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Snow White and the Huntsman · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian, and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. If only I had a child as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as a raven's wing, and all with the strength of that rose. It's Snow White and the Huntsman, and this film is lit. Hello, and welcome back to this Film is at the Pockets. We're talking about movies that are based on books or movies that are based on fairy tales. In this particular instance, it's not exactly a book.
• 1:14
  Speaker B: Not exactly? No.
• 1:16
  Speaker A: Wouldn't be completely accurate to say it's a book, but it is a story, and this movie is ostensibly based on it. We're gonna get to lots of different segments. No guess who this week. But we have everything else. Oh, we don't have Lost Adaptation either.
• 1:31
  Speaker B: No, we don't have a Lost in Adaptation.
• 1:32
  Speaker A: Whatever. I don't. Who cares what segments we have? You'll see when we get there. We're gonna start like we always do. If you have not read or watched Snow White and the Huntsman, we're gonna give you a brief summary right now. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This summary is sourced from Wikipedia and we'll talk about it more later. But I think it's not right. I think they just made stuff up.
• 1:58
  Speaker B: At least one thing.
• 1:59
  Speaker A: We'll get to that later. But, boy, I was like, what? While admiring a bright red rose blooming during a white winter, Queen Eleanor of Tabor. Tabor. Tabor pricks her finger on its thorn. Three drops of blood fall into the snow, and she wishes for a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as a raven's wing, and a. And a heart as strong as the rose. Hey, that's the intro quote. The Queen gives birth to Snow White, but falls ill and dies many years later. After her death, Snow White's father, King Magnus, and his army battle an invading army of glass soldiers. King Magnus finds a prisoner called Ravenna becomes enchanted with her beauty and marries her the next day. Ravenna is in fact a powerful sorceress who used the false glass army to charm her way into the kingdom. On their wedding night, she confesses that there was a king much like Magnus that used her, hurt hurt her and then discarded her. She kills him before taking over the kingdom. Snow White's childhood friend William and his father, Duke Hammond, escape, but are unable to rescue her, and she is locked away in a tower for years. Ravenna does not know why she allowed Snowlight to live, but has a feeling about her. Tabor and its people deteriorate under Queen Ravenna's rule. She periodically drains the youth from the kingdom's young women in order to maintain a spell cast over her as a child by her mother, which allows Ravenna to keep her youthful beauty. When Snow White comes of age, Ravenna learns from her magic mirror that Snow White is destined to destroy her unless she consumes the girl's heart, which will make her immort. Ravenna sends her brother Finn to bring her the princess, but Snow White escapes into the Dark Forest where Ravenna has no power. The Queen makes a bargain with Eric the Huntsman, a widower and drunkard, to capture her, promising to bring his wife back to life in exchange. However, when Finn reveals that Ravenna does not actually have the power to revive the dead, the Huntsman help Snow White escape. The Duke and William learn that Snow White is alive, so William leaves the castle to find her, joining Fenn's group as a bowman. Snow White saves the Huntsman's life by charming a troll that attacks them. They make their way to a fishing village populated by women who have disfigured themselves to make themselves useless to Ravenna. The Huntsman learns Snow White's true identity and leaves her in the care of the women. He quickly returns, however, when he sees the village being burned down by Finn's men. Snow White and the Huntsman evade them and meet a band of eight dwarves. The blind dwarf Muir perceives that Snow White is the only person who can end Ravenna's reign. As they travel through a fairy sanctuary, they are attacked by Finn and his men. A battle ensues, during which Finn, his men and one of the dwarves are killed. William joins the group on their journey to Hammond's castle. Notice it says one of the dwarves, because it doesn't even care enough to mention what dwarf, because I could not tell you his name. Gus.
• 4:34
  Speaker B: I think it was Gus.
• 4:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, we'll get to that. William joins the group on Their journey to Hammond's castle. Ravenna disguises herself as William and tempts Snow White into eating a poisoned apple before fleeing. William kisses Snow White. Though nothing happens, a single tear is shed from her eye, supposedly, according to this, which I did not see even though I was looking for it while watching the movie, but sure I'll believe it. Snow White's body is taken to Hammond's castle. The huntsman professes his regret for being unable to save her, as her heart and strength remind him of his wife Sarah. He kisses her, yet does not notice a second tear fall from her eyes as two kisses of true love break the spell. Citation needed. Snow White awakens and rallies the Duke's army to mount a siege against Ravenna. The infiltrate the castle through the sewers and open the gates, allowing the army inside. Snow White and Ravenna fight. When Ravenna is about to kill her, Snow White uses a move the Huntsman taught her and stabs her to death in the heart. I would also argue calling it a move is maybe a bit much. She just stabs her with a knife she was holding. But whatever. The kingdom once again enjoys peace as Snow White is crowned the new Queen of Tabor. That is the summary of the film. Boy, I got a lot of questions. Let's get into them. And was that in the book?
• 5:50
  Speaker B: Gaston, May I have my book, please?
• 5:52
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 5:54
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination.
• 5:57
  Speaker A: It is revealed that Snow White is the daughter of Queen Eleanor. Was that her name? Yeah, Queen Eleanor. And I realized watching this movie that I remember literally nothing of the Disney film of Snow White or any other version for that matter. And so I have no idea if Snow White was a prince. Like, what her whole deal. I don't know the plot of Snow White, other than the poison apple thing. I literally have no idea what happens. I just am aware there are dwarves in it and a poison apple and she wakes up at some point, but I genuinely have no idea, like, what the. What else is going on. So is Snow White the daughter of a queen? Is she a princess?
• 6:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, she is a princess.
• 6:38
  Speaker A: Okay. I would not have guessed that in my head. Snow White is like.
• 6:42
  Speaker B: Lives in the woods more like Cinderella.
• 6:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or something. Yeah. I didn't.
• 6:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, she does live in the woods for a time.
• 6:49
  Speaker A: Fair. Yeah. So then we talk about. We move forward a little bit. Snow White's mother dies and the king goes to war and they fight this giant, weird glass magic army thing. And then after they finish defeating the army, they find a Prison carriage with a single woman inside. Charlize Theron is locked inside, and the king just immediately falls for her. And the story says that they get married the next day. And I wanted to know if that came from the book and then also my subsequent follow up question or from the story. And my subsequent follow up question is, does she then also immediately kill him and take the throne? Cause it's literally immediate.
• 7:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like their wedding night.
• 7:35
  Speaker A: Their wedding night. Yeah.
• 7:36
  Speaker B: I think that we could call this building off of stuff that happens in the Grimm's version of the story. So I actually read two versions for this episode. I read little Snow White, which is from their 1812 text, and Snow White from their 1857 text. They dropped the little for some reason, even though she remains little. More on that later. So in the 1812 version, the evil queen is actually not a stepmother at all. It's her own mother. The same one who wishes for a beautiful child at the beginning. Maybe she wanted to be a boy mom and decided was not happy to have a daughter. It's interesting.
• 8:31
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 8:32
  Speaker B: But that is something that the Grimms themselves actually changed because the 1857 edition of the story does specify that Snow White's mother died shortly after she was born and that her father remarried a year later.
• 8:46
  Speaker A: So in some of them, it's just her actual mother who becomes evil and. Or is evil or whatever and like,
• 8:52
  Speaker B: becomes jealous of her daughter's beauty.
• 8:55
  Speaker A: And then in other ones later, it's.
• 8:57
  Speaker B: It's a stepmother. Yeah. And I. I think that's a fine and understandable change. I. I don't know why it was made. It's possible the story just mutated and borrowed from other well known stories like Cinderella. Or maybe the Grimms decided it didn't make sense for the mother to wish for a very specific looking child, only to then turn on her for looking a very specific way. I do think that in the right hands, there could be something interesting to explore there if it was like her actual mother.
• 9:31
  Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's definitely like a Reddit slash graced by narcissists. You could do something with that.
• 9:41
  Speaker B: Neither of these texts mentions the king after the first paragraph.
• 9:45
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 9:46
  Speaker B: I don't know where he is or what he's doing for any of this story, but apparently he just doesn't care that his wife wants to kill his daughter and eat her organs.
• 9:56
  Speaker A: Fair.
• 9:57
  Speaker B: Honestly.
• 9:58
  Speaker A: Kills him off.
• 9:59
  Speaker B: Typical father figure for a fairy tale.
• 10:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. The movie just kills him.
• 10:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was. And I guess they just decided they don't need to explain how she explained the way that the king just died. Like, she just has a violent. I guess I don't understand. Partial. I don't understand a lot about this movie. Spoilers. I think this movie kind of sucked. I. I liked a lot. I want. I wanted to like it, like, a lot. Like, I went in wanting to like this movie, and I just broadly thought it kind of like the script is kind of ass. Or at least as presented the script, like, as. As shown in the film. It felt like just a mess and just like, yeah, lots of issues we'll get into. But, oh, boy. What was my point? Oh, and. But like, one of the things that I thought didn't make sense was like, so she. She just stabs the king in the chest with a knife after poisoning him or sucking some of his essence out or something.
• 11:03
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 11:04
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 11:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. It implies that she, like, poisons him
• 11:06
  Speaker A: somehow or something, and then just stabs him in the chest. And then her army, like, she raises the gates, I guess, or whatever, and lets all of her people in. So I guess. I guess she needed to be able to do that. But, yeah, she just has a. Just violently takes the throne, like, through force. So I don't even necessarily understand the purpose of the marriage.
• 11:30
  Speaker B: I guess that legitimizes her.
