Snow White and the Huntsman

[Deloria]

But it was just a Gothic novel that happened to be set in Arabia because it was fashionable because of the Arabian Nights. That's also why it was written in French.

[Blackthorne]

Born in 1991 and you didn't have "dark" fairy tales?  That's all there's BEEN since you were born, kid!  It's freakin' cliche now!


Bt

[Lambonius]

Amusingly enough, it seems they're just fine with Mask of Eternity's "violent darkness", in that the game allows you to literally decapitate opponents with your bare hands

[Numbers]

Amusingly enough, it seems they're just fine with Mask of Eternity's "violent darkness", in that the game allows you to literally decapitate opponents with your bare hands

You know...the first level?  If you, for whatever reason, fail to get the dagger from Connor's house...and then you see a Spriggan...and he hops up to you...and you punch him with your fists...and his head goes flying...yeah, that's what I meant by that.

Of course, that's not as violent as the cutscene triggered when you kill the Spriggan in the cemetery when you have the hatchet; Connor literally bashes its face in half.

[dark-daventry]

Born in 1991 and you didn't have "dark" fairy tales?  That's all there's BEEN since you were born, kid!  It's freakin' cliche now!


Bt

Well, perhaps I rephrase what I said; I personally have only ever been exposed to the happy stuff. It's been the last couple of years that I've been getting exposed to the darker versions.

[Lambonius]

Amusingly enough, it seems they're just fine with Mask of Eternity's "violent darkness", in that the game allows you to literally decapitate opponents with your bare hands

You know...the first level?  If you, for whatever reason, fail to get the dagger from Connor's house...and then you see a Spriggan...and he hops up to you...and you punch him with your fists...and his head goes flying...yeah, that's what I meant by that.

Of course, that's not as violent as the cutscene triggered when you kill the Spriggan in the cemetery when you have the hatchet; Connor literally bashes its face in half.

Yeah.  I get it.    I wasn't confused as to the logic of Mask of Eternity being considered dark and violent, I was confused as to where you got your information from about IA being totally okay with it.

[Numbers]

Amusingly enough, it seems they're just fine with Mask of Eternity's "violent darkness", in that the game allows you to literally decapitate opponents with your bare hands

You know...the first level?  If you, for whatever reason, fail to get the dagger from Connor's house...and then you see a Spriggan...and he hops up to you...and you punch him with your fists...and his head goes flying...yeah, that's what I meant by that.

Of course, that's not as violent as the cutscene triggered when you kill the Spriggan in the cemetery when you have the hatchet; Connor literally bashes its face in half.

Yeah.  I get it.    I wasn't confused as to the logic of Mask of Eternity being considered dark and violent, I was confused as to where you got your information from about IA being totally okay with it.

I guess it's not really information; it's just the vibe I get from the IA forums.  I've been on the forums a lot as a lurker, and, up until recently (when a certain somebody whose name starts with an "A" and ends with a "nakin" got himself banned on the Telltale forums), it seemed to be a hobby to put down TSL.  Plus, whenever MoE was brought up in a conversation, you seemed to prefer it to TSL, despite the fact that TSL is more King's Quest-like than MoE is.

[spoiler]I don't know what exactly TSL did to you...other than turning Valanice into a sleep-deprived wretch...or having Manannan be related to her...or giving Alexander hair that Goku would be envious of...or retconning a bunch of other stuff...or making the plot less family-friendly-fare and more like a sob story...God, I'm bad at this.[/spoiler]

[Blackthorne]

As one of the co-founders of IA, I can say that I do not prefer (or Condone) Mask of Eternity.

And as for Annakin's anti-TSL rants, we were no proponent of them, either.  In fact, we found his rants to be redundant and told him of this.

He issued an apology on our forums, and others as well, incidentally.

MoE and TSL definitely polarize King's Quest fans, I can say that for sure.

I can also say that I think MoE is steaming pile of fresh manure.


Bt

[Numbers]

As one of the co-founders of IA, I can say that I do not prefer (or Condone) Mask of Eternity.

...

I can also say that I think MoE is steaming pile of fresh manure.


Bt

Or, in the immortal words of Connor:  "Gadzooks!  What is that moldy smell?!"

[Rosella]

*cough* Spoilers in your post there, 929572.

[Blackthorne]

Spoilers on a 14 year old game?? 


Bt

[Rosella]

More like a few-month-old one. Some people haven't gotten to the end of Chapter 3.

[Numbers]

*cough* Spoilers in your post there, 929572.

Duly noted.  I was trying to be general to avoid having to enclose it all in a spoiler tag, but at least one of the things I mentioned is a pretty major plot point.

In the words of Crispin Glover from Back to the Future--"All I can say is...I'm sorry."

[Bludshot]

I really don't understand the idea that this new movie is original.  Certainly more mature than Disney but that isn't really saying much. 

It is still the same exact story in the same exact setting only now the Huntsman is a axe throwing studmuffin.  Which is fine but not enough to call the movie original.  Also I have no problem with Kristen Stewart but it is going to be a hard sell making her "fairer" than Charlize Theron.

Mirror Mirror does a little better but it is directed by that hack Tarsem Singh so that's out.

[Numbers]

First reviews for Snow White are coming in. Looks like it's not terrible, but not great either--just very, very average. At least it sounds like it's better than "Red Riding Hood" was. Plus, there are worse movies you could go to see (Battleship, for instance).

[darthkiwi]

I saw the trailer and really hope it's a great movie, but I have deep reservations (largely due to Stewart, because... well.)

