Snow White and the Huntsman

In the epic action-adventure Snow White and the Huntsman, Kristen Stewart (Twilight) plays the only person in the land fairer than the evil queen (Oscar(r) winner Charlize Theron) out to destroy her. But what the wicked ruler never imagined is that the young woman threatening her reign has been training in the art of war with a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, Thor) dispatched to kill her. Sam Claflin (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) joins the cast as the prince long enchanted by Snow White's beauty and power. The breathtaking new vision of the legendary tale is from Joe Roth, the producer of Alice in Wonderland, producer Sam Mercer (The Sixth Sense) and acclaimed commercial director and state-of-the-art visualist Rupert Sanders.

Review

Ok so this remake or adaption re-imagines the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale in a Medieval setting with the beginning we are familiar with: a queen who pricks her fingers on the thorns of roses during winter and three drops of blood end up on the white snow, so she wishes for a daughter who is just as fair.

Not long after her wish, the queen gives birth to that daughter and her health takes a turn for the worse. Soon the queen succumbs to her illness and passes away. The king is distraught and sinks into depression. But his grief is put aside when his kingdom is under attack from a mysterious dark army. 

During one of the conquests, the king's army manages to destroy the dark army and save a beautiful woman who was held captive. This woman is the antagonist, the soon to be evil queen that is actually a man-hating sorceress name Ravenna (Charlize Theron). The king forgets about his grief when he sees the beautiful Ravenna. In fact he is so besotted with her that he makes her his queen.

Unfortunately for him, being the man-hating sorceress that she is, Ravenna kills him on their wedding night. Ravenna's dark army soon takes over the castle and Ravenna assumes sovereign over the kingdom and her dark magic plunges the entire kingdom into despair and horror, all the while keeping Snow White captive.

The reason why Ravenna has kept Snow White (Kristen Stewart) alive, is when the vanity-feeding magic mirror tells her that can either bring her to her end or enable her to be immortal (she has to eat Snow White's heart). She chooses the latter option.

Snow White and the Huntsman is all about how Snow White escapes from her prison and encounters the widowed drunkard of Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), who is hired to retrieve Snow White when she escapes into the dark forest. But the Huntsman soon is on Snow White and together they encounter a tribe a women who disfigured themselves to stay out of Ravenna's jealous glaze, the darwfs, and a chidhood friend of Snow White who has become an excellent archer and has feelings for Snow White.

Despite the potential for any romantic drama, all of the understated romantic drama is ultimately wasted and there is no conclusion (even in the ending). The storyline was ok and the acting was good. Charlize Theron totally stole the show, it should have been called Ravenna and Snow White or something like that. She give more depth into the character of the evil queen, and showed that Ravenna was not naturally evil or jealous, but she became so because of her circumstances and some twisted values instilled in her by her mother to save her life. It kind of makes one feel sorry Ravenna and hope that she found her peace towards the end. Perhaps while knowing that Snow White was the key to either her destruction or immortality, she hoped to be immortal but she was also tired of the life she has lived (it is implied she is really really old) and being under the control of her dark powers. In some way, she could have been hoping to find someone to put an end to it for her.

It wasn't that the show was bad, but it had so much more potential.