• 11:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, I guess. Sure. Potentially. I don't know. Yeah. The rules of monarchy are stupid and stuff. So, like, maybe, maybe. But it just felt like I was like, well, it's not like you can pretend that somebody else killed.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: Right.
• 11:45
  Speaker A: The kid. Like, maybe they did concoct some story. I don't know. I don't. I. It's just the movie doesn't care. It doesn't really matter. But it's just a lot of those little details.
• 11:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I think there were certainly more subtle ways she could have gone about usurping the throne.
• 12:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. I was just, like, expecting her to, like, slowly poison him and he dies and then she takes the throne or, you know, something like that or. Or even she does have him killed. Like, you know, she does kill him violently, but then makes it appear that an assassin showed up. You know what I mean?
• 12:16
  Speaker B: Right.
• 12:17
  Speaker A: But no, she just. People come in and, like, she just violently overthrows the castle and, yeah. Like, kills a bunch of other people.
• 12:25
  Speaker B: Clearly not worried about being violent.
• 12:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so, like, clearly, again, and I'm not even saying it's unrealistic because there's a lot of different ways people have taken the throne throughout history. And I'm like, maybe there's a real life, you know, connection that this would make. It just felt unnecessarily convoluted. I don't know. So the famous line, mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? We hear that in this movie. And I wanted to know if that came from the book. Cause I was surprised that we hear that exact line in this movie. Cause I had always assumed it was from the Disney version, but it's in this one. So I was like, oh, maybe it is in the story. And then also the design of the mirror in this movie. I wanted to know if that felt like it was inspired by the book, if there's any description of said mirror. Because it was definitely a more unique version of a mirror in this, as opposed to in a lot of film versions of it. You will see it's like what we would kind of.
• 13:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a very ornate kind
• 13:19
  Speaker A: of mirror, like, traditional mirror. Whereas in this, it is like a large, circular, polished piece of gold or bronze or something. That honestly reminds me a little bit of the. I don't know if it was meant to be that because it was way too big, so it wouldn't be. But the shield that what's his name uses to. Or at least he does this in the movie. Maybe this isn't from the traditional story from Greece. What's his name? Medusa. When he, like.
• 13:47
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Reflects Perseus.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: Perseus. When he has, like, a polished shield that he uses. And again, I'm thinking specifically of something of the Titans.
• 13:55
  Speaker B: Clash of the Titans.
• 13:56
  Speaker A: Clash of the Titans. The old, like, Roy Harryhausen one or whatever. Yeah, so I was like. Because it kind of reminded me of that, but obviously it's not a shield. It's huge.
• 14:05
  Speaker B: But anyways, so the Evil Queen's line that she says to the mirror. I don't have the proof of this. I do suspect that that line was conceived for the Disney movie.
• 14:21
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 14:23
  Speaker B: It's slightly different in Grimm's text. In the 1812 edition, she says, mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all? And then 1857, she says, mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this realm is fairest of all?
• 14:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, so similar.
• 14:40
  Speaker B: Similar. Pretty close.
• 14:41
  Speaker A: But they definitely tweaked it. And. Because that's the exact wording in this film. The exact wording of the one from the Disney film.
• 14:48
  Speaker B: And that's. Yeah, I believe. Yes, that is also the. Yeah, I do think that is a Disney change. I think the mirror is not described in The Grimm's text, other than to say it's a magic mirror. However, I like this movie's mirror design because it looks like an ancient mirror.
• 15:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:12
  Speaker B: Because mirrors were made out of polished metal before they were made out of glass. They were made out of, like, bronze or copper.
• 15:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker B: So I figure that they're pulling from that, and I think that's pretty neat.
• 15:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I like the. That's actually the best thing in this movie is just generally the way it looks. That both the combination. The cinematography that I talked about in the prequel, but also just the set design, the art direction generally is really cool. Like, I like a lot of how the movie looks. It's just what happens in the movie that is.
• 15:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, I really like that direction for the mirror because I think it makes it feel, like, even more archaic and weird.
• 16:00
  Speaker A: It feels like an artifact that she found. And even the way it's presented in the movie, where they carry it in and uncover it, it's like they found it on a.
• 16:08
  Speaker B: Before we later on see her backstory. It could even be implying that she has been around for millennia or something.
• 16:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It feels like a relic from the past. Like some sort of ancient magical item that is still. Yeah. So in that regard, I think that's really cool. Like. Yeah, I completely agree. We then see the evil Queen Ravenna take. Take her milk bath or whatever. Whatever this is. And I wanted to know if anything of this came from the book, because I was like, oh, this is interesting, because she has this giant pool of white liquid that I assume is supposed to be milk, but it's definitely not the viscosity of milk. It's the viscosity of, like, wax, like, melted, like, when we see it on her. But I assume it's supposed to be, like, milk or something.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: I guess it could be some kind of like. Like very liquidy clay.
• 17:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or some sort of clay or something. But it was cracking me up because we. I talked about in the prequel how this. The cinematographer for this, Greg Fraser, also shot the Dune movies. And I was like, holy shit. It's the oil bath thing from that. Baron Harkonnen, like, lounges around in Dune. Including the shot with his face, like, coming out of it or whatever, except it's white instead of black, which I thought was funny, but I was like, oh, he's testing out. He got a test run on those shots with Baron Harkin, except he got to do it with Shirley's Theron, which is probably nicer.
• 17:35
  Speaker B: So this is not mentioned in either Grimm's text. I assume it's a reference to the kind of beauty treatments that somebody this wealthy could do. Like a milk bath probably is the reference which supposedly has, like, anti aging properties.
• 17:52
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. Because we see that she does a bunch of stuff to stay eternally young and beautiful. Yes.
• 17:57
  Speaker B: Obsessed with being young and beautiful. I do think, like, I think that scene, it's just a really cool visual.
• 18:04
  Speaker A: It's very cool. The shot where she comes out of it, like, covered in the white, wearing the crown.
• 18:09
  Speaker B: When she does it, she looks like a chess piece. It looks fucking sick.
• 18:12
  Speaker A: It's awesome. Again, visually, this movie has lots of cool stuff going on, but. Yeah, and that in particular was probably the best visual in the whole movie. Just like, wow, that's super gnarly and cool. But we then see the queen confront a couple of people who have brought in, who have been brought in. They were captured. They were, I think, the Duke's men. And they were like, they're basically kind of part of an uprising to, like, overthrow the queen or whatever. And one of them, they bring them before the queen so she can, like, pass judgment on them or whatever. And while they're in front of her, one of the guys is able to grab a knife and stabs the queen in the stomach with it. And it just does not affect her at all. And we find out that she's essentially just like invincible. And I wanted to know if that element came from the book, like, is she magically invincible to swords and stuff?
• 19:07
  Speaker B: There is no indication in the book that she is invincible in any way. We know that she does some level of magic because she's able to concoct these poison items to kill Snow White. But she does die at the end of this one.
• 19:24
  Speaker A: Well, she dies at the end of this one, too. But that's because Snow White in this story is magically able to kill her. I guess because of the, like, something to do with the spell and her being the fairest or whatever. But, yes, apparently, unless you're the hottest bitch in all the land, you cannot kill the queen, because that is apparently what the prophecy is here. Right. That is why it seems like I misunderstand it, that that is because Snow White is so fine, she is able to stab the queen and murder her. I think, speaking of the kind of beauty stuff that she does, we also see that the evil Queen can absorb the life essence of younger women in order to keep herself young. She starts to age and then she brings in a girl from the town or whatever. And sucks all the life force out of her, and she ends up all old and shriveled and Charlize Theron gets young again. And I wanted to know if any of that came from the book.
• 20:19
  Speaker B: It does not. I am kind of assuming that this is meant to be a reference to the legend of Elizabeth Bathory.
• 20:26
  Speaker A: It is. I asked this question, but I read somewhere during the prequel research that that was what this is. Yeah.
• 20:33
  Speaker B: So for anyone who doesn't know, Elizabeth Bathory was a Hungarian noblewoman who allegedly tortured and killed hundreds of girls and women from 1590 to 1610. And the popular legend is that she bathed in her victim's blood to retain her youth and beauty. Although that's supposedly a detail that was added over a hundred years later.
• 20:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. From what I've heard, the details around her specifically are very debated in terms of, like, what's, like, similar to, like, Vlad the Impaler or whatever. Like, how much of this is myth versus reality kind of thing. So. But yeah, again, I read when I was doing research for the prequel, that that was directly what they were referencing with that. And I think the bath thing, too, potentially, like, she bathed in the blood and whatever that white. But I think that even was also similarly an allusion to her. A bunch of stuff happens, but Snow White has been locked in one of
• 21:30
  Speaker B: the towers for an indeterminate number of years.
• 21:33
  Speaker A: At least five to 10 years. I don't know exactly, because she seemed to be about, what, like, 10 to 12?
• 21:38
  Speaker B: I would put her at like, 10 at the beginning of the movie. Yeah.
• 21:41
  Speaker A: And then she's like, 18, so.
• 21:43
  Speaker B: Well, they say she's coming of age.
• 21:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. She says she's up, so 16, 17, 18, who knows? But, yeah, she's. You know, it's been at least five years, five to 10 years later, it might even say directly in the movie. I just can't recall.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: I don't think it did.
• 21:58
  Speaker A: Snow White has grown up. She is Kristen Stewart. She's able to escape from the tower when Finn comes in. The brother of the Evil Queen comes in to get her because she has gotten this prophecy from the mirror that she needs to kill and eat Snow White's heart. And that will make her eternally immortal or whatever.
