The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2.

Previously: Henry IV Part 2.

This post is gonna be wayyyyy less in-depth than the one I wrote for Henry IV Part 1 because nothing happens in this play. I'm serious. Maybe there was some heavy editing going on or something but as far as I can tell the only things that happen in Henry IV Part 2: Electric Boogaloo are:

• Random soliloquays about how hard it is to be king.
• The world's greatest collection of Rude Mechanicals, indicating that "LOL, he's a women's tailor" is a joke that remains hilarious for 500 years.
• An extended sequence of Tom Hiddleston's oiled and gleaming torso.
• Sad Falstaff.
• The King is dead; long live the King.

"I just can't wait to be King!"

It was like one of those situations when there's a really awesome, successful movie, and then someone's like, "OK, let's get a sequel up in this joint!" except instead of writing a whole new story they just erase most of the character development from the first movie and try to do it all over again a second time. Although this time round there's little to no plot, and the supervillain was defeated at the end of the last movie so instead of a battle there's just an awful lot of tragicomedy scenes involving an old fat conman slowly sinking into gout, despair and failure along with his new collection of comedy sidekicks. I don't know much about the circumstances surrounding the writing of this play, but I can easily imagine Queen Elizabeth writing to Shakespeare all, "More of this Falstaff fellow, my man! He makes one LOL!" and Shakespeare sobbing into his inkwell as he tries in vain to think up something interesting that happened to Henry V in the years leading up to his coronation.

Unlike in Part 1 when Prince Hal was front and centre as a modern coming-of-age protagonist, Part 2 saw Falstaff in the foreground as a kind of decaying Captain Jack Sparrow figure, unwillingly succumbing to his many debtors in his old age. Simon Russell Beale struck a pretty good balance between playing a sympathetic Falstaff and being outright unlikeable (the first being rather difficult and the second being all too easy), partially because the people Falstaff was taking advantage of were so damn stupid. I spent a significant chunk of this play throwing rotten turnips at Mistress Quickly's head because she just kept getting taken in by Falstaff's wafer-thin scams. I wanted to like her because I'm a Strong Female Character myself and feel a duty to the sisterhood, but sisterhood only goes so far when girlfriend is letting Falstaff eat her out of house and home again instead of letting him be sent to debtor's prison. Also, the girl who hangs out in Mistress Quickly's tavern? Why is she into Falstaff all of a sudden! He obviously has no money, he's super unappealing in every conceivable way, and just last week she was getting to make out with Golden Prince Hal himself! There's a pretty strong implication that she's at least a part-time prostitute, but that kind of just brings me back to the whole "Falstaff has no money" thing. On the whole, the person who consistently had the best reaction to Falstaff was this guy:

This kid was the Henry IV Part 2 equivalent of the hilarious reaction-shot characters we saw in Richard II. Throughout Falstaff's gradual deterioration into the realm of true awfulness, this boy was on hand to remove Falstaff's boots and pour him more wine, apparently for no pay whatsoever. (Which, come to think of it, sounds alarmingly similar to the type of internships my generation are currently suffering through en masse.) All the while he is barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes at every person around him, presumably because his keen young mind is as-yet unmarred by decades of alcoholism. I have no doubt that he'll grow up to be an excellent Calm Thou Tits character, of which this play has many. Shakespeare loves to include these guys: bit-part characters who show up to say "Are you really sure you want to murder the King?" whenever one of the protagonists is foaming at the mouth about love, kingship, patriotism, etc. Henry IV Part 2 saw the old King Henry followed hither and yon by a whole troupe of Calm Thou Tits courtiers, including Ser Jorah from Game Of Thrones. (Which was super exciting for me because whenever Ser Jorah appears onscreen in Game Of Thrones, I immediately sacrifice a gallon of tears to the gods of romance because his slavish loyalty to his Khaleesi is food for my soul.)

"Calm thou tits, my lord!"

