Snow White and the Huntsman arrived in 2012 with a tagline that promised the end of the fairy tale: “The fairytale is over.” What Rupert Sanders’ film actually delivers is a fairy tale stretched to 127 minutes, dressed in remarkable armor, and left standing in the Dark Forest without much of a story to carry.
It is a strange, beautiful, frequently inert movie. Universal Pictures released it in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2012, and in the United States on June 1. It grossed $396.6 million worldwide against a $170 million budget, so the audience showed up. Whether the film earned that turnout is a separate question, and the answer leans no.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Ravenna Drains the Young
The plot is the Grimm tale with a darker coat of paint. Queen Eleanor of Tabor pricks her finger on a rose in the snow, wishes for a daughter with skin as white as snow, and dies years after giving birth. King Magnus then marries a prisoner named Ravenna the day after meeting her.
Ravenna is a sorceress who used a false army of glass soldiers to charm her way into the kingdom. On their wedding night she tells Magnus that a king much like him once used her, hurt her, then discarded her. Then she kills him and takes the throne.
Snow White’s friend William and his father, Duke Hammond, escape but cannot rescue her. She is locked in a tower for years. Ravenna drains the youth from the kingdom’s young women to keep the spell her mother cast on her, and when Snow White comes of age, the Magic Mirror tells Ravenna that the princess is destined to destroy her unless she eats the girl’s heart and becomes immortal.
A Bargain in the Dark Forest
Snow White escapes into the Dark Forest, where Ravenna has no power. The Queen then makes a bargain with Eric the Huntsman, a widower and a drunkard, promising to bring his wife back to life if he captures the girl.
That is the engine of the film, and it is a good one. Chris Hemsworth plays Eric with a scowl and a heavy walk, and he is the most watchable thing on screen. He is not asked to do much beyond look aggrieved and swing an axe, but he does it with a conviction the script has not earned.
Charlize Theron has the better part. Ravenna is vain, wounded and cruel, and Theron plays her as a woman who has decided that other people’s youth is a resource she is owed. She gets the film’s only real speeches, and she makes them land.
Kristen Stewart is the problem, and not because she is bad. Snow White is written as a symbol instead of a person. She is imprisoned, she escapes, and almost none of it tells us who she is. Stewart plays the role with a hard, watchful stillness that works in the tower scenes and leaves a hole at the center of the film.
Dwarfs, a Bowman and Wasted Talent
The supporting cast is a mix of squandered talent and one genuine pleasure. Sam Claflin’s William is a childhood friend, and the film never figures out what to do with him. He exists to be the third point of a triangle the movie refuses to draw.
The dwarfs are the film’s best idea and its most mishandled one. They include:
- Ian McShane as Beith
- Ray Winstone as Gort
- Nick Frost as Nion
- Toby Jones as Coll
- Eddie Marsan as Duir
- Lily Cole as Greta
- Rachael Stirling as Anna
That is a murderers’ row of British character actors, and the film gives them a few jokes and a battle. Nick Frost gets the most mileage, because Nick Frost always does. The rest are set dressing with names.
What the Design Buys
Sanders came out of commercials, and it shows in the best way. The production design is the reason to see Snow White and the Huntsman at all. Critics praised the production design and the visual effects, and the film’s look is the thing that holds up.
The visual effects earned an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, and the costumes earned one for Best Costume Design at the 85th Academy Awards. Both nominations are deserved. James Newton Howard’s score is the other thing holding the film together, and critics praised it alongside the design work.
Where the film falls down is the action. The battle sequences drew mixed reviews. A movie about a huntsman and an army should have a clear sense of who is hitting whom. This one does not.
Beauty as Theft, Never Committed To
Strip away the armor and Snow White and the Huntsman is a movie about beauty as a form of theft. Ravenna does not age, because she takes the years from other women. That is a real idea, and Theron plays it with real feeling.
But the film never commits to it. It wants to be a dark fantasy, a coming-of-age story and a war epic at once, and it does none of the three completely. The result is a movie that is easy to look at and hard to care about.
Stewart won Worst Actress at the 33rd Golden Raspberry Awards. That is a harsh verdict on a performance that is mostly a writing problem, but the voters were responding to something real: the film’s lead is its least defined character.
The casting history is more interesting than the finished film in places. Producers first considered lesser-known actresses, including Riley Keough, Felicity Jones, Bella Heathcote, Alicia Vikander, Lily Collins and Rachel Maxwell. Dakota Fanning and Stewart were later rumored to be short-listed. Co-producer Palak Patel confirmed on March 4, 2011, that Stewart was offered the role.
Winona Ryder was considered for Ravenna before Theron got it. Tom Hardy was supposedly offered the Huntsman and turned it down. So were Michael Fassbender and Johnny Depp, who both claim to have declined. Viggo Mortensen was said to be in negotiations with Universal and supposedly turned it down too. Hugh Jackman was claimed to have been offered it and declined. Hemsworth, who had starred in Thor, took it.
A sequel followed, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, directed by the first film’s visual effects supervisor Cedric Nicolas-Troya.
A Mood Board With a $170 Million Price
Snow White and the Huntsman is a $170 million mood board. The design, the score and Theron are worth the ticket. The script is not.
The film’s central mistake is treating Snow White as a prize to be fought over rather than a person with a want. She spends most of the runtime being chased, captured or rescued, and the movie mistakes that for an arc. Hemsworth and Theron get characters. Stewart gets a symbol.
What the source makes clear is how much of this was a casting story before it was a film. The list of actors who passed on the Huntsman is longer than the list of things the character actually does. That is not a knock on Hemsworth. It is a sign that the role was thin from the start, and no amount of armor fixes a thin role.
It is not a bad movie. It is a gorgeous, empty one, and it is a studio betting that scale and spectacle could stand in for a script. The box office said the bet paid. The film says otherwise.
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