• 22:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 22:17
  Speaker A: And so Finn goes to get her. She's able to find a knife, or not a knife, a nail she pulls out of the wall and it uses it to, like, hit him in the face and then escapes. And she's able to get out of the castle. She finds a magical horse on the beach. I Never even asked about that. I meant to. Is there any allusion to where Was it something to do with that guy? But he didn't have a white horse, did he?
• 22:39
  Speaker B: No.
• 22:40
  Speaker A: And that wasn't the Duke. Cause remember there's that guy who like sees her sneaking and he has a horse and he goes outside and I thought maybe it was gonna be like that he was gonna help her escape. But then we. There's just a. An unsaddled horse on the beach sitting
• 22:56
  Speaker B: there just like wait.
• 22:56
  Speaker A: And I don't think it was his horse.
• 22:58
  Speaker B: I don't think so either.
• 22:59
  Speaker A: And I don't think his horse was white like that.
• 23:01
  Speaker B: Don't think he would have gotten there. Known where to leave it.
• 23:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I don't know, but I thought that was gonna. Anyways, I must have missed something there with that. I think that's just so that he sees that and then he can go
• 23:13
  Speaker B: back and tells and says, oh, this princess is still alive. But the magical white horse I think is just like a magical MacGuffin or whatever.
• 23:22
  Speaker A: So she's able to get on this horse and ride away. And then she finally. She gets to the dark forest and she has to leave the horse behind. We'll talk about that later. But when she gets into the forest, she falls and she lands on some fungus of some sort that releases some spores into the air that are psychoactive or psycho reactive or whatever. And she starts tripping balls. And this scene is very cool. Again, super cool visual stuff in this movie. I thought all of this stuff with her tripping was really gnarly and creepy and gross and interesting. And I wanted to know if any of that came from the book because I was like, oh, that could actually be. That could be one of those things that didn't make it into like the Disney versions but actually is, you know. Yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker B: So it does not come from the book. She does run through the forest and it is described as dark and scary. But there's nothing about her like tripping balls on mushroom spores.
• 24:16
  Speaker A: Okay. But yeah, I thought so many of the visuals during that were really cool with all the little bugs like crawling everywhere and it's like you can't tell what you're seeing happening the time in the same way that like as she is and like you're seeing these like dark figures that sometimes look like people and sometimes look like just. All of that I thought was really, really cool and like really well done of like making you unsure of like what you're looking at and stuff in a way that was really effective. So now they aren't able to follow her through the woods because they are the Dark Forest. And the queen can't go get her because she says she has no power in the Dark Forest. Does that come from the. Is that anything in the book? I was wondering. I was like, why? What does that mean? You don't have any power in the Dark Forest? The only thing I could think is that because there's no life there, that she can't, like, pull. She can't use the energy to do her power. That would be my guess. Because the forest is dead or whatever. Maybe. But they don't say that. She just says, I have no power in the Dark Forest. And I'm like, seems like if anywhere the Evil Queen would have power would be the Dark Forest, but I guess not. So she has to recruit a huntsman to track her down. And this is where Thor shows up. Chris Hemsworth plays the Huntsman, and he's a local drunkard whose wife died a while ago. We'll find out.
• 25:34
  Speaker B: He hasn't been the same since.
• 25:35
  Speaker A: He hasn't been the same since. We'll learn a little bit more about that later. About his wife. But he knows the Dark Forest, and so she recruits him to track him down. And he doesn't want to do this initially. He's like, why should I? And she basically says, hey, I'm magic. I can do whatever I want. I can bring back your dead wife. And he's like, well, okay, then if that's the case, I will do it. And I wanted to know if that came from the story.
• 25:58
  Speaker B: The Huntsman is a character in the Grimm story.
• 26:01
  Speaker A: I knew that. But.
• 26:03
  Speaker B: But the queen tells him to take Snow White into the woods, kill her, and bring back her lungs and liver
• 26:09
  Speaker A: so Snow White doesn't escape. She has Snow White.
• 26:13
  Speaker B: She has Snow White. And then she says, take her in the woods and kill her. But the Huntsman cannot bring himself to do this, so he lets Snow White run away. And then he takes back the lungs and liver of a boar instead to trick the queen. There's no mention of the Huntsman having a wife, but he also vanishes from the text after the scene where he lets Snow White go. So we don't know what happened to him. I would presume he probably gets put to death by the queen.
• 26:42
  Speaker A: I think once she figures out.
• 26:43
  Speaker B: Once she figures out that Snow White's actually still alive.
• 26:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or maybe, you know, maybe he lasted long enough for Snow White to prevail. Right. Like, the queen gets overthrown at the end, right?
• 26:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, kinda.
• 26:57
  Speaker A: So maybe, you know, who knows? But yeah. Well, that brings me. My next question is, does the Huntsman immediately turn on the Queen and help Snow White? Cause that was funny in the movie, is that he goes into the woods to find her, finds her, and then immediately Finn, the brother, the brother shows up and is like, you fucking idiot, she can't bring your dead wife back, you stupid. Stupid. And I'm like, he's stupid. Why are you telling him this? And immediately he's like, oh, well, in that case, fuck you then, and lets her escape.
• 27:26
  Speaker B: I mean, I guess you could say in a sense that he does immediately turn on the queen since he lets Snow White escape instead of killing her.
• 27:34
  Speaker A: That's fair.
• 27:35
  Speaker B: I felt like the movie didn't know what to do here.
• 27:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 27:39
  Speaker B: Like, how to get him to do
• 27:40
  Speaker A: the amount of space I thought a lot for what is supposedly a script that was so good at. Needed to go. I was like, the script's got a lot of weird jumps in logic, but.
• 27:51
  Speaker B: Because, like, we need the Huntsman to find Snow White. Right. But we also need, when we need him to be like a little bit of a scoundrel.
• 27:58
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: But we also need him to pretty much immediately join forces with her.
• 28:03
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 28:04
  Speaker B: So the answer, the movie decided, is to just have the brother just immediately tell the Huntsman that the queen can't act. Like, why would he do that?
• 28:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, why would he? Again, the idea is like, well, he's an arrogant asshole who doesn't value the Huntsman at all. And just like, is like, thinks he has so much power over him as a lowly, you know, commoner or whatever that he. He doesn't think through the fact that if he tells him this, he'll immediately be like, oh, well, fuck you then, I guess is the idea. But it does. It does. You're like. Because I had the reaction watching the movie during that scene, I'm like, why would you say that? Yeah. Right. In the Dark Forest still.
• 28:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:46
  Speaker A: Like, it's one thing. Like, what would have made more sense is like, they start heading back to town, right? And as they're like traveling and. And he's like chit chatting at like he. And once they're out of the Dark Forest and he feels like.
• 28:59
  Speaker B: He feels. He feels like he's got it in the bag.
• 29:01
  Speaker A: He's got it in the bag, he's gonna gloat. And he ends up and is like, you. And then he says something like that and then he helps her escape in that moment or Something, you know, like. But we're short. Maybe in the original version of the script, that is what happened. And then things got shortcutted. Cause that is my other thing. I don't want to see a longer version of this movie, but I do feel like a lot of felt like a lot of the script got cut to make things fit into a close to two hour movie. Whereas I bet the original version of the script was a three hour script or something. Because that's what it feels like to me, especially towards just with how quickly characters get introduced and then like we're supposed to care about. You know what I mean? Like, it just feels like we have so little time to do anything. It almost feels like this must have been a longer script at one point that got hacked down to make it a reasonable runtime or something. I don't know. Does Snow White have the soothe beast ability? Because they get attacked in the dark woods? As the Huntsman and Snow White are making their way through the dark forest, they get attacked by a troll, giant ass troll. And it kicks the huntsman's ass. But right as it's about to kill him, Snow White runs out and she uses her force powers like Anakin to soothe the beast. And it's like, okay, nevermind. And then it just leaves. And I wanted to know if there's any element of that that comes from the story.
• 30:23
  Speaker B: I actually think there is a textual basis for this. In the 1857 version, as she's fleeing through the woods, the text states wild beasts darted by her at times, but they did not harm her. Okay, so I feel like we can extrapolate from that.
• 30:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, it also feels like their version of the Disney princesses can talk to animals. Things like the Grimdark version of that is that she can, like for soothe the feral beast or whatever. Like, you know, similar. Yeah, it does feel like that.
• 30:59
  Speaker B: So I mean, force soothing a troll, getting birds and squirrels to do your chores.
• 31:07
  Speaker A: He then takes her to this fishing village that is populated exclusively by women because all of the men are either at war or have been killed or whatever. And I wanted to know if that came from the book because I thought that was an interesting little sidetrack that we took briefly in the movie.
• 31:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is not from the Grimm's text, but I think it is a cool idea that works well with the rest of the movie's story.
• 31:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. And because they extrapolate from there, all of these women have scarification on their faces. And the main woman that we interact with during this section says Specifically that our scars protect us. Without our beauty, we're of no use to the queen. And so there's this idea that these women are scarring themselves so that the queen won't consume them for their beauty. And I wanted to know if anything like that any of this element came from the book.
• 31:58
  Speaker B: Another cool idea. Also not from the book. I will say that when I read the Wikipedia summary, I was expecting a little bit more disfigurement, all things considered. I thought they were still really pretty.
• 32:13
  Speaker A: I mean.
• 32:14
  Speaker B: Yes, it's pretty. Like light scarification.
• 32:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 32:18
  Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know.
• 32:19
  Speaker A: It's a cool idea. I guess the idea is just any sort of imperfections the queen would like. That's the idea. Like it's. Whatever. Yeah. So the dwarves then show up. We're like an hour into the movie, and the Dwarves. Surprise.
