Saturday 14 January 2012

For decades, Disney have been taking classic fairytales and twisting them into more marketable shapes and throwing them at an unsuspecting, gullible, young female audience. (I still don’t have a fringe like Ariel! Why, Mr Disney, WHY?!?).Fairytales make good movies. There is a solid story arc, there are goodies and baddies, often some sort of romance, every character is archetypal and it all rounds itself off with a nice, solid moral that Grandma would be proud of.

It would seem that fairytales can be endlessly re-imagined and re-interpreted as well, if that recent redigestion of classic tales as box-office movies is anything to go by. Look at Tangled, Red Riding Hood, Hoodwinked, Alice in Wonderland and Puss in Boots.

The best example of this re-imaging of a classic tale is the forthcoming release of not one but two versions of the classic Snow White. The best known original version of Snow White is that of the Brothers Grimm, though several other countries had their own related versions. The Brothers Grimm was the one most shamelessly ripped off by Disney, with the magic mirror, the poisoned apple , the seven dwarfs.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is famous for being a lot of firsts, including Walt Disney’s first full-length feature film, the first full-length animated film produced in America, the first in colour and a couple of other records.

Now in 2012, . These two films look to be polar opposites of story telling. Snow White and the Huntsman is dark, fantastical and has a healthy drop of chilling evil. The only problem I have with this film is Kristen Stewart as Snow White. Really? Can anyone believe Charlize Theron would be threatened by her? Come on.



Mirror Mirror on the other hand is a bit cheesey, has HUGE dresses and I'm guessing a very predictable story line.


I won’t lie, I want to see them both.

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