in that Mirror Mirror did beat this one to the
box-office with more of a focus on the Queen than we’ve come to expect (unless
you’re one of the enthralled masses who’s seen what this fantasy tyrant is
capable of when transported to our world in TV’s Once Upon a Time), but we also get some well-staged battle scenes
when our romantic pair and the Duke’s troops storm the castle in a manner that
reminds us a bit of the attack on Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings second installment, The Two Towers (2002), except this time the fortress is breached
but it’s the good guys doing the breaching, with the added fascination of evil defending
warriors seemingly made of black glass who fly apart upon contact, becoming
even more deadly as their sharp edges fly at our heroes from all directions (a
great visual effect, used well at both beginning and end of this active,
photogenic movie).
Queen
Ravenna is not one to be easily conquered, despite the triumphant attitude of
the righteous invaders. In fact,
she’s done her own share of invading over the course of her 20 lifetimes,
subduing many other kingdoms before she got to Snow’s territory with a
combination of a powerful army, a ruthless attitude toward all who don’t bend
to her will, and an ongoing magic spell that grants her the potential of
eternal youth as long as no one challenges her status as “the fairest of them
all.” With no crime committed except desiring to take her rightful place on the throne after Ravenna
seduces and kills her father (on their wedding night no less; she seems to have
evolved from praying mantises by way of Hamlet’s
Queen Gertrude), Snow White finds herself in years of imprisonment that would
have satisfied Henry VIII, only to finally show some spunk in escaping her
captors, taking temporary refuge in the Dark Forest. (At least until she’s given much better protection against
the various creepy-crawlies and vicious trolls there by Thor The Huntsman
and the 8, no make that 7, dwarfs—after the Queen’s equally evil brother, Finn
(Sam Spruell), kills one of them in the hunt for Snow’s life-extending heart
which will keep Ravenna in her state of eternally-callous beauty [normally, she
just eats animal hearts or sucks the youth out of any available prisoner, but
spells being the complex entities that they are, now that Snow’s on the scene
Ravenna’s powers are fading, just as the liquid-manifested “man in the mirror”
predicted, presented in a fantastic special effect with an ominous voice
provided by Christopher Obi Ogugua].)
Theron gives her all to this maniacal part, launching herself into
spasms of fury that rival (and conjure up memories of) the black-clad evil
fairy Maleficent in Disney’s animated 1959 Sleeping
Beauty (Les Clark, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman), overpowering all who
would even question her, crawling around on her throne-room floor seemingly
covered with oil when she’s repulsed by The Huntsman in the Dark Forest and
forced to flee back to her palace as a flock of crows (reminiscent of Gary
Oldman’s vampire turning into to a swarm of rats in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992
Bram Stoker’s Dracula), and proving
herself a deadly physical adversary in the final familial showdown, at least
until Snow manages to slip her own knife in first, creating a defeated,
withering antagonist straight out of the terrifying end of The Picture of Dorian Gray (published by Oscar Wilde, 1891, since
adapted in many cinematic and video versions).