• 32:33
  Speaker B: This movie could have eliminated the Dwarves altogether.
• 32:36
  Speaker A: It probably should have actually. Or used them or. Yeah, could have done a lot of things. But the dwarves show up and I wanted to know if they are in the story. I assume they are, but I don't actually know that for sure. That could just be like an early addition in the Disney version or whatever. But assuming they are in the story, do they feel more like the friendly, silly doors from the Disney film or do they feel more like these doors which are like rambunctious, like, and they have like very. Not that the other ones, they obviously have unique personalities because they're all based on their names or whatever, but they're all like vaguely friendly and nice or whatever. Whereas these ones are much more of a kind of standard. They're just like people like they have. And they're a little bit more. At least initially they're introduced, they have weapons and they're kind of feisty and all that sort of stuff. They're more like Tolkien versions of Dwarves.
• 33:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, they fit more in this kind of gritty.
• 33:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, like high fantasy version of Dwarves as opposed to the Disney movie version of Dwarves. And I wanted to know which of those felt more accurate to the story. Assuming they're in the story.
• 33:41
  Speaker B: The dwarves are in both versions of the Grimm story. I would say that they feel closer to the Disney version.
• 33:47
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 33:48
  Speaker B: We don't really get to know them all that much. They don't even have names in Grimm's they're just seven dwarves. But they immediately let Snow White move in with them and then they have to keep reminding her not to talk to strangers and saving her when her stepmother tries to kill her. Multiple Times.
• 34:05
  Speaker A: Okay, so does she just go live in the wood?
• 34:07
  Speaker B: I don't understand what she gets away from. She. The huntsman takes her out.
• 34:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:12
  Speaker B: And then she runs away and she runs through the woods until she finds the dwarves cottage.
• 34:17
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 34:18
  Speaker B: And then we have a little kind of Goldilocks esque scene where she goes inside and she eats some of their food and then like tries all of their beds until she finds one that she likes. And then the dwarves show back up and are like, someone's been eating my food and sleeping in my bed. And then they see her there and they're like, wow, she's really pretty. And then they let her stay in their house and like do their housework.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: Fair. Fair enough. All right. So then they venture forth. The dwarves join up with them because Bob Hoskins, the blind old dwarf is like, she's the. She's the chosen one. Like literally says like, she's the one.
• 35:02
  Speaker B: Correct me if I'm wrong. The implication is that he has like some kind of like prophetic powers or something. Yes.
• 35:10
  Speaker A: Either that or he knows of some prophecy that he correlates to her. One of the two. Either he is prophetic in some way or he is aware of some prophecy and is the one who recognizes that she fulfills said prophecy. I couldn't tell you, I wasn't sure myself. But we find out that he was blind when they met and then being around her cures his blindness. And he mentions other. Yeah, and then he mentions like other people. Like oh, haven't you noticed that like your ailments don't aren't as you don't notice them anymore?
• 35:47
  Speaker B: I remember that. I don't. I totally missed the part where he. His blindness.
• 35:52
  Speaker A: To be fair, I don't think I would have noticed that had I not read it in the Wikipedia summary. Which again, maybe it's lying, but so many details like that in this movie. When I was reading the Wikipedia article I was like, is we watch the same movie? Not, not so many. But there's a handful of those where I'm just like. I don't think that was actually alluded to in the movie.
• 36:09
  Speaker B: But yeah, I feel like whoever did the Wikipedia summary extrapolated some things.
• 36:14
  Speaker A: I do think there is a scene where you see his eyes are like clouded when they first meet and later on they are not. And it's implied. There's definitely an implication that he is able to see again and again. He then has that whole speech about how he's like, haven't you guys noticed that your Injuries don't hurt as much or whatever. Whatever. It's somehow implying that she is. Yeah. Just being around her, like.
• 36:37
  Speaker B: Right. She has a. An aura.
• 36:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which again, I guess is the idea of why the. If the queen eats her heart or whatever, she'll be immortal or something. If she has some sort of magical essence or whatever. So they then. So they need to take them to the. The duke's castle. They need to get her to the duke's castle so that she can meet up with them, rally her people or whatever. And they. They journey through this fairyland area like where the fairies live in the woods because they're running away from the bad guys. And we see this. The most important thing that I need to ask is if any tiny, horrifying fairy people burst out of any bird chests in the book. Because that happens in the movie. I was not expecting it and I was ill prepared. I know.
• 37:23
  Speaker B: We both had the same reaction. We were watching it and we both went, yeah.
• 37:29
  Speaker A: She's like looking at these birds and then just these little people crawl out of there chests and you're like, what? And I guess they're the fairies or whatever.
• 37:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I guess there are not any magical creatures in the book, so. No.
• 37:44
  Speaker A: Okay. Well, on a similar note, does she then like see a giant? I think they call it White Heart, but it's just this giant white deer with the world's biggest antlers. It looks a lot like the deer from Shadow and Bone.
• 37:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:58
  Speaker A: And something else we just watched recently
• 38:00
  Speaker B: that A discovery of witches.
• 38:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, Discovery of witches. She finds a deer with giant antlers and. Yeah, it's like a classic. Like you're the chosen one thing.
• 38:08
  Speaker B: Yes. This is not in the Grimm's text, but white deer and stags in particular and hart H A R T is like an archaic term for a stag. They are a pretty common symbol in European folklore, usually associated with purity and. Or seen as messengers from fairy realms. So the movie seems to be playing with that.
• 38:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's a total. It works and then she goes up and communes with it briefly and then it gets shot with an arrow. Because it's the exact same thing that happens in Shadow and Bone, actually. Literally. I wonder if Leigh Bardugo was watching. I don't know when she wrote those books. I think they would have been out by this. Or she at least would have been. Right. Anyways, it doesn't matter. Then one of the dwarves dies. Which one? Gus, I think. And my note here is, I want to care about this, but honestly, I just haven't had enough time to get to know these characters. And so I don't care. But does one of the Dwarves die in the story? Because we had eight initially in the movie and we end up with seven. I guess. I think. I'm pretty sure, no.
• 39:20
  Speaker B: None of the Dwarves die. And I completely agree with you. The Dwarves. I came into this story way too late for me to feel the way that the movie wants me to feel about this. And I'm. I'm gonna stand by my statement that I think this movie could have nixed the Dwarves entirely.
• 39:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I. I think it could have.
• 39:39
  Speaker B: Like, I know it's. I know they're like an important part of the. The lore of the story, but, like, I think we could have just gotten rid of them.
• 39:48
  Speaker A: I don't think you need to even get rid of. I'd like. Yeah, you could have gotten rid of them. If you want to do them, that's fine. But then. But I think the thing you couldn't do was introduce them an hour into the movie and then an hour and 20 minutes into the movie, kill one of them and expect us to care when we've spent, like 30 seconds with them and don't really even know. You know what I mean? It has no weight. And you're just like, okay, sure. Yeah. It did nothing for me. Which was disappointing. So then they fall asleep in the woods. They're close, I think, to Williams, to the castle at this point. Snow White wakes up the next morning while everybody else is still asleep and just wanders around in the woods. And then William walks up and is like, hey, blah, blah, says some stuff about their past or whatever, and then gives her an apple and she takes a bite out of it and surprise. It's a hairy, gross apple. It's the poison apple. And William was, in fact, the evil queen, shape shifting to appear as William. And I wanted to know if that came from the book, if the queen shape shifts into Prince William in order to trick Snow White into eating. I say Prince William is not. He's. Whatever the son of a duke is. Baron or something.
• 41:02
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 41:02
  Speaker A: Whatever.
• 41:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, a future duke. Future duke.
• 41:06
  Speaker A: Whatever. Yeah. And so she surprised it's her. I wanted to know if that came from the book or the story.
• 41:13
  Speaker B: No, the wicked queen does disguise herself to get Snow White the poison apple, but she disguises herself as an old peddler woman.
• 41:21
  Speaker A: Okay, I think I remember that from the Disney ones.
• 41:24
  Speaker B: Well, in the Disney movie, she disguises herself as A horrifying woman.
• 41:28
  Speaker A: Yes, I remember.
• 41:29
  Speaker B: Who's like clearly evil.
• 41:31
  Speaker A: Yes. Like you made yourself look more evil to give her this poison apple. But apparently it works. Yeah.
• 41:37
  Speaker B: I don't have big feelings about this change. I think it makes sense in the context of the film. Yeah, like, it's fine.
• 41:44
  Speaker A: It's fine. I was a little surprised at. And I would have to go back and watch it. Like I would have to pay closer attention to some of the details. But this is one of those movies that's frustrating because I can't I talking about it. I'm. I don't know how much of it is just messy ass storytelling and like a bad script versus like I missed detail. You know what I mean? Like, I could also imagine that I
• 42:06
  Speaker B: missed a messy script.
• 42:07
  Speaker A: I think it's mostly that. But I also want to leave open that there are some detail I always want to leave open. There are some details that I just may have missed while taking notes or whatever. But I found it very jarring that she just knows where they are and finds them and is able to get like she just finds them in the woods immediately and is like. You know what I mean? Like in a way where it's like the rest of this time it's been this big struggle to find. We gotta go find Snow White. And then it's like, oh, well, it wasn't that. And I can't remember how she knows where they are if she does.
• 42:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think we're as the audience probably meant to do some conclusive leaping there.