Aside from our nameless hero, Falstaff's Boy, this was a play about distinctly unappealing people. Prince Hal's evolution from carefree adolescent to royal hero in Part 1 seems to have regressed a little in the interim, leaving him to lounge around with Poins while he waits for father to die. I feel like the Hal we see this time round comes across a lot more feckless because we've seen that he can do better, but he still goes back to his old ways of spying on Falstaff and failing to live up to his duties when his father needs him the most. He tells Poins that he's upset about his father's illness, but his younger brothers are all either by his father's side at court or busy fighting rebels while he and Poins oil each other up and giggle. When it finally comes to it, Hal's rejection of Falstaff gives every appearance of being needlessly cruel. All through the play King Henry's messengers have been hounding Falstaff down as a bad influence on Hal when he and Hal are barely even in touch any more. Falstaff is a moocher and a con-artist, but Hal really doesn't seem like someone who needs outside help to get into trouble.

If you enjoy scenes made out of pure, nail-biting frustration, look no further than Prince Hal taking the crown from his father's pillow. Look, if you're going to take the crown from your father, check to see if he's dead first! This is basic shit, dude! As it is, there's this long scene that contained what I can only imagine were some potentially enthralling emotions and soliloquays and what-have-you, but the audience are paying way more attention to the door because clearly the still-breathing king is about to burst in at any moment and demand his crown back. By the time Jeremy Irons did lurch into the room, my friends and I had all practically shouted ourselves hoarse from yelling "Take it off! Take it off!" at Prince Hal. And not in a Magic Mike way.

I have no idea if Hal's brothers have a larger role in Henry V, but this scene really made me hope that they do. Prince Hal, who up until now has spent the majority of his time getting drunk and playing pranks on people (interspersed with semi-regular bouts of navel-gazin), has rolled up to the palace to ponder the meaning of kingship in the couple of hours prior to his ailing father's demise. And then he nabs the crown before his dad's even kicked it. I realise that this is a powerful scene and that the brilliant thing about Hal is that he isn't quite ready for power, and that power changes him irrevocably, but -- what do the brothers think? Are they bitter about the fact that they've been standing by their father all this time while all Hal has to do is waltz in and claim the throne? What? Has anyone ever written a fanfic play about Prince Hal's little brothers? Is it like Game of Thrones? Enquiring minds want to know.

To no surprise whatsoever, Jeremy Irons' role was even more impressive here than in Part 1. Now close to death, his frame seems to shrink in on itself, partly helped along by the fact that he spends most of the play in ragged nightgowns rather than the more imposing robes of office he was wearing in the days before Hotspur's rebellion. Also he only appears at night, murkily lit to a grey pallor as he staggers around the throne room by himself, lonely and exhausted. Dressed in a soft, closely-fitted velvet jacket, Prince Hal looks even more lithe and youthful by comparison, and far more subdued than he was before he entered the palace. The most significant difference, though, was the lighting. The scenes we see of Henry IV's rule all seem to take place during the witching hours, with everyone's skin looking drawn and haggard in the grey-blue light. As soon as Hal is crowned, though, the throne room takes on the red-gold tones it had during Richard's reign, and Hal himself seems to glow with youth and vitality.

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The Hollow Crown: Henry IV, Part 1.

Previously: The Hollow Crown: Richard II.

I was a little more prepared this time round because unlike with Richard II, I'd actually seen this play before. And, perhaps, Prince Hal's story is easier to follow than Richard's because he's a less ambiguous protagonist -- a character you can root for. Richard's flamboyant incompetence was entertaining to watch, but was distinctly unheroic. For all that Richard II was aesthetically pleasing, it didn't have the same gleeful excitement of Henry IV, with its clear-set coming-of-age journey for Prince Hal and its cast of crowd-pleasing comedy sidekicks. Falstaff's constant supply of old-fat-coward jokes may have been designed for an audience of 16th-century drunks, but I'm easily pleased and found him hilarious. (Possibly because I have the spirit of a 16th-century drunk.)