I
admit that I’m not much of a fan of the pouty Stewart (although her earnest
demeanor in reclaiming the family throne does play out effectively here), but
even with that bias acknowledged I still say that Theron is the reason to see
this film (along with the equally-impactful swirling scenes of black glass and
black crows and the masterful manner of the graying of the kingdom once Ravenna
begins her reign, making it a wretched place worthy of its gloomy Middle Ages
allusions) because she pours herself emotionally into this evil role in a manner
equal to the creepy scene of submerging into and emerging from her body-moistening
milk bath, in which she seems to pour herself physically into the surrounding
liquid, becoming as ethereally unreal as her mirror-man confidant. Another positive aspect is recasting
Snow as the agent of her own salvation: she needs to be awakened from the
apple’s spell by true love’s kiss, yes, but after that she wields her own
weapons and is the focus of her own coronation rather than seemingly leaving her
own realm behind as in the original story and riding off with the rescuing
prince to his lands. (Although she’ll likely bring The Huntsman out of the crowd
soon for a well-deserved promotion, all of which—including the final coronation
scene—brings me back again to the original Star
Wars with Han/Huntsman starting out as a mercenary,
then revealing his hidden good side to end up as the love interest of Princess
Leia/Snow White; like I said before, we’ve become used to fantasy/fairy-tale-hybridization,
as a means of providing narrative-relatability comfort and reinforcing the
age-old myths that these modern versions of older stories are based on). Stewart aside (but she’s there for
narrative-relatability as well, keeping theatre seats warm until the Twilight: Breaking Dawn [Bill Condon]
conclusion thankfully finishes off that franchise next November), Snow White and the Huntsman is more
ambitious than it had to be given the name value of its stars and more engaging
than I expected. You won’t lose
anything by not seeing it, but you’ll find it reasonably well worth your time
if you do.
A
good number of viewers have already decided that Men in Black3 (Barry Sonnenfeld) is worth their time, as it’s racked up
about $117 million in just two weeks of release (but already bumped from the
first week’s top position by the opening of Snow
White and the Huntsman), even though a good argument could be made that
just as we don’t really need another twist on evil queens and poison apples
(except for the enduring appeal of this cultural icon) we don’t need more of
Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones), whose blend of science fiction,
action, and comedy was effective the first time around (Sonnenfeld, 1997) but
really unnecessary in the 2002 sequel (Sonnenfeld again; at least he’s got
steady work) when K must be brought out of retirement and have his
anti-extraterrestrial terrorist memory restored in order to once again keep
peace in our galaxy (where poor planet Earth is always the focus of either the
overlords or the scum of the universe, as Superman, the Green Lantern Corps,
and The Avengers can testify at length).
This time around K is erased completely by a grisly bad-ass alien
villain, Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement), who brings the delightful aspect
of time-travel into this franchise continuation, greatly enhanced by the
presence of Josh Brolin as the young Agent K, unaware that he’s about to be
offed so as to transform the space-time continuum for the benefit of the baddie
who not only wants revenge for his long incarceration (since 1969) but also to
prevent K from shooting off his left arm before the arrest.
Once J understands what’s happened—and he’s
the only one who does because he’s seemingly singular in retaining a memory of
the previous timeline (a not-fully-justified anomaly in the MIB3 narrative, although the
script does offer an attempt at an explanation; at least when the DC Comics
folks reboot the universe—at least 3 times since the 1985 “Crisis on Infinite
Earths,” but I make no pretense at trying to keep up, although I know they’ve
just recently done it again—they often hold the superheroes out of the initial
transformation so that they can remember what was before and appreciate the
changes that have come since, but I think in the current reconfiguration they
didn’t even both to do that), knowing that K should have been around all these
years, not terminated at Cape Kennedy on the day of the Apollo 11 moon
launch--he sets off on his
own journey back to 1969 to thwart Boris and set things right. (It’s a shame he couldn’t have stopped
off in 1985 on the way to bring along Marty McFly [Michael J. Fox] who’s got
much better experience with time travel after all of those Back to the Future [Robert Zemeckis, 1985, 1989, 1990] adventures,
but with all of this government downsizing and the GSA extravagant-spending scandal
time-travel just isn’t as well-funded as it used to be—in fact, in MIB3 it’s not run by a
government agency at all but by some guy from a NYC comic book store with mysterious
connections to cosmic devices.
Once again, to the delight of Tea Partiers, private enterprise to the
rescue—although I don’t think they’ll outsource the entire MIB unit anytime
soon, unless it would be run by Donald Trump who could scare any wayward alien
back to his home planet with a firm “You’re fired!” and a wave of that frightening hair.)
