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(Warning: Major spoilers throughout) The buzz leading up to Snow White and the Huntsman was relentless: This was to be the darker, bleaker spin on thefamiliar fantasy. And after seeing the remake, I guess that spartially true: The Evil Queen, as embodied by the milk-bathing,soul-sucking, hallucinating, carcass-eating Charlize Theron, wasindeed one degree more twisted than I had expected. But as for therest of this plodding reimagining, it wasn t more macabre ormysterious; it was just more tethered to conventional thinking andmainstream filmmaking. In other words: More predictable and lazy.More boring. (MORE: TIME's Mary Pols reviews Snow White , and finds more to enjoy) After seeing the film (and if you haven t, you should really stopreading now before I ruin everything), I thought the low point inthe production s downward trajectory was Snow White s fieryrallying of her army to take back the castle. Fed up with the EvilQueen, empowered by her resurrection from the dead (thanks to themagical kiss from her main drunkard, er, Huntsman), Kristen Stewartdelivers her best Mel Gibson impression in front of the gatheredinfantry. She screams of injustice, of freedom, of sacrifice andbetter days, and then leads us all into a frantic closing montagethat finds armed riders crashing through castle gates (drawn up bysome intrepid dwarfs), dodging boiling oil as they strike down oncoming waves of the black army. Theclimactic showdown involves the mysterious supernatural ghostwarriors that defend the Queen henchman composed of flyingshards, who punish the Huntsman relentlessly as he searches for away to kill these floating swarms of metal. Now I ask, sincerely: What here holds any link to the realm of Snow White ? I have no doubt that director Rupert Sanders thought he wasmodernizing the thing, or making it relevant for a new generationof teen boys (the only demographic Hollywood cares about any more),but instead what he s done is strip away all that was novel aboutearly visions in his push to frame the story in a timeliercinematic context. The film's climactic battle isinterchangeable with just about any other big screen castle siegefrom the past 20 years. The trek through the enchanted forest thistime around could easily be Narnia or Middle Earth. The angry trollcould be a Kraken. As soon as the Huntsman and Snow White slip fromthe clutches of Finn who, oddly enough, might be the mostdistinctive character in the film Snow White devolves into the routine. Still, in one form or another, all the familiar Snow White elements are here the forest, the poisoned apple , the loving prince, the dwarfs. And there s some novelty inseeing how Sanders and company toy with the concept of the EvilQueen; her mirror seems less magical than a figment of herfractured imagination, her evil nature stems from a spell cast onher by her mother which requires murders to preserve her outerbeauty, her milk baths and transformations into a flock of birdshave a creepy and ethereal quality to them. But all these ironicreferences and momentary throwbacks are but minor diversions. WhenI think back to this new and improved Snow White, my mind keeps returning to the resurrection, and the rallying cry.Here is Snow White, revived and raging which never happened inthe original sporting armor and screaming out to her vengefularmy. Snow White as warrior princess: it's a bizarre sight tobehold. And this isn t just the low point of the film, and themost derivative plot twist imaginable, but it may also mark the lowpoint of Kristen Stewart's career. An actress who has becomefamous for her vulnerability, for evoking a torn conscience and anaching heart, Stewart plays Snow White as a bruised rose until thisfinal act, when she must go thorny instead. Shreaking out to hermen, leading the charge, here s a woman and a character whocouldn t look more out-of-place. (MORE: Richard Corliss names the top 10 films of the millennium ) That said, it sure makes for a good marketing campaign: Lots ofswords, shields, furious horse-riding and a glimpse of the EvilQueen s mystical shard creature. The relentless TV ad campaignpromised a bigger and badder fairy tale a fantasy epic, withaction to spare. But as with so many recent epics, from The Avengers to Immortals, Transformers and stretching all the way back to the Star Wars prequels, the human-vs.-CGI-creature approach is anything butthrilling. It's chaos without character; empty eye candy. Andthat s why the Snow White twists didn t just bore me, but angered me: Gone was theotherworldly mood, texture and atmosphere which made the earliervision a classic. These are the surrealistic elements which originally led filmmakerSergei Eisenstein to name the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the greatest film ever made, as he recognized the cinematicfreedom afforded by animation, paving the way for more detail,mystery and metaphor. That Snow White rose above the limitations of sets, actors, camera equipment andgenre conventions. I shudder to think what Eisenstein would say ofthis new Snow White, so hopelessly bound to marketing requirements and genre formulas,so intent on replicating the "fantasy epic" routine.After seeing Snow White, I went home and watched the 1937 original on my laptop via eightdifferent low-def YouTube clips; woefully cumbersome, fewer specialeffects, no big movie stars…yet so much more magical. Steven James Snyder is a Senior Editor at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @thesnydes . You can also continue the discussion on TIME s Facebook page , on Twitter at @TIME and on TIME s Tumblr . We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Compressor Tubes , China Copper Coated Tube for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Refrigeration Tube.
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