Tom Hiddleson as Prince Hal was, put simply, totally awesome. I'd been looking forward to this play in particular both because I love Henry IV/Henry V story, and because Tom Hiddleston was clearly such brilliant casting. And having seen it? I'm now coming to understand why Tumblr is basically a giant online shrine to Tom Hiddleston. Within about fifteen seconds of him coming onscreen I had little hearts in my eyes like an anime character, like, what was even happening. Hiddleston's Prince Hal is so charming and handsome that I'm now desperate to see him play a genuinely unappealing character. Because, you know, the only other thing I've really seen him in is his role as Loki in Thor and The Avengers, who despite being a villain is still pretty lovable. I found myself comparing the two, and the one thing that stands out between them is Hiddleston's ability to play royalty. The level of automatic, commanding entitlement both Loki and Hal display is wonderful, although they show it in very different ways.

It didn't take me long to realise: The Female Gaze is strong with this one. Seriously, the camera loves Prince Hal. And, you know, virile young men in general, most of them dressed in tight leather jerkins unlaced at the throat. In Richard II there were a lot of luxurious panning shots of Richard's gold-plated everything, but it wasn't really... affectionate? Richard was an intrinsically weak character, protected by his royal blood and riches as he teetered on the brink of being deposed by stronger men. Prince Hal, on the other hand, has the potential to be a strong and charismatic leader but hasn't yet been given the chance to fulfil that potential. I feel like the director of Richard II was taking a rather unlikeable character and trying to make him as entertaining and sympathetic as possible while still highlighting and mocking his flaws, whereas with Henry IV we had a protagonist who was already really appealing, being played as sexy and fun as possible by an actor who is apparently able to conjure charisma out of nowhere.

Here we come to one of those moments when it becomes abundantly clear why I'm not a "real" reviewer, because this whole next part is going to be about how Tom Hiddleston is super dreamy. (Oh, if only this were an exaggeration.) First of all, that thing I was saying about the Female Gaze? Look no further than the costuming. This quote refers to Henry V rather than Henry IV, but I think it's still relevent:

"...while I wanted it to be set in the period, I wanted it to have some kind of modern feel. Things like Tom’s jackets. And I didn’t want him to have a bowl haircut, I wanted him to have a look that wasn’t just accessible, but attractive. He was in “Avengers Assemble”, for goodness sake! He’s an amazing, beautiful-looking man." -- Thea Sharrock, director of Henry V.

The costume designer for Henry IV Part 1 must have taken a very long look at Tom Hiddleston and thought, "What looks good on this guy?" He's tall, he's slim, his performance is very energetic and physical, and they put him in a form-fitting leather jerkin and trousers, with the jacket open at the neck at all times. The result? Large portions of the film are scenes where the camera lovingly caresses Poins and Hal's exposed collarbones as they share drunk LOLs about their latest prank on Falstaff. I think Shakespeare would approve.