So,
it’s bad enough that K is now gone and Boris is on the loose, but things get
worse because without the Earth-shielding ArcNet device employed by K back in
1969 (don’t ask; it seems to be some sort of a high-energy shield that
encircles the globe), Boris is now leading his Boglodite invaders on yet another
attack on our dear planet, a battle we’re doomed to lose (why they had from
1969 until now to ready the invasion I’m not quite clear, but asking such
questions of this movie isn’t the best use of your energy; just flow with it
and enjoy the non-stop action lest your non-logic sensors become
overloaded). So, J has further
motivation to stop über-evil Boris’ time-space disruption (Boris has his own
guiding philosophy: “The most destructive force in the universe—regret.”), even
though his African-American presence isn’t so well accepted socially, even in
the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and the younger version of K isn’t very
open to the sudden appearance of this strange guy who raises more questions
than provides answers. In this
sense, Brolin as a very plausible early edition of Jones is already living by
the older agent’s maxim of “I don’t ask questions I don’t want to know the
answer to.” But he’s also open to
the concept that truth, while it may be stranger than fiction, is often the
only possible alternative to what seems too fantastic to deconstruct, so off
they go to Florida (after an hilarious stop at Andy Warhol’s Factory, where
Boris breaks in to cause havoc, just as J knows he will from having read the
reports of his homicidal actions at this point in time).
Along the way they also encounter one
of the sweetest alien characters ever to grace a sci-fi themed, action-barrage,
monster-movie, special-effects extravaganza in Griffith (Michael Stuhbarg), who
provides them with the ArcNet, accompanies them to the Apollo launch, and
experiences the constant blessing/curse of seeing a myriad of possible outcomes
to every instance, never knowing for sure which one will actually come to
pass. Like the other major
characters he also has a guiding philosophy, although his is more like a
melancholy understanding: “But where there is death there will always be
death,” an ominous prediction which finally reveals itself at the end and
explains why Agent K has been so sour for all these ensuing decades, despite
being more upbeat (and even romantically motivated toward Head Agent of the
future O [Emma Thompson, pleasant enough in a limited role]) back in the “You say you want a revolution …” days of
yore. So, even if we can
reinstall the prior timeline as the operational one, a tragic event from an
alternate chronology will still impose itself (not unlike the ultimate rise of
the sentient machines in Terminator 3 [Jonathan
Mostow, 2003] despite our hopeful assumption that such a future had been
prevented by the actions and sacrifices of Schwarzenegger‘s protective android
in Terminator 2 [James Cameron, 1991];
I guess Marty McFly probably couldn’t help Agent J after all because Marty must
operate in a section of the multiverse where timelines can be fully altered,
whereas J knows that even if he protects K that something wicked this way comes [goodbye, Ray Bradbury; we'll miss you],
no matter what he tries to do to prevent it).
Of
course it all comes down to a series of close calls and relatively unexpected
twists at the end (and seemingly no one’s ability at the Apollo launch center
to see 4 guys—J, K, along with the young and older Boris—battling on the
rocket’s scaffolding just prior to launch, even though TV cameras are constantly
trained on the lift-off device and its historical payload), but eventually the ArcNet
is secured on the nosecone, both versions of Boris are killed (no arrest this
time from young K, who’s learned his lesson through faith in revelations from
his time-traveling companion, just like Doc Brown [Christopher Lloyd] in the
first Back to the Future), and all
would seem to have ended well. Except that just before young Boris is blown
away he manages to get off a wayward shot of his own that kills the commanding
Colonel of the launch area, a decent guy who also believed in the mission of
the counter-alien agents, a man revealed through decipherable clues to be Agent
J’s long-lost father, with the main clue being the sudden appearance of a young
boy looking quizzically for his dad, a boy obviously the young version of
J. Younger K uses the standard
neuralyzer tactic to allow the boy to remember his father as a hero but nothing
else, despite K’s personal despair at having allowing the death to occur, then
years later will recruit him into the MIB force. Adult J has just enough time on his magical time-travel
device to return to the day he left.
