So, midnight show of “Snow White & The Huntsman,” and the auditorium was stuffed. In the luckiest casting ever, it has Thor and Bella fighting the serial killer Aileen Wuornos from that movie with the little girl from the Adams Family – except this time the serial killer is hot and she is just as much of a monster, but now she is a Queen in fantasy-land too, with way better skin from her freaky, but also sexy, milk baths.
Thor is pretty good in this film but he traded in his hammer for a big ax and he never uses his lightning powers. He can still outfight anybody except the super-creepy brother of the serial-killer-way-evil Queen who made the audience so uncomfortable they giggled sometimes. Strange thing is, Hawkeye is in this too, disguised as a prince or something or, come to think of it, maybe it was Legolas. But this guy had all the cinema arrow hero tricks stuff down cold. I mean, he has definitely studied archery movies hardcore. Plus he is way brave and way defiant of his cautious and always wrong dad who talks a lot but never does anything. And he, the son, is also really handsome. I like girls but I could tell, because all the handsome guys shaved, but only a day or two before the film got made.
Serial-Killer Queen takes over the kingdom because, mostly, she hates kings and then locks the little princess in a tower. The super insecure hot Queen isn’t all bad though because despite claiming that she has wiped out tons of kingdoms before this one, and has killed thousands (and she might be being modest on that one point) she gives Bella really spiffy clothes to have in the tower, especially with those Walt Disney, Snow White puffy shoulders, which also makes her brave in a way because Bella is the only person who could threaten her evil Queening and she doesn’t just kill her to begin with.
Not only that, she gives her these rock-star leather pants for underneath her Disney dress which is really handy in case she ever wanted to escape – oh and great running boots. Then one day a bird convinced her (Bella) to look out her window, because I guess if you are in a tower for ten years you never do that, and she finds a way to escape. I don’t want to ruin anything but that makes the Queen angrier than ever and she was hardly ever nice as it was.
Thor is off drinking beer or ale or something and the Queen picks him to lead her team into the swamp to find Bella. I think she knew he was Thor because she could have sent scores of men searching but sent him instead. I bet you can’t guess what happens next. During this part, keep your eyes open for cameos by the Black Riders, Easterlings and oh, they have a cave troll but he has on a mask of the monsters from “Pitch Black,” and his part is sweet. But really, the kids who designed the film, including the monsters, did awesome. I don’t want to get, like, super movie-nerdy, but the creature design and set design were mostly always kinda awesome. Really, they were more awesome than the rest of the film. I would have had them write some script too because it could have used some leftover awesome, but it wasn’t terrible or anything.
So, if you don’t want to know how the movie goes you should stop reading. Right now. Don’t blame me if haven’t ever watched the Disney cartoon or know the story or know how these movies work, but there were these dwarFs. They weren’t dwarVes like Gimli where they are a different race and culture and stuff, they were just kinda regular guys who used to live in a colony of dwarFs. Thing is they all looked like pretty famous British guys from a bunch of violent movies, most of them gangsters, but also funny and violent guys like Ed who killed zombies in that “Shaun is Dead,” zombie movie from way back like, ten years ago, which you can watch on Netflix sometimes.
They take Bella and Thor past a tree (that is super good at hiding not just people but whole regions) to a magical land where there are a bunch of magical creatures and I thought the design, again, was really cool, but parts of the movie were a fairy tale and parts of the movie were trying to be all gritty and realistic so I was like pointing at the movie yelling, “What are you movie? Are you a fairy tale with Narnia Creatures or are you Hill Street Blues? Make up your mind!” I was totally confused and the other kids in the theater were like, “Not cool, even at midnight,” so I used my inside voice after that.
But these dwarFs seemed like they were going to be really cool. I mean Swearengen, the guy who calls everybody #&*#@&% from Deadwood and uses lots of other swears, was there but I also wondered why Tyrion Lanister and other guys who are actually dwarFs weren’t there instead of dudes pretending to dwarFs. But it turns out they didn’t get much cool dialog anyway. I guess having one of them have mystical powers and one of them crush on Bella was good enough.
So after a while everybody recognized that Bella was this super vampire or something with magic blood. The insecure Queen kept asking her magic mirror if Bella was hotter than her and I think the mirror was trying to get her killed because he kept lying and telling her yes – and she obviously wasn’t – which made the Queen’s stress lines show up more and more. Also, the mirror had a weird dude under a golden blanket to talk for him — or else the serial killer was trippin’. I think it was just supposed to look cool.
So eventually Thor and Hawkeye and Swearengen and Ed and pretty much all the good guys ride from the good-guy castle to the bad-guy castle. Bella turns into Joan of Arc and secretly, all this time, she has been seriously skilled at sword fighting and horse riding. (And a reader reminded me she even has a shield with the White Tree of Gondor on it, which surprised me since I didn’t know French princess warriors had that kind of gear.) I mean, what else are you going to do in a castle prison for ten years right? Turns out the good-guy castle is just over the hill and across the beach from the bad Queen’s castle – and oh – they are both awesome! I don’t get why Bella went the long way to get there, but whatever. They also ride when the tide is coming in because Bella just can’t wait but it doesn’t matter that much because the bad guys who have this way-big army suck at arrows and flinging burning pitch and sword fighting. More stuff happens but I don’t want to ruin it.
So like I said, Thor was really good and I am not a big cheerleader of Bella but she wasn’t too bad either. But I don’t get why she is some big movie star. She was pretty good when she pretended to be Joan Jett but she seems a lot more like Joan Jett than a princess – know what I mean?
So, I don’t know that I would go pay money to see this movie. I guess Bella fans will love it but the Queen with all her extremely cool evil costumes was one of the best things so it was more like going to one of those gallery things where they display art and not very much like those stories where you get all emotional about stuff. The pictures were cool though. I sure hope that other movie this year with dwarVes is a lot more involving.