Another reason why Hiddleston was perfect casting: his age. I assume that in the original setting Prince Hal was intended to be significantly younger, but at 31 Tom Hiddleston is ideal for our modern perception of an over-priveleged man-child. He looks boyish, but he definitely isn't a boy. This Hal isn't so much forced into adulthood by Hotspur's threats of war as he is waiting for something to force him into adulthood from the very first scenes of the play. From the start there's a certain feeling of melancholy, as if Hal already knows that he's coming to the end of his time as a wastrel in the streets of Eastcheap. It's practically a coming-of-age teen/college movie cliche. It's easy to interpret Hal's pranks with Poins and Falstaff as immature and thoughtless, but in this adaptation it was almost as if Hal was being set up as a future king from step one: charismatic, able to command the respect and affection of his followers, and with an actual brain in his head (even if he's only using it to fool his father's messengers and play tricks on his friends). Compared to the aging, angry King Henry, it's surprisingly easy to see Hal as future leader of men. This is, I suppose, the luxury of television: they can cast the same actor for Prince Hal and Henry V, and show all three plays in quick succession, which onstage would be more or less impossible.
I can't wait to see Jeremy Irons in the next play. Towards the end of Part 1 he looked like he was on death's door, grey-faced to match the morbid darkness of his clothes and castle. It was very easy to imagine this Henry as the aging, frustrated continuation of the Henry Bolingbroke we see in Richard II, his gloomy court a direct reaction to the frivolous extravagance of Richard's reign. This play may have been set before the reformation, but King Henry was practically a protestant before his time -- surrounded by rigidly black-mantled courtiers in a huge, empty grey stone throne room with no lit candles, and swaddled up to the chin in thick black furs and scarves. I particularly loved this aspect of Henry's costuming: imposing but not exactly kingly, what with the ratty grey scarves and knit cap.

HAT FACTS: according to Jeremy Irons, bobble hats were invented for soldiers to wear under their helmets, with the bobble acting as a cushion in the top point of the helmet. I really hope this is true, partly because it's interesting and partly because I want Jeremy Irons to be a secret knitwear expert.

One of the reasons why Henry IV Part 1 is my favourite is the plethora of drunk rap-battles. I mean, if you don't appreciate Falstaff and Prince Hal exchanging insults in front of a baying audience of drunks and bar-wenches, I don't even know what to do with you. And, of course, there's Prince Hal's impression of his father. Tom Hiddleston is known for doing excellent impersionations of his co-stars, and his Jeremy Irons was brilliant. Pictures barely do it justice. He even added a scarf and hat. Even moreso than the scene where King Henry gives Hal the "stop being a wastrel" speech, Hiddleston's Jeremy Irons impression convinced me that he really was the King's firstborn son. 

Was it just me or were some of Hotspur's scenes cut from this adaptation? I'm not particularly familiar with the play, but I'm pretty sure that when I saw it onstage Hotspur had far more scenes, particularly with his wife. Either way, Hotspur and his wife were H I L A R I O U S. They were 100% that annoying couple who are always macking on each other and/or having loud, public arguments all the time with no consideration for the people around them. Michelle Dockery (as Hotspur's wife) didn't get much screentime but boy did she make the most of it. One of the things I love about this play is the quantity of opportunities for humour outside of the typical Shakespearean comic fixtures, and the Hotspur/Kate relationship is totally one of those opportunities. In the Welsh Wife scene, which in earlier times might have been a chance for some straight-up "LOL, Wales" jokes, this time round we get Kate making hilarious bitchfaces at Hotspur, a mixture between, "Why aren't you like this, huh?" and "What the hell is up with these two lovebirds, anyway?" And of course, they then proceed to make out in front of everyone as all the other characters politely look at the walls and wait for them to go away. PERFECTION.

I don't feel like the movie suffered from the seeming absense of Hotspur, though, because this adaptation seemed to focus so closely on Prince Hal's own journey rather than the Hotspur/Henry conflict. If anything, until we reached the final battle Hotspur seemed more like a secondary character than a major antagonist. That battle is also the moment when we finally see Prince Hal begin to harden into something more like his father. Before that he's very emotional -- either joking around with his mates at the tavern, or emoting tragically at the camera because oh boy is Tom Hiddleston good at that. But when we reach the battle with Hotspur and the Northerners, Hal seems to age ten years, finally taking up the burden of kingship. 