• 42:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's where stuff like that, like moments like that and especially the whole end of this movie, honestly, just most of the movie, the pacing so many times felt like there was just stuff missing. I was like. I felt like there was a scene missing or something that would lead to. But they also want the surprise reveal. Whereas if we set up her going there, then it's more obvious, you know what I mean? Then the twist of it being of William being her is less twisty. So I don't know. It's fine. We also get throughout the course of the movie this backstory explained that when Ravenna was young, her village was like attacked and her mom cast a spell on her that can only be undone by the fairest blood. And I think it's essentially is this spell. I was a little confused as to what the spell did. To be fair, I wasn't sure. I think it basically keeps her is. Is the reason she's like immortal or like invincible is because of this spell. And that it can only be undone by fairest blood. And that's part of the reason why she uses the Myr to find the fairest of them all and sucks their essence out. So that she's always the fairest, so that she cannot be defeated, I think is the idea. And so that's also the reason that Snow White, who is the fairest of them all, is able to kill her, I think. I think. Anyways, does any of that backstory with that spell come from the story?
• 44:14
  Speaker B: No.
• 44:14
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 44:15
  Speaker B: It is obvious in the text that the Queen practices witchcraft to, like, some extent.
• 44:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 44:21
  Speaker B: But we don't ever learn her backstory.
• 44:23
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 44:23
  Speaker B: And honestly, I think the movie would have been fine without the backstory.
• 44:29
  Speaker A: I. I would agree. Or just needed more of it. It's one of the two. You need more backstory.
• 44:34
  Speaker B: You either need more backstory or you need to just let the source of her power be, like, nebulous. Doesn't matter.
• 44:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I just didn't do much for me. And it's fine. Like, I think it, like, setting up the whole idea of, like, House in the White kills her and stuff. It's just.
• 44:55
  Speaker B: But we also. We are. We set that up with the magic mirror.
• 44:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, the mirror, which I think makes
• 45:02
  Speaker B: more sense as, like, oh, we have this, like, powerful magical artifact.
• 45:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 45:07
  Speaker B: That gives you a prophecy.
• 45:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 45:09
  Speaker B: Like that to me.
• 45:11
  Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. And then. So that's the reason she's looking for Snow White. And that's. Yeah. And that. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It didn't do a lot for me, but it's. It's. It is part of what the movie. When the movie is trying to be its most interesting in terms of dealing with some of, like, kind of the feminist discourse around, like, this story or whatever like that. Like, I feel like this is part of that, which is, like, this whole idea of her mom, like, trying to protect her from, like, men and stuff like that. And because she casts a spell right before, like, their village gets, like, raided by an army or whatever. The whole thing with Ravenna, like, when she's talking to the king before she kills him, and she's like, oh, you know, men have done this to me, or whatever. And, like, women are used and discarded or whatever. And, like. Like, it's like the movie at times is, like, brushing up against this, like, kind of feminist deconstruction of, like, why the Evil Queen is evil, but, like, from a feminist lens, but it doesn't do enough of it to really mean Anything.
• 46:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's an interesting idea.
• 46:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:13
  Speaker B: Which is kind of my. My main thesis of this movie is that it has a lot of interesting ideas.
• 46:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:20
  Speaker B: But, yes, it doesn't. It's not doing enough with it.
• 46:24
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 46:25
  Speaker B: To be anything.
• 46:27
  Speaker A: And I think that's largely because there's too much going on.
• 46:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 46:31
  Speaker A: Which probably, to your point, had they just cut some of the subplots, the Dwarves or the, you know, whatever that you could have.
• 46:39
  Speaker B: And I like. And I even think that you could still do a kind of feminist deconstruction with the Evil Queen without having to have such a convoluted backstory.
• 46:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. Just have it be about, like, vanity and, like. And, like, jealousy and, like, women tearing down other women and women enforcing patriarchy through the, like, beauty idea standards and stuff like that. Like, it's all there.
• 47:03
  Speaker B: Which is the actual correct way to deconstruct Snow White, in my opinion.
• 47:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker B: Like. But it. But it's very.
• 47:11
  Speaker A: What. Get. This is what happens when a man tries to deconstruct.
• 47:14
  Speaker B: Well, it's very. It's very 2010s.
• 47:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:18
  Speaker B: It's. It's very like that, I guess, would be considered like third wave feminism. It's very much like in that oeuvre.
• 47:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Is Snow White saved by the power of polyamory? I joke, but I also don't, because, boy, I. This is a question I have. According to Wikipedia. So after she gets. She eats the apple, she falls asleep. She seems to die.
• 47:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 47:47
  Speaker A: William is there sobbing, and he kisses her and nothing happens.
• 47:51
  Speaker B: Nothing happens.
• 47:52
  Speaker A: They take her to the castle. To the duke's castle or whatever. Lair in state or whatever at the duke's castle. And then the huntsman is there drunkenly hanging out. And then he goes. He gives this big spiel about how she reminds him of his dead wife and about how they're like strength and beauty and all that sort of stuff. And then he kisses her and then she wakes up. And the Wikipedia summary, as I read earlier, specifically says he kisses her, yet does not notice a second tear fall from her eyes as two kisses of true love break the spell. I read that after watching that scene and went and then waited the rest of the movie. Nowhere at any point, at any time does the movie ever, unless I completely blacked out, allude to the fact that it took two kisses or what. I think this Wikipedia summary is just making that up. I don't know why she woke up or what it was about. The only thing I can think that they're going for but again, the movie does a horrible job explaining this because it never even attempts to. Is that Prince. Because this feels like the very 2010s feminist deconstruction of this story in the traditional story. Prince William, her childhood love or whatever, who she hasn't seen in this movie, at least she hasn't seen in a decade or something. They don't really even know each other. They were friends as children, but they're destined to be together or whatever because of. That's how the story works. And so he kisses her, and that's true love's kiss. And that's what wakes her up in the Disney version. Right?
• 49:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 49:44
  Speaker A: Okay, so I think this one goes. But that's bullshit. That's some, like, outdated. Where, like, your destined true love, who you don't really even know that much, comes and gives true love's kit. Like, why is that true love's kiss? And goes. Actually, we'll have that. But it doesn't do anything. What actually does something is this other guy who she actually has a relationship with and has spent time with. The problem in this movie, though, is that they haven't really spent much time together and don't really have anything resembling a relationship. So it's also not true love's kiss. Unless you interpret the scene as. That was the true love's kiss. Wasn't him kissing Snow White. It was the huntsman's kiss for his dead wife.
• 50:32
  Speaker B: Honestly, that would be my preferred way to interpret it.
• 50:36
  Speaker A: It's the only way it makes sense.
• 50:37
  Speaker B: It is the only way that it makes any sense. Yeah. If you interpret it as, like, his love for his wife. For his wife in that kiss. The purity of it. Yes. Is what breaks almost.
• 50:50
  Speaker A: And almost like a. Because he says a line. Like, the last thing he says to her is something like, you'll see her in heaven, basically. Or whatever. Like, he's like, hey, say hi to my wife for me when you get to heaven. And so almost like, that kiss is for his wife.
• 51:08
  Speaker B: Right.
• 51:10
  Speaker A: Which. Okay, that's. But the movie never. You have to really.
• 51:14
  Speaker B: Like, the movie does not care to explain the mechanics of this at all.
• 51:19
  Speaker A: At all. And again, so you have people on Wikipedia just making shit up. What do you mean? It's two of. No, it's not. I mean, maybe. But that's not. Like, I genuinely think it's the third thing I said. Like. And again. But to me, that very much feels like a 2010 feminist deconstruction of this. Of, like, well, we need a. But then failing it, because again, that could work if, like, if you're like, well, this Prince William guy, that's not actually true love's kiss. It's this other guy, this lowly commoner who actually knows her and understands her and.
• 51:50
  Speaker B: Except he doesn't.
• 51:51
  Speaker A: Except he doesn't. Yes. That's the problem of the movie, is that he doesn't. They. They've shared, like, a handful of lines together, and it's mostly about how they're surviving in the. You know, they're not, like, deeply connected.
• 52:02
  Speaker B: It's been, like, two days.
• 52:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's not like they have some deep connection. And honestly, William, from their whole childhood, knew her more than.
• 52:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, no kidding.
• 52:13
  Speaker A: Like, they spent most of their childhood together up until, like, age 10 or 12 or whatever. Whereas the huntsman has known her for two days and most of their conversations have been related to escaping creatures in the dark forest or whatever.
• 52:25
  Speaker B: They have no chemistry.
• 52:26
  Speaker A: And they have also. Also have absolutely no chemistry. And again, also, he's so committed to his dead wife that it doesn't even. It's not like he loves her. And again, the move that his speech there definitely implies, like, again, he loves her because she reminds him of his. Okay, it's just. It's a mess. Does any of. How does it work in the story? And how does it compare to this so fun fact?
• 52:50
  Speaker B: Supposedly a kiss being the thing that breaks the spell and revives Snow White was actually added to the story by Disney, who was borrowing from Sleeping Beauty. In the Grimm story, Snow White awakens because the piece of the poisoned apple that she bit off gets dislodged from her throat. Yes. So in the 1857 version, this happens when the prince's servants are carrying her coffin to his castle and one of them trips.
• 53:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 53:26
  Speaker B: And this, like, dislodges the piece of apple from her. In the 1812 version, this is so unhinged. I love it. The prince is so obsessed with Snow White that he insists on carrying her coffin around with him everywhere. He doesn't just, like, take it to his house.
• 53:45
  Speaker A: Right.
• 53:46
  Speaker B: He, like, wants to take it with him. She's like his comfort object. I don't know, man.