(Although he comes back at the instant that he departed, so it’s still not
clear to me why his encounter with Agent O earlier that same day allows him an ongoing
memory of K, because his time jump returns him to a later point, with the
inference that his 1969 adventures with K had not yet occurred when he first
learns of his partner’s “death,” so it seems to me that at the earlier day part
his memory of K would have been erased along with everyone else’s—but of course
that would have ended the film immediately and given us no chance to experience
the marvelous Jones-Brolin meld, so I shant protest too much; besides, time
travel stories always bring up problematical situations such as this which are
better left to philosophy dissertations than to immediate movie explanations—for
a real mind-bender I encourage you to find and view the obscure Primer [Shane Carruth, 2004] which confronts
this subject in ways too arcane and dense to even attempt to recount here but
which I’ve enjoyed in several viewings, although I have friends who were
literally put to sleep by it.)
However, if either you’re too confused by now with all this to even know
what I’m talking about or you’re mad at me for once again revealing the whole
plot—which you could find in even more detail at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_Black_3
anyway through no fault of mine—I’ll restore your virginal state (of mind, not
body) with some help from my associate.
So, if you’ll just stand here while he puts on his dark glasses, I’ll
tell you to just be aware of Men in Black3
as an engaging, adrenaline-pounding thrill ride that you’ll likely enjoy if
you don’t analyze it too much. OK,
now please hold still, this flash will just take a second …
(6/7/12 Sorry about the spacing differences between the last paragraph and most everything else above it. God only knows what lurks in the crevices of Google Blogger but I can't fix it ... or maybe it's just Ray Bradbury sending me a cryptic message from the great beyond, which would be an honor no matter how this silly page layout looks. And I've noticed recently that some of the spacings in earlier reviews are now migrating around a bit on their own long after they were posted, so all I can do is go with the flow and assume the great Goggle gods of the Internet have intentions that are indiscernible to me, a simple carbon-based lifeform. My apologies, then, if the graphic structure of the page interferes any with the comprehension of the contents, but that's assuming they're comprehendible to begin with. I'd put money, if I had any, on I'll Have Another to win the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes before I'd bet on the crystal blue persuasion of these reviews, but maybe at least Ray is enjoying them from afar. That would be just peachy with me.)
(6/9/12 [Belmont Stakes day] The advantage of blogging vs. print publication is that you can update when necessary, as is the case here [of course the disadvantage is that you can try to edit for improvement upon further consideration, which could lead to endless rewrites so I've tried to avoid that constant temptation] because not long after I made my I'll Have Another comment above the poor horsey was scratched from the race today so maybe now it's even money that he'd win the Triple Crown vs. my reviews being coherent; if I were you I think I'd invest in government bonds from Greece or Spain, which probably are more likely to pay off for you than either of those options. [I still think I'm being monkeyed with here from the fun zone of cyberspace; maybe Bradbury has joined up with Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke for some cosmic pranks so keep an eye on your checking account balance.]
And, regarding the comment above about unnecessary sequels for Men in Black, I now see that there will be at least one sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, maybe two, even though the first film has clearly finished the essence of the original story, so, unlike the racing community who know when it's time for a winner to gracefully retire, leave it to Hollywood to beat a dead, but still very profitable, horse around the box-office track for as long as we, the audience, will tolerate it. Kristen Stewart may not need a vampire bite to make her immortal after all.)
Regardless of the appearance of this page layout, if
you’d like to know more about Snow White
and the Huntsman here are some suggested links:
If
you’d like to know more about Men in
Black3 here are some suggested links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkqgy7CC2MY
(an extended review by Christy Lemire [AP] and Ben Mankiewicz [Turner Classic
Movies], although I don’t care for her comments any more than the several
people who responded to her in a negative way but I don’t agree with the sexist
manner in which some of the commenters dismiss her—please, attack her, if you
must, on substance not on existence)
We encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as
the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what we’re
doing and why we’re doing it.
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be discussing whatever plot details are needed for our comments so please be
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