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Movie Review: Snow White and the Huntsman

I’ve decided that I’m going to stick with my longer movie reviews.  I realized that I write these for fun, and limiting myself really defeats the purpose.  However, I also know how annoying a long piece of text is on your dashboards (Especially for those that are interested in some of the stuff I have to say, but not most of it).

Now, I wasn’t really too excited for this movie.  My big summer blockbuster list was filled with movies like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises.  I honestly wasn’t expecting much from this movie and I was going to skip it until the summer crew decided to watch it.

And I have to say, reading that it was a 46% on rottentomatoes didn’t help.  But whatever, right?  I can’t review only good movies.

Plot - For those that don’t know, this movie is a variation of Snow White.  She has to kill the witch because she’s special.  It’s kind of like every other fantasy story.  It’s also a more violent adaptation of the innocent children stories we’ve heard, such as the Alice In Wonderland movie that came out a couple of years ago.

I always have a problem with this section because I don’t want to spoil much.  I think a good way to explain this story is by saying it’s kind of like Avatar: The Last Airbender.  What I mean is that it’s an adventure.  It goes from scene to scene that are never relevant until the protagonist gets there, so it seems random.  This works when it’s a tv show or a book, aka something that’s long.  In a two hour movie, however, it seems like a bad and sloppy story telling.  The problem also occurs where they try to fit too much into too short of a time.  This makes a lot of the dark and scary areas not since they don’t have time to be dark and scary.  I mean, the first place they enter is considered a death trap forest and they make through it like a breeze.  They also end up relying a lot of pure convenience or something stupid of the sort like magic.  It just ends up being unbelievable.

A lot of the scenes also seem forced just because it’s trying to stick to the Disney Snow White that we all know.  There really was a lot of potential for this, and I think they dropped the ball.

Characters and Actors - I only knew that Thor and the wife from Hancock were going to be in this movie.  Oh, and also Kristen Stewart.  Now I like Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron as actors.  They’re both good looking and very charismatic.  Kristen Stewart, on the other hand, I’ve never seen in a movie (because I never watched the Twilight movies).  I didn’t have an opinion about her acting until this movie, and dang she is not a good actress.  I think it’s because she doesn’t ever show her bottom teeth, which causes her to have a bleak expression all of the time.  Anyway, the characters were all whatever except for Charlize Theron’s character: the witch.  I thought she played the part of an exaggerated tyrant witch well.  Hemsworth also does the older style accents, like his in Thor, well in here.  The problem is that he only has a couple of lines where he does talk so eh.  Overall, I think it would have been a better decision if they made Kristen Stewart the witch and Charlize Theron as Sleeping Beauty.

Cinematography and Misc. - This movie looks pretty good.  They have a lot of pretty parts and it doesn’t do the terrible dark to instantly bright transitions that other movies do to skip from night time to day time.  There is also a weird forest scene that’s trippy as anything, but it’s pretty.

The final battle scene at the end is really lame.  It’s supposed to be an epic war, but it’s more like two small groups going at it together.  There has to be a large army somewhere.  LotR had HUGE armies of bad guys, and same with 300.  This was just like two small villages going at it.

And might I add that the witch and her brother are the most impatient people ever.  They tell people to leave and then yell at them to leave right after without giving them time to even take a breath.  I don’t know why, but it bugged me that someone thought that was a good way to make the line.

Overall and tl;dr (too long, didn’t read) -I would say don’t watch this movie.  It really isn’t worth the money and it’s nothing special.  I wouldn’t even really watch it if it’s on tv.  It really feels like a bunch of cut and paste from random scenes they wanted to do.  The story is whatever, the acting is eh, and overall I would say pass.  I would say watch Alice in Wonderland instead, but maybe it’d just be better to spend the money on a meal while you’re hanging out with friends.  It is the summer after all.

End note - This movie would have been so much easier if Thor just had mjolnir and destroyed everyone.

Movie Review: The Avengers

This was my second most anticipated movie of the year.  Not because I expected it to be great, but because I really didn’t know how it would turn it.  And so I got to see it opening night in a crowded movie theater next to two talkative guys while it was storming outside.

It surprises me that a couple of people don’t know what this movie about.  It’s about Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and Thor saving the world from bad guys.  However, the real story is based on how well these guys get along, because they’re not really team players when paired up with other superheroes.

To start the review, I’d like to say this movie is stunning to look at.  It’s absolutely gorgeous and probably the best looking superhero film so far.  All of the powers of the heroes, the random energy stuff, and especially the Iron Man suit are fantastic to look at.  The choreograph impressed me as well since they were juggling 6 different fighting styles.

The story is not too shabby.  The beginning was probably when the story was the strongest because it was when the team is first assembled.  It was great seeing the disconnectedness of the characters and how they individually thought of their situation.  The end just became a bunch of fighting.  It reminded me of the ending city fighting of Transformers 3, but incredibly better.  Going along with the fighting, they paired up the fights really well.  We finally get a good Iron Man fight (something I’ve wanted in the two Iron Man movies), and the rest continue to kick ass.  They sometimes have unbelievable (even for a superhero movie) stuff in there, but overall it’s the best fighting I’ve seen in a super hero movie.

There are still a couple of faults.  First, they rush a couple of key things, like the establishment of unity of the team, just to get the story going.  Most of these faults I can’t be too harsh because they were trying to fit so much in a two hour movie.  However, some of the jokes in this movie are whatever.  The people in the theater were laughing at everything, but I’m not sure if they were genuinely laughing or because they thought they should be.  I thought there were a couple of good laughs, but I wasn’t with the crowd and I think other people would agree if it wasn’t opening night.  They also make serious moments in the movie comical just to get it over with, which was disappointing.

I highly recommend this movie IF you have been following these characters.  It really offers a lot of awesomeness for the superheroes, but it will just be a lot of noise and lights if you don’t care about the heroes.  It might even be awesome to watch if you don’t know much about the Marvel Universe, but you just love action packed movies.  Also, I have to say I really started liking the idea of the Hulk after learning more about him and this movie disappointingly just makes him comical relief.  He’s a very serious character because the Hulk is an uncontrollable power that is technically the strongest fictional power ever created, and I think they dropped the ball on that.  He does have some cool fight scenes, but man he could’ve been more awesome.