• 53:53
  Speaker A: It's like classic old school crazy when somebody dies. It's like, old story. Yeah. Like, they just. Yeah.
• 53:58
  Speaker B: So he's. He's carrying this giant ass glass coffin with a body in it around everywhere with him. And finally one of his servants has had it up to here and opens up the coffin and starts, like, shaking her corpse, causing the piece of the apple to fall out of her Mouth.
• 54:19
  Speaker A: Amazing. Incredible. Incredible. And then my final question. Does Snow White kill the Evil Queen and take the throne? Because they get the big fight at the end. She stabs her in the stomach with a knife, according to Wikipedia, using the move that the Huntsman taught her earlier, which, again, the move is look the victim in the eye so that they don't.
• 54:42
  Speaker B: Right. The move is like, block, then stab.
• 54:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's the whole thing. Which is really. I mean, it's kind of. Yeah, it's not really much of a move. It's like. It's like, don't let them stab you. And then you stab them. That's like. That's not like a. It's not like a trick. You know what I mean?
• 54:55
  Speaker B: Right. I wouldn't call it a move so much as just, like, fighting someone. 101.
• 54:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. When I watched it, when I read the Wikipedia part of that, I was, like, expecting, like, she's gonna do something, but I was like. But he never taught her anything really, like, again, other than, like, the part about. And. Yeah, anyways. And so she stabs the evil queen. Evil Queen Diesel. And then she is crowned the Queen of the Land. And I wanted to know if that's how the story ended.
• 55:23
  Speaker B: Kind of, sort of, in a way. So after Snow White is revived in Grimm's, she marries the prince, and the queen is invited to the wedding. And then when she gets there, they heat up metal shoes over coals and force her to dance in them until she drops dead. I've heard it's an incredible ending.
• 55:44
  Speaker A: Classic. Classic. So, yeah, ostensibly just very different.
• 55:49
  Speaker B: Yeah,
• 55:52
  Speaker A: a little. Yeah, definitely. I can understand why you would change that, because it definitely makes Snow White seem, you know, fairly cruel. Even if. Even if the Evil Queen deserved to die, having her dance on hot coals for your entertainment as she dies is, you know, something most of us would be like, ah, that's not, like, a great thing to do. Yeah. All right. Those are all my questions. It's time to find out what Katie thought is better in the book. You like to read?
• 56:21
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 56:23
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 56:27
  Speaker B: Everything. Okay, so right off the top, when this movie started, we get the queen looking at her blood on the snow and wishing for a child. And I had to ask, was the addition of a rose to that necessary? I don't think so. This isn't Beauty and the Beast. It's not Sleeping Beauty. Just let it be Snow White.
• 56:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know enough about all the different specific imagery to know what they're pulling from what? Obviously. I mean, I know there's a rose in, like, Beauty and the Beast, but, you know, I'm not. I wasn't entirely sure. Yeah, it doesn't.
• 57:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. Next thing, I understand why this story gets simplified down to just the poison apple. But I have always liked the queen trying to kill Snow White multiple times with different implements. First, she sells her laces for her stays, and then she laces her up so tightly that she can't breathe. And then she sells her a poison comb. And finally, the poison apple. I just like it. I think it's interesting. 3. It's a nice. It's a nice. It's a nice fairy tale kind of a number. Speaking of the poison apple, another detail that always gets left out of adaptations is that the queen only poisons half of the apple. And then when Snow White tries to be like, no, I'm not gonna take that apple from you because you could be trying to kill me, the queen is like, no, no, no, look, I'll eat half of it. And then she eats the unpoisoned half.
• 58:12
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 58:12
  Speaker B: I think that's a fun detail.
• 58:14
  Speaker A: She's got an assassin's teapot. Yeah, it's awesome.
• 58:17
  Speaker B: I also like the piece of poisoned apple falling out of Snow White's mouth. Again, I don't need this to be Sleeping Beauty. Let it be Snow White. And I think that a servant accidentally knocking a piece of apple out of her mouth is so much weirder and more interesting.
• 58:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 58:35
  Speaker B: Also, we already discussed that. The movie just wildly underdeveloped. Exactly what was going on there.
• 58:41
  Speaker A: Absurd.
• 58:42
  Speaker B: I don't know why. Multiple eye adaptations claiming to be gritty and dark. Don't utilize the iron shoes. I'm gonna be real real with ya. That's an insane ending to this story, and nobody has the balls to do it.
• 58:57
  Speaker A: Well, and you could definitely. I think, as you described, you can't do that in this movie. But you could do a version of it with. Especially when in a version that has magic, you could do a thing where you could do an allusion to it where when Snow White defeats her, she does something that causes. Especially in this one, because that black magic glass stuff that she. That she uses throughout the movie, you could do a thing in this one where, like, Snow White does something that causes her magic to, like, maybe she uses the magic mirror or something. Maybe that's a little on the nose, but, like, something that causes her magic to, like, rebound on her and she ends up, like, shackling herself in, like, metal Boots that or. You know what I mean. You could do an illusion to it that isn't directly. Oh, and then the protagonist of our story tortures a woman to death.
• 59:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:57
  Speaker A: Look, I'm just saying nobody's gonna like you. You. You can't legitimately tell me that this story as written would make sense and make for a good ending if our protagonist, who is otherwise presented as a morally upstanding person, tortures a person to death at the end of the movie. Not. Not again. It's one thing if it's like it happens and she doesn't stop it or like, whatever, but like, haha, you're here. I'm torturing you to death for our entertainment. That's not.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker B: Well, no, I guess not. I just think that it's interesting and nobody has the balls to do it.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong. You're not wrong there.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker B: The only, the only fairy tale media that I know of, off the top of my head that utilizes this element in any way is the Tenth Kingdom.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker A: I don't remember enough about that to remember what happens in it. I'll take your word for it.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker B: My last note in this. I had issues with this movie. A lot of them boil down to how atrocious the pacing was.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker B: Because the pacing. There are some parts of this movie, the whole setup, all the prologue stuff, goes on forever. Gone forever. And then.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker A: Which was fine. Like, I thought it was fine.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker B: Like.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker B: But then like Snow White and the Huntsman are supposed to have this like really great relationship and it. It's just like all crushed.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they just don't have enough. Yeah. Which is weird because they meet fairly early in the movie.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker A: But it just feels like they don't spend that much time.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker B: Well, the movie.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker A: Developing their relationship.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker B: No, the move. They needed like a quiet moment where it's just them.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they have a couple, but they're mostly not like. Again, the one is the one where he teaches her the quote unquote move about. Like, he's like, oh, do you know how to fight? You know how to use a knife or whatever. And then like he briefly kind of like gives her a tip about like how to stab her.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker A: And that's like it basically.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because like when they go to that fishing village, he has like, he has a quiet moment, but it's with the lady at the fishing village. And then the next time, like the next quiet moment they have is with all of the dwarves.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker A: No, I agree entirely. Yeah. It's just. Yeah. You don't have enough. We don't have enough time to develop any of the relationships that really matter with what the movie wants to do, which is the relationship between Snow White and the Huntsman. We don't have enough time. It doesn't really develop enough to really matter or to make me believe that he's, like, so destroyed at the end when she. You know what I mean? Or. Or, like. Or another thing is, like. You know, some. Like, we just. It's very expositional in the way that we just have to take his word. Like, when he's like, oh, you remind me so much of my wife. It's just him saying that.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker A: And, like. And buying that he's emotional in that moment. We don't actually. Like, we can't compare them. We know we've never met his wife.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker B: We don't even see her.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker A: We've never seen her. So we have no idea, like, what she's like. We can't see the similarities in them. It's all just taking his word for it in a way that feels very hollow and I guess. Sure. But it just. You're relying so much on. Yeah. Again, just exposition in a way that is just really unsatisfying, and it goes beyond that. Again, the same thing with the Dwarves. You're just like. They're in the movie so briefly. Like, they show up an hour in, and then one of them dies like, 15 minutes later, and you're like. Like, yeah, I guess I barely knew that guy's name. I don't. Like, you know what I mean? It just doesn't. None of it, like, has any weight because the person who gets the most development and who is the most interesting is the Queen. Yeah, we see, like, the most of her backstory. We see the most of that stuff. But it then doesn't make her interesting enough. Like, her motive, like, her motivation and stuff. She just has to. This is kind of what I guess Ebert was getting at. She kind of just has to be evil. So, like, she just gets killed at the end and then the story ends and you're just like, okay. Like, it just. Like, the one character who is super interesting, her death is just kind. She just gets stabbed and then she dies, and it's. And we move on and everybody's happy. You're like. There's not really, like, a moment of, like, really reflection on, like. Or, like. And, like, you know, there could even be a moment where Snow White and her, like, had, like, some sort of. They had a moment together where the Queen kind of got to Explain something about her backstory and Snow White, like, were to see some humanity in her or something. You know, just anything that would, like, add any layers of, like, interest to this. It's. Yeah. Nope. All right, let's go ahead and find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker B: Hands down, the best thing about this movie is Ravenna.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. An iconic evil queen. Great images, great performance by Charlize Theron, incredible costumes.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's great.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker B: Good stuff.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker A: It's a lot of fun.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker B: Another thing that I think this movie did good was aging up Snow White. She's seven years old in the Grimm's text.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker B: Why seven?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker B: Even though I think the movie could have used more time with the dwarves, if, in fact we're going to have the dwarf characters, I don't have a problem with skipping Snow White playing house for them. I'm fine with that. Even though it ends up being not all that important. I appreciated that the movie established a backstory between Snow White and William, rather than him just being some random prince who becomes obsessed with her corpse.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. It does have. You know, that at least has a little bit of. You're like, okay, I get why he's like, you know, they had this history together as a child, but then makes it a little more confusing with, like, what we're doing there with his kiss not working, like, what that means and.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, right. Like I said, it ends up not being that important, but, like, the idea was there.