Regular readers may know that I enjoy armour. There's a tag for it and everything. The armour worn for the Battle of Shrewsbury appealed to me for two reasons: its basic utilitarianism and its relationship, character-wise, with the costumes of last week's Richard II. Although this play takes place a generation after Richard II, in many ways it seems like it's set in an earlier period of history. Richard's court was a place of luxury and beauty, and even his armour was a complex work of art, glistening gold from head to toe. His enemy Henry Bolingbroke, however, was the precise opposite:

Maybe I'm just looking too closely at this because I'm an armour fanatic and have a Game Of Thrones tattoo on my face and am secretly married to Loki on the astral plane, but I can totes see the evolution of the Richard-Henry-Hal reigns in the way they dress for battle. First of all, the young Henry Bolingbroke barely does dress for battle. He's always ready. And taking into account the fact that Richard II and Henry IV had different costume designers and very different aesthetics, there's surprisingly little difference between the appearance of the young Henry Bolingbroke and the Henry we see in Henry IV Part 1. The Northern practicality and toughness of Henry Bolingbroke (which in Richard II seemed like such a stark contrast with Richard's sparklicious, un-dented armour) has aged into a kind of chilly, monochromatic austerity, which in the battlefield translates to the King sitting stiff-spined on horseback in his grey woollen hat, trying not to show any evidence of his unspecified terminal illness. At the end of Richard II it was almost as if Henry Bolingbroke didn't want to be king, and in this play it certainly doesn't appears to be enjoying it. While Hal, it seems, is a golden prince who was born to rule.

Prince Hal seems distant from both Richard and his father: neither frivolous nor grim. He's young and fun-loving, but he's still a capable warrior for all that he breaks away from his father's sternness. His armour is flexible and lightweight and, I think, considerably more period-appropriate than the intricate costume armour worn by Richard in the previous installment. Call me weird, but I really appreciated the simplicity of Hal's armour, and that it didn't particularly set him apart from any of the other knights -- although, of course, the commoners only got chainmail or leather. I'll be interested to see how that continues in later films, because Thea Sharrock, the director of Henry V, mentioned specifically that she and Hiddleston had tried to make their version of Henry V as much of a man of the people as possible.

Oh, Falstaff. Finally we come to you. Falstaff's a tricky one because he's just. So. Preposterous. The humour of Falstaff is so bound by old-fashioned slapstick that the filmmakers must have decided to put extra emphasis on the tragic side of his character this time round, giving him a hint of Sam Gamgee loyalty as he half-seriously begs Hal not to abandon him at the end of the rap-battle scene, complete with an emotive soundtrack. I expect some people would find this maudlin, but I was OK with it, particularly since the next film should build on that. We already got some closure to the Falstaff/Hal relationship at the end of this film, though, as Prince Hal, fresh from battle and finally coming into his own as an adult and a warrior, allows Falstaff one final deception. Also, one final Tom Hiddleston grin, something I doubt we'll be seeing as much of in the next two films.

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Chanel: Cruise 2013 at Versailles.

Previously: See the Chanel tag for further reports on Karl Lagerfeld's forays into a variety of intriguing design themes that usually boil down to "I'm stupendously rich."

Karl Lagerfeld and the court of Versailles -- to be honest, I can't believe this hadn't happened before. Lagerfeld, with his ever-present chalk-white ponytail, aura of eccentric aristocracy, and conscious detachment from the everyday wants and needs of the proles, couldn't fit in any better if he tried.

Studio photos from Chanel's lookbook; show photos from Style.com.

This being Chanel, the eighteenth-century French influences only went so far. For all that Lagerfeld adores extravagance when it comes to showmanship, he still adheres to the relatively sedate and conservative Chanel ethos. While this show was rather more cheeky and street-cool than many recent Chanel collections, it was mostly restricted to a calming colour palette of fondant-like pastels in Chanel-favoured fabrics.

The show took place at the gardens in Versailles, the models strutting around one of the fountains to a soundtrack of M.I.A. and harpsichord remixes. The styling choices were impeccable: a modern, Harajuku-like twist on powdered wigs in the form of two-tone pastel ponytail/pageboy haircuts, plus every model was wearing snazzy brothel-creepers. A nod to both the old and the new, alongside some cool Chanel-symbol beauty marks that, unlike the pale blue pageboy wigs, I suspect may make an appearance on actual humans outside of catwalk land.