I'd love to see a retelling of the Snow White myth which centres on the Queen. She wants to be the fairest of them all and has created a magic mirror. Does that not interest people? She could have created a magic sword or a magic crown or a magic army, but she made a mirror. Which suggests that she doesn't just want power, she wants to see things, perhaps appropriate things she sees. If she could use the mirror to see far away, kind of like a camera obscura or the mirror in the KQ series, then that would give her a sort of power over the world she sees: if she can see anything then she can control it.

But, like the Lady of Shalott, if all you can do is see but never interact, what good is that? Perhaps she sees everything through a mirror to allow her an omniscient overview of her kingdom - but bear in mind that medieval mirrors didn't provide perfect reflections since they didn't have the technology to produce perfectly smooth mirrors. So, seeing everything through a mirror means to see imperfectly - to have a warped view of reality - and to be constantly aware that that view is warped, that there is something between you and what you see. This is why the Lady of Shalott looks away from the mirror to truly see what she could previously only see by reflection, and if the Queen's magical powers only reinforce her alienation from the world she sees then that surely will only increase her disassociation from the world she rules, reinforcing the boundary between "self" and "other", making her more introverted and cruel.

And she asks the mirror who the fairest of them all is. So she doesn't just want to see, she wants to see herself - and she wants to be seen in the way she chooses. She effectively wants to control all the relationships she has with people so that everyone adores her. She must have some fairly deep-seated issues about this, but I'm not really interested in going back to the root of them: I'm more interested in the problems they cause in the present. I can imagine her insisting that all her royal portraits are painted to make her look young and beautiful and totally in control. What sort of images would she have on her coins? What sort of presence does she want to project to her subjects? Would she ever consider marriage - or is that too much of a risk, because a husband might usurp her power and because it might damage her looks? Does she use magic to stay eternally young - and what sort of strain does that put on her? I can see a lot of parallels here with Elizabeth I, a queen who refused to marry, used copious amounts of makeup as she got older, and always wanted to be painted as though she were beautiful. But that wasn't just a personal, emotional impulse: it was also important to ensure that her subjects saw her as a sort of perfect goddess, to maintain the glamour that sustained the monarchy.

So how would such a character feel if the mirror told her "You are the fairest - at the moment. But another will come who threatens to usurp your beauty."?

What interests me especially here is the fact that political power is equated with physical beauty: the Queen is both an absolute ruler and absolutely beautiful. Does this mean that the political and physical can overlap? Or is that just a simplification? What's also intriguing is that both Snow White and the Queen exist under a very male gaze - they want to be beautiful because, presumably, men find them beautiful and attractive. And yet the Queen is cold and distant, and Snow White is virginal and innocent - it's as though the discourse of sexual desire has become so ingrained in this world (as it might have been in the middle ages) that women react to it and live within it without even realising. Also, bear in mind that while power is apportioned according to a male gaze, it is the Queen who has the magic mirror and therefore the power of the ultimate gaze. Bear in mind also that while the valuation of power/beauty is an essentially male decision - traditionally it is kings and patriarchs who have evaluated women on their beauty and divided women up accordingly - it is the women who have power in this world: the Queen is the one pulling the strings, and Snow White represents a source of absolute power (ie. absolute beauty). It's strange to me that this fairytale deals with feminine beauty and was told in a partiarchal world, yet creates a fiction which is fundamentally in a matriarchal setting. Perhaps this is to better study the implications of female beauty, by giving the Queen absolute power and therefore sort of studying it in isolation?

And what, exactly, is her relationship with her inner circle of knights, and the armies they raise for her? Why do the knights fight for her? Is it her glamour and her arresting personality, or simply loyalty to a monarch? Do they all worship her as a beautiful being who gives meaning to their lives - is their entire moral code based around her beauty? How would this be affected by the introduction of somebody fairer?

You see, what I liked about the trailer was that it made me wonder about these things. And what I like about "dark" retellings of fantasy stories is not so much the fact that they are "gritty" but the fact that they drag what was a fairytale story back to the real world, where people lived in a very artificial feudal hierarchy which exists not to make each individual happier but to prevent the whole system collapsing, which would lead to anarchy and the destruction of the whole society. People's desires are kept in check by systems like honour, prestige and morality to prevent them from tearing the fabric of society apart. If people follow their desires more than society permits - for example, if a married lord who is in love with the Queen kills his wife so that he can marry his beloved, and if the Queen goes ahead with this and marries him, things will start to go very wrong very quickly. There's only so much pressure the social system can take. So when you take a fairytale and bring all those factors back in, as they would have been in the middle ages - eg. if you read Gawain and the Green Knight, a medieval poem, you can see these systems in play, although they're sort of shrouded because their true purpose is not known, even to the author - it immediately brings up all these questions, which all put strain on the characters and on the social world they inhabit, and that makes drama because suddenly the plot, the "dark" bits, the climactic fight scenes don't mean a thing because what matters is the people in these worlds and how they deal with things.

But yeah, I don't have high hopes for this. I'll keep an eye out for reviews, though.

[KatieHal]

Sounds you're itching to write a story to me, darth.

[darthkiwi]

Ha, I think I'm itching to write hundreds. Unfortunately it takes a lot longer to write than to muse on one.

[Numbers]

Actually, from what people have said about the plot, the movie does delve into the Queen's desire to stay beautiful; she goes so far as to literally suck the beauty from other beautiful women, who then shrivel up like that Nazi at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I believe she also kills the King near the beginning of the movie so her power isn't usurped.

So, in other words, she really does have the same overblown insecurity issues that Malicia does.

[darthkiwi]

Hmm, intriguing. Might look into seeing the film at some point, then.