Once upon a movie...

  It started with Disney, when he took classic fairy tale stories and animated them for children.  He took out the horror and morbid morals buried in them and made them family oriented.  Now that we are older we are making our own idea's about these fairy tales and how they can be redone.  The age of vampires is done, does this mean that it all about princesses, prince charming and wicked witches?
  Beastly 2010
 Red Riding Hood 2011.


It started here, the tween years, that fairy tales became the in thing.  Let's take the two themes of these two movies and examine them.  Beastly, the first to open the door, gives us a new look at the tale as old as time Beauty and the Beast.  This is an over used plot that follows the same lines.  The only difference is that this is a modernize version.  But the main plot points will stay in.  In Beastly the Beast will become normal again and the Beauty will love him all the same.
The problem?  It's not original.  Sure, you modernize it, and make it more relate-able, but when you misuse Wicca and a true beauty it's sick.  The Wicca Religion/belief has one rule that is broken in the movie: Do what you will, so long as it harms none.   Now, if we remember correctly was the story of Beauty and the Beast for children or not?  So children were warned about witches, why?  Because of history and religion.  Fairy tales contain morals for a reason mainly due to a cultures beliefs and one of the biggie religions was Christianity.  In Christian (and Jewish) doctrines it is claimed that witches (or pagans) are not well liked.  So in stories witches are used either for good or bad, but mostly bad.
Overall, I know it's just a movie, fantasy and escapism.  But when you call a guy with tattoos and piercings a "Beast" well, now you're being stupid.  I don't find men with tattoos "ugly" or piercings "hideous", i think it's hot.  It's the stuck up pretty boys that i think are ugly.  Do you get the sarcasm?  The point is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to depict a person as being ugly in this way (the movies way) is contradicting the meaning of inner beauty.
As for Red Riding Hood, I personally do not like it for reasons that are not acceptable to explain on this blog.  A few issues i have with it are so: having a random love triangle has no premise to me.  If the outcast wood cutter was left out of the story it would have been fine, the story would flow all the well.  However, if he was only used to be a red haring, killed off and, thus proofing he isn't the werewolf, was misjudged this would have been better.  Before seeing the movie I was hoping (praying) that Amanda Seyfried was the werewolf - I would have loved to see this twist in the story's plot.  Sadly, this is not so.  
Again, it is a fantasy.  It's hard to judge fantasy because it isn't real (duh!) and maybe that's what bothers me.  I like fantasy but I also like the issues (realistic issues) that come up in the fantasy story.  Rather then having Mary Sue and Garry Stu stories, I'd like to see a fairy tale story with two women or two men.  Imagine Cinderella (the guiltiest of all overused story plots) going to the ball but instead of being with a prince she meets a girl who inspires her to give her step family the finger and leave.  Or the story of the 12 dancing PRINCES (not princesses).  Imagine, a prince has a friend who is helping him and his brothers go out dancing but they are loyal to one another, so when the king is all 'where are they going out to?' the friend helps keep the secret.



*~* Detour Rant *~* ## skip ahead if you want to know the point.

Of course, though, we can't have girl on girl (guy on guy) fairy tale stories, because it's not romance its erotica.  You can have an emotionally abusive guy fall in love *coughlustcough* with a one dimensional, personality lacking, ninny and call it romance or true love.  But God forbid there's a story about two same sex, intelligent, well developed characters fall in love.  NO!  it's not love it's all about sex and filth.  Frankly, it has nothing to do with sex or sexuality or what have you, it's a matter of story, plot and characters.  It seems Hollywood is dead and so people just keep remaking movies and using abused plot lines to make a movie.  What about creativity?  Why they just grab the hottest book of the New Yorker and make it a movie, it's about money!  Not story telling.  If people put half as much time in telling a great story as they do in making money, I assure you they would double their profit.
Fairy tales are overrated.  Cinderella isn't about a girl going to a party to have fun who happens to snag a prince.  It was about parents telling their children (daughters) that if they do their work and earn their play time they may marry a prince one day.  It was the hope that a daughter would be marry off to a good man one day and not the town drunk who knocks her up.  Beauty and the Beast is about telling your daughter that her father will sell her off to a older man but if she is good of heart and has patience she will learn to see her husbands inner beauty (kindness) and learn to love him.  
Frankly, fairy tales are no better than the vampire craze we went through.  First you think you're coming out of this vampire-hangover only to learn that Hollywood injected you with Fairy Tale Dust (FTD=the new LSD) and now you have to go through five years of fairy tale freak trips.


*~* Continued point to the blog *~*


Whether or not this is a new age or if these is truly the days of Hell we need to take note of some future works that will be coming to theaters and DVD soon.
  Sleeping Beauty 2011
   Snow White and the Huntsmen 2012

I will confess that Sleeping Beauty interest me.  Mainly because it is not set in a fantasy world or has fantasy elements.  It is modern and realistic yet fulfills that fairy-tale-dust addiction that America is hungry for.  Although it has yet to be seen in America I'm sure it will be received well do to the title alone.

As for Snow White and the Huntsmen (why not just call it Snow White?  Oh, that's right, it's a romance between S.W. and the Huntsmen, how silly of me to forget) I again state that due to bias feelings I can not express my true feelings about it.

From the trailer I first expected it to be centered on the wicked Queen.  Imagine a movie (The Wicked Queen - good title right?) where the main character is a manipulative intelligent woman who wants to reach immortality.  Sounds great but then they introduce S.W. and from there it goes down hill.  Not just down but drops suddenly into the crust of Earth.

Final thoughts:

Only time can tell if the tween years of America will result in unfulfilled marriages, unreachable expectations and "true love" or not.  I, meanwhile, will stick to the Grimm's version of these fairy tales and continue to look for that perfectly flawed, well rounded character in that all original plot.

And here I thought Hollywood was dead.


Signed, The Carnivorous Rabbit (one day I'll have a positive review)