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what the movie nailed. As I expected, practically perfect in every way. This will be quick.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker B: Well, we. I mean, we talked.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker A: To be fair, again, with all. All of these categories, there's more things, but with a lot of them.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker B: We discussed it, and these story is not very long. It's, you know, a couple pages. But the one thing that I did want to mention here is that the queen pricking her finger and dripping blood onto snow is what instigates her wish for a child.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker B: She's sewing.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker B: In the. In the text, not in the rose garden. But that is. That is, like, the inciting incident.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker A: All right. We got a handful of odds and ends before we get to the final verdict.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker B: We talked about in the pretty sequel episode, Charlize Theron and her corset for the wedding scene.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. It didn't look.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker B: I didn't think it looked that bad. Like, it looked like it was very tightly laced. Yeah, but it didn't look particularly, like, heavy.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker B: Or. I don't know.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker A: She said it was. She was hunched over by the time she got to the.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker B: That doesn't make any sense. Maybe it was poorly made.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker A: I. If any. I think what. My guess, and this is pure speculation, is that this was said on some talk show because it was a thing to say. Because it's an easy thing, as a woman on a talk show to be like, wow, that corset, that was a bitch. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like. It's a generic, throwaway, vaguely feminist y thing to say. You know what I mean? Like, especially from that time period, it's just like, oh, that corset. It was horrible. I was almost hunched over by the time I got to the front. Just because it's a thing you can
• 1:08:08
  Speaker B: say then there's always corset discourse when we do period pieces.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. And she was probably, like, exaggerating. Like, it. Probably. But also, it probably was like, you know, she's probably not used to wearing corsets. It probably was slightly uncomfortable or something or, you know, who knows? But, yeah, I'm sure it was exaggerated for. For an interview on a talk show, on Jimmy Fallon or whatever.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker B: This movie has, like, one of the most unfortunate haircuts in it.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker A: I think he's got the haircut Ben Affleck has in the last duel, kind of.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker B: But, like, worse.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker A: But wor.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker B: So bad.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker A: Or is that Matt Damon, one of. Yeah, I can't remember. Yeah, no. Finn the brother. I didn't mention this, but in the prequel I read that. So he didn't do a wig. He actually just cut his hair that way because he. Yeah, and he was like, it works great for the movie, but boy, going out in public like, this is rough
• 1:09:06
  Speaker B: bleach blonde, no toner, fuck ass Bob with micro bangs.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's awful. The page boy cut. It's. Yeah, it's bad. I talked about how some of the stuff in this reminds me of or reminded me of some stuff from Dune, the similar cinematographer. But I'm legitimately wanted to look up and see if that one room, the room where she kills her at the end, but that we see her in a lot that has like, a pool of oil or whatever in the middle.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker A: I swear. Looks like the same set and room where in the beginning of the first Dune movie, Paul takes his Gom Jabbar test, where the lady, like, tests him. And I swear it's like the exact same room I was. It was.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker B: Didn't they build these sets?
• 1:09:49
  Speaker A: I think they did. So it probably. It could be. It could be. I have no idea if it. Yeah, it very well could be.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker B: Did you notice that? So the scene where Ravenna is talking to the figure that comes out of
• 1:10:02
  Speaker A: the mirror, he's, like, leering in the doorway.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. The brother is, like, leering in the doorway, and it seemed like he could not see the mirror figure.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker A: I did notice that, but that was. That is interesting.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to get from that exactly, but I thought it was an interesting detail.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker A: I think you could take. It could go a couple ways, but I think it could take the idea that she's insane.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker A: But she also can do magic, so.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker B: Right. And he can't. So maybe.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker A: Maybe that's it. Because you could take it. Yeah. That she has created this. The mirror didn't say anything. And that she has created this myth or whatever and, you know, is, like, kind of insane and hallucinating this. But also, it's not like, in the rest of the story, we know she can do magic and stuff. So it's not outlandish that this mirror could come to life and talk to
• 1:10:48
  Speaker B: her like, okay, Bella Swan cliff dives again in this movie.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, she does. Although it was way shorter than it looked like when she was standing there. The shot, it was kind of a forced perspective thing that, like, messed with my head. I thought she was much higher up from the water when she's, like, standing on the edge of the cliff, she crawls out of the sewer or whatever. She's standing on the edge of the cliff looking down at the water, and then she jumps, and it's like eight feet down. I was like, oh, that wasn't that far at all. I thought she was, like, 30 or 40ft up. No, she's like, maybe 10ft. And she hits the. I was like, oh, okay, that wasn't that bad. I mentioned this earlier. But when she gets. She finds that white horse on the beach, and then she rides it to escape, and then she gets. Gets to the dark forest. And as she approaches the dark forest, she hits this patch of, like, mud that the horse gets, like, caught in.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker A: And she falls off. And she initially starts, like, trying to drag the horse out of the mud. And I was like, oh, my God, are we gonna get it?
• 1:11:47
  Speaker B: I was like, oh, no, Artax.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker A: I literally thought we were gonna get an Artax scene, but I. No, I think they just needed her off the horse.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker A: And to explain why they don't ride. Like, they don't chase her into the Right. They need everybody on foot in the dark forest and not on horses anymore. So the horses get stuck in the mud and then they turn around or whatever. So I don't think you're meant to assume that horse died. I think they just. Somebody else probably pulled that horse out of there or whatever.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker B: I'm gonna go ahead and believe that. Yeah. Because we do not see what happens to that horse.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. I also thought this was interesting. It mentioned this in the summary that William shows up after he finds out that she's alive. He shows up and joins the Finn's, like, group of mercenaries that are going out to hunt for her, which. And I was like, how did. I guess they don't know who he is. Which I guess. I guess you might not know.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's, I guess no reason that they would know who he is.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker A: I don't know about that. Because he's the son of the Duke who is the main person waging a war against the queen. Right.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker A: You would think that maybe Finn would recognize the son. Maybe not. I don't know.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker B: Again, I mean, obviously not in this universe.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker A: Clearly not. But you. I just. I found that surprising that, like, nobody was like, hey, that's the Duke's again. I understand. It's like, you know, we don't have cell phones. Like, not everybody knows what everybody looks like, obviously. But of all the people that you might know, I think the son of the Duke, who's, like, your main enemy in this warrior fighting, might be a guy that you would know, that you would, like, maybe know and recognize. But maybe not. I don't know.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker B: I guess not.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker A: But he just joins up with them. I was like, oh, okay. Well, that works. I also felt throughout the movie, and I don't know if you felt this way, I'm gonna get your opinion on it, that Kristen Stewart's makeup was just a bit overdone for, like, most of the movie. It felt a bit too glamorous. Maybe you're gonna tell me it's not and that that's just what Kristen Stewart looks like. Maybe she's just that gorgeous. I don't know. Because I felt like some of her makeup throughout the movie fel too well done for the circumstances.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker B: I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, I see what you're saying, and I don't disagree even. But I didn't think it was bad enough that I was like. It was not notable to me.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker A: Interesting because she really at times felt like. I felt like they had. It almost was like I was watching like somebody had run like a glam bot, like AI filter over her face in a way that didn't make any sense. I don't know. Not like awful and not most of the. Not like all the time. There were just a handful of scenes where like they've been run around the dark forest and I'm like, doesn't it just looks. I don't know, it just doesn't look right to me. But I. Yeah, I mean, I could
• 1:14:46
  Speaker B: tell they had like over lined her lips. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker B: I did appreciate that. Like when we see her touch the white heart that she had dirty ass fingernails.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, well, and they definitely like the dwarves, they like dirty up all their teeth and everything. Like generally, I think it like, again, overall, visually the movie looks pretty good. I just thought her makeup felt a little off to me. But I don't know. This is another big thing that the movie just. And this I'm gonna go full 2010 obnoxious chud on the Internet. This is the most Mary sue ass thing that has ever happened in a movie. And I've never heard anybody even complain about this.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker B: Honestly, I think this one just flies under the radar enough.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, maybe, but the movie just has zero interest in explaining how and or why Snow White is like the person who should lead an army into battle at the end of this movie.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker A: I was like, wait, what? It's one thing for her to like give the speech, right. And like rouse the people as like, I'm the rightful heir to the throne, whatever. Like, sure. But then she like puts on armor and is like, rides the horse at the front and like leads the charge into the castle and then goes and fights the queen. And I was like, when did you learn how to do any of this when you were trapped in that tower your entire life? What?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker B: I could, I could buy that she might have learned to ride a horse. Pretty.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker A: Yes. 100 riding a horse. Absolutely.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker B: But being able to wield a sword and shield really makes no sense.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker A: Makes no sense. And it's like.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker B: And I get, I get that she has to be the one to kill the queen. Sure. With the like, prophecy and whatever.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker A: There's other ways to do that. But yeah, sure, she definitely does. But I felt crazy that I was like, did I miss a scene where. Because again, the only thing I can think is that there was probably some cut scenes that. That are not really that important, but are Kind of important. If you want this to make any sense at all. Again, you just go, whatever, who cares? It's a fair like. But that's. That seems silly to me in this instance because again. Or. Or even have a scene. So what you could have done was you have a scene where you show the Huntsman training her how to use a sword. Again, we get one scene where he's like, here's how you use a knife. That's it. We get 15 seconds.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker B: There should have been like a little montage while they were traveling. Yeah.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker A: The dwarves are helping teacher.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. Where she learns how to do something.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker A: Exactly. All that sort of stuff. Or. Or the other thing is when the. The early part when she's a child, show that she was a little bit of a tomboy or that her dad was, like, training her how to fight because.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker B: Because she's supposed to inherit the kingdom.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker A: Sure. Something like that. Give us a little bit of that at the beginning, like having her and William, like, dueling with each other instead
