It’s clear that Hollywood is pretty well tapped-out when it comes to new ideas. Heaven forbid they consider coming to WordPress and looking for some fresh writing talent. Instead, they’ve rehashed a fairy tale and added a generous batch of special effects to spice it up. I know my loyal readers will point out that I recently did the same thing with the Three Little Pigs in my erotic opus, Forty Seven Shades of Pink. In my defense, no one is paying me buckets of cash to write anything, original or otherwise, and I didn’t actually use any special effects except the pigs being able to dress themselves in lingerie. Let’s face it, they could already talk and build houses so that’s not exactly a quantum leap in believability.
I don’t have too many clear memories of my early childhood, largely because it was a long damn time ago. I’m told that my parents and grand parents read me fairy tales from time to time. Though my memory is admittedly a tad vague until early puberty, I’m pretty sure I would have recalled the part in Snow White wherein evil doers are sliced in half with swords and immediately turn into a million chunks of digital coal. I certainly would not have forgotten a witch who looks like Charlize Theron, spins in the woods and turns into a swirling flock of ravens like some bad-trip, M.C. Escher print.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven’t actually seen the new Snow White movie, and I likely won’t. I’ve seen the trailer a couple of times, and that’s more than enough for me. The special effects certainly looked dazzling enough, but to be honest, when you’ve seen one evil henchman reduced to a scattered pile of black rocks, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
Compared to most fairy tales, the traditional storyline of Snow White is not particularly reliant upon special effects. There’s an evil witch with competition issues and a talking mirror. The mirror tells her about a more beautiful woman, named Snow White (we’ll save the speculation about Hitler youth ideals for some other blog). The wicked witch can’t deal with being the second fairest of them all. She fails in putting a hit out on Snow White who escapes into the woods, eventually shacking up with seven miners who happen to be dwarfs. The queen hunts her down and slips her a poison apple which puts Snow White in a coma. Aside from the talking mirror, there’s absolutely no reason for special effects in the story. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen talking mirrors on sale at Bed, Bath and Beyond, in case you’re interested in getting one of your own. Bear in mind, those sassy bitches are on the clearance rack for a reason.
The new movie, if the title is accurate, focuses more on the early part of the story and the huntsman’s role as failed hit-man. Certainly there is room for the character to deal with the turmoil of his task. Again, no real reason for additional special effects, unless the film makers decided to go with the miniature angel-huntsman on one shoulder and the little devil-huntsman on the other, but I didn’t see that in the trailer. A quick consult with some blog writers and we might have had the angel-devil on the shoulders scene, but nooo, those big wheels out in Hollywood couldn’t be bothered.
Obviously, Snow White as a story doesn’t really need special effects, gratuitous or not. Another part of the problem is the special effects themselves. With the advent of computer generated imagery, the wonder of special effects is no longer wondrous. Once upon a time, movie-goers would speculate for days about “how’d they do that?”, scanning the edge of the screen for tell-tale silouettes of wire or looking for the zipper on the back of the Godzilla suit. Today, we don’t even bother wondering how the magic happens.
I know how to use my computer like a typewriter to write these dopey blogs and to look at porn research online. There are hundreds of thousands of twelve year olds people who can do so much more with a computer than me. They can do things like make Spiderman swing from buildings or create dog-beasts from thin air to chase the last few Hunger Games contestants to the final fight scene. Hell, computer experts can even see about getting me an upgrade on my airline tickets (though they can’t consistently get me an emergency exit row or bulkhead seat). I would love to say how much I appreciate their facility with the keyboard and mousepad, but as long as Spidey doesn’t break up and freeze into a pixilated mess of red and blue, midswing, I don’t even notice their work.
Sorry Hollywood, adding a bunch of eye candy and razzle dazzle is no way to fool us into thinking we didn’t already know this story line since we were 4 years old. Now when “Jack and Jill, Terror Hill” comes out, I may have to change my stance and go see it. Rumor has it the scene where Jack breaks his crown is incredibly gruesome, plus we finally get to find out what a crown is.
1pointperspective 