• 1:17:38
  Speaker B: of like climbing a tree and she
• 1:17:41
  Speaker A: beats him because she's a better. She's a quick learner, you know, anything like that. We get none of that. Which felt crazy because it's so easy. Yeah, like, that's what I'm saying. Just that scene with her and William just have them dueling with wooden swords and she's better than him when they're 12 and we. We get. We'll throw away line about her. Her father wants to make sure she can defend her. Whatever. There's none of that. And it's just like, oh, surprise.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, you can warrior. You could even do like, at. If we're gonna do that at the beginning, you could have a line where her father's like, you're gonna assume the throne and it's the job of a ruler to be at the front of the army.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker B: Because he clearly believes that because we see him right out at the foot. So then. And then that explains at the end, we could even have a scene where she, like, has a little tete a tete with the duke where he's like, no, I don't want you at the
• 1:18:32
  Speaker A: front of the army.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker B: That's my place.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'm the queen, you know, I'm the rightful ruler and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. And it's just like the fact that none of that's there and it's just like, oh, nope, she's just leading the charge in battle despite no evidence that she would be any good at any of that. That is crazy.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker B: You could even get away with it if you.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker A: If she hadn't been trapped in a tower. If we just hadn't known what she was up to.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker A: She had disappeared for five to 10 years and then reappeared. You know what I mean? We could just assume that she did. But she was trapped in a tower from like 12 to now. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. It's fine. It's whatever. That's. My most chud opinion I'll ever voice is that that's doesn't make any sense and is bad. I thought the black glass creatures at the end were pretty cool.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker B: I was kind of hoping that they were gonna turn into the same glass soldiers from the beginning.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker A: Exact same.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker B: Because I thought that would have been cooler.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker A: And it makes no sense that they don't. I thought the glass monster things were cool. And the only thing I could think is that they just wanted to do a different design because I thought it would be fun. But it makes so much more sense because that is some very effective subtle storytelling that would make it clear, oh, she orchestrated this whole thing from the beginning. That whole army, which you can infer that. I inferred that. But you could make it a little more clear and obvious without still directly saying it. You don't even have to say anything, but just have them fighting the same knights from the beginning. Yeah, but no. Okay, sure. Great. Also, this movie has one of the most awkward ass final shots I've ever seen. I think. I know. I was like. I felt like the movie didn't know how it wanted to end. And I. As I thought more about it, I think the movie did know how it wanted to end, kind of, which is that it didn't. It wanted to end on the focus of her. Again, this is the 2010 feminist version of it. The ending is her as the queen, not her with another man, not her
• 1:20:42
  Speaker B: with William, not her with the huntsman. She's the queen.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker A: She's the queen. The focus is on her. But the way it's done I thought was really awkward. Where we get this shot of her getting crowned and then we see like Eric walk through the background and kind of give her like a. Yeah, nice. And then the camera cuts back and we hold on this wide shot of her way at the front, but you can't really even see her at this point. Like, it's like all the whole hall or whatever. And then the camera just like slowly pulls back and then the door shut. I guess again, they're going for kind of like A fairy tale. Like, oh, yeah, the door's closing the book. Closing the book, whatever. But the way it holds on that shot where you can't even really make out the main character because she's so far away from the. You know what I mean?
• 1:21:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker A: Felt so crazy to me in comparison to something like. Which I think is a very good version of this, like, feminist revision of a story. The ending of, like, Dune 2 part 2. That story. The ending of Dune part 2. That. Because that Dune part 2 is very much a feminist, like a reworking of.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker B: I don't remember the ending of June
• 1:21:48
  Speaker A: Part two that ends on Chani. The final shot of that movie is Chani's face. It's not Paul. It's not whatever it is on Chani and her rage at what Paul has done and abandoning her and all this other stuff, centering her within this narrative. But it ends on a close up of her where we can really see what she's feeling in this moment. And then that's the final shot of the movie. And again, that is very much a feminist kind of deconstruction of what's going on with the whole story in. With between Paul and Chani in Dune. And centering her in the narrative, as opposed to centering Paul in the narrative for that final shot, I think is really important and really cool. And I'm very excited to see where it goes in Dune Part 3. This movie, I think, is going for a similar idea of, like, we're centering the woman in this. This is a feminist deconstruction of this. But you can't even see the woman because she's so far away from the camera. She just gets lost in the crowd of everybody else up on the dais or whatever. Dais where they're doing the it in a way that's just like, if you're gonna do that, just end on a close up of her or whatever, it's it. I just. I thought it was a very awkward final shot that I could kind of understand what they were going for, but was executed poorly. It was weird, which was crazy, considering generally, visually, it was the best thing the movie had going. So before we get to the final verdict, we wanted to do a. Remind you that you could do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about Snow White and the Huntsman. Tell us we're wrong. I wanted to be wr. Tell us why you love this movie. If you do. I don't know. Maybe you agree.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. Or tell us why you agree with us.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker A: Or tell us why you agree. Just give us your opinions. Maybe you have answers to some of our questions. Maybe we did miss something. Would love to know about it. Let us know on social media. You can also help us out by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Drop us a five star rating. Write us a nice little review. We would really appreciate that. And you can Support us@patreon.com ThisFilmIsLocation get access to bonus content starting at the $5 a month level. We will be releasing. We gotta do that asap. But we'll be releasing our bonus episode on Disney Snow White, which was the runner up in our March Madness Poll.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker B: The 1937 animated version.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker A: 1937 and Disney Snow White, not the new one. So yeah, we'll be talking about that on the bonus episode. So look out for that here in the next week or so. And at the $15 a month level you get access to priority recommendations. If there's something you would love for us to talk about about, you can request it if you support us at that level and we will add it to our docket. Katie it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker B: Sentence passed.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker B: That's stupid. I've said before on this show that each iteration of a fairy tale is reflective of the time and place it's told in. And that is certainly true of Snow White and the Huntsman. A gritty fairy tale with a girl Boss Princess is very 2010s. I can't hate it for that. Overall, I think it's a fairly fun ride. Not amazing, but pretty fun as a fairy tale. I wouldn't say that Snow White is a big favorite of mine, but I have long felt that the Grimm's version has so much potential. And I think that most adaptations, this one included, seem to largely ignore the weirdest, most unique things about it. Like the piece of apple getting knocked out of Snow White's throat and the Evil Queen being forced to dance to death in hot metal shoes. Even the Evil Queen being Snow White's real mother in the 1812 version, in the right hands, that could be such an interesting theme to explore. As for this movie, I think that everything about it works really well on paper. A plot about Snow White reclaiming her throne from the Evil Queen is a cool idea that makes sense in the larger context of the fairy tale. Expanding the Huntsman's character is a cool idea. Even a lot of the smaller details, like the women scarring themselves so the queen doesn't come after them, are cool ideas, but I fear that I like the ideas of this movie more than I like the execution. It's not that it's so terrible. It has some high points, most notably Charlize Theron's Queen Ravenna. But the pacing is so uneven. The characters and relationships are so underdeveloped, and the mechanics behind what brings Snow White back to life and some of the magical elements are so severely under explained. I guess you could say that both the Brothers Grimm, Snow White and Snow White and the Huntsman have a lot of untapped potential. Potential. But this time I think I have to go with the untapped potential of the Grimm's folk tale. It's just too weird and too goth for me not to love it.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker A: I think that makes sense. And yeah, I. As much as I complained about the movie, I didn't hate watching it. It's a perfectly fine blockbuster.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker A: Movie. It's just not good. Like, it's just not like it's. It's just like it's not.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker B: I wanted it to be a lot better.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker A: Genuinely have to turn your brain off and just be like, what? Whatever. Like just watching a fun, pretty like action adventure movie. But it also. It just. I think the biggest issue to me is that it seems to really lack the heart that would make it really work were it, you know. Anyways. All right, Katie, what's next?
• 1:27:22
  Speaker B: Up next, we are doing a Switch episode and you are reading and we are going to be talking about Edge of Tomorrow, a 2014 film based on the novel all youl need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakura. Oh boy. Sakurazaka.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker A: Yes, that'll be our next episode. Should be a lot of fun. I haven't started the book yet, but I've seen the movie years ago. Interested to see what you think of it. I don't remember.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker B: I don't think I know anything about this movie.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker A: Well, you'll learn a little bit. It's a very fun movie. I don't remember it being very deep or having a lot to say. I could be wrong about that. But I do remember it being a very fun action movie with Tom Cruise. All right, so also known as Live, Die, Repeat on some. Depending on where I think we released is Live, Die, Repeat and then got renamed Edge of Tomorrow or vice versa. I can't remember. But anyways, come back in one week's time or two weeks time. We'll be talking about Edge of Tomorrow and in one week's time, we'll be hearing what you all have to say about sleep. Snow White and the Huntsman. Until that time, guys, gals on boundary, pals and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.