The most direct Versailles influences were the pannier skirts and pantaloons, decked out in pastel frills and lace. Short and stylised, those outfits were 18th century by way of Lolita and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette rather than being a real nod towards historical fashions.

Karl Lagerfeld is self-aware enough that I'm sure this show's peasant vs super-rich undertones were entirely intentional. There were a couple of male models in the show and they, along with the female models wearing the trouser-suit outfits, looked like pantomime parodies of pageboys.

The suits with knee-breeches looked almost costumey, like the girls-dressed-as-boys outfits worn in comic plays, and the wide-legged trouser suits were like a modern retelling of Marie Antoinette's fetish for dressing up as a faux peasant and working on her own private "farm". They were made from traditional Chanel suit fabrics in frothy cupcake shades of pink and blue, and the baggy trousers were only peasant-like in that they had artfully unhemmed cuffs. The end result was a series of outfits that were one half neatly-tailored Chanel womenswear, one half Japanese street style Lolita parody.

For me, this show was both more youthful and more interesting than expected. Cruise/resort collections tend to be unimaginative and mostly focussed around easy summer staples like bikinis and maxi-dresses, but this show was 72 outfits long and covered a wide variety of styles from straight-up 18th century costuming to modern party dresses and hip-hop influenced brothel-creepers. The biggest surprise was the prevalence of faux-gold and purposeful tackiness -- themes that the mature designers at Chanel usual shy away from.

Footage of the full show is available online here, and hi-res mid-walk photos can be found here. 

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Snow White & The Huntsman: The prince doesn't get the girl; the girl gets the kingdom.

Previously: Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story.

Thanks to last week's new releases, my Charlize Theron viewing history is now all the way up to three films total. (The first was Aeon Flux, which, yeah, ask me about that sometime. It's the worst.) I won't be posting a review of Prometheus until it's been out for a little longer, but the one thing I will say is that if you're planning on seeing it, you should read this (non-spoilery) warning first. Following the advice therein will, I think, improve your Prometheus experience.

I was very excited about Snow White & The Huntsman because the marketing was so gosh-darned appealing (surprisingly so, considering the content and audience) and I am of the opinion that Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron should be the next Bogart and Bacall. Unfortunately, SWATH was nowhere near as good as I expected, dragging on longer than it should have done and including several completely superfluous characters. In some respects it succeeded (ie, visual effects and Awesome Ladies, both of which featured prominently in the trailer) but the end result was an action movie that could've done with more action, and a drama that needed tighter drama.

This movie may not have been very good but KRISTEN STEWART IS STILL MY KHALEESI.

I'm inclined to be biased in favour of SWATH because it's so clearly Bechdel-approved. It's a story about women and the problems they face because of the way women are socialised to think about their own power and beauty. The hero and the villain are both women, and neither of them resemble Kate Beaton's Strong Female Characters or the kind of emotionless kickboxing androids that appear in so many other genre movies. The prince doesn't get the girl; the girl gets the kingdom. 2012 has been a fantastic year for female-led sci-fi/fantasy movies, and my only serious issue with the feminist themes in SWATH is the way Ravenna's relationship with beauty and power was portrayed. While too much explanation will inevitably ruin any story that hinges on "magic", the complete lack of a coherent explanation regarding Ravenna and Snow White's various intangible powers meant that their ultimate standoff packed far less of a punch than it should have done. It's not often that I complain about there being not enough exposition in a blockbuster movie, but this was such an easily-solved problem that a minute or so of flashback montage might well have sorted it out.

screencap from here.

Ravenna's belief that a woman's youthful beauty is a direct source of power means that she ends up sucking the land dry, bathing in milk while peasants starve and faceless medieval Stormtroopers serve up supermodel Lily Cole as a royal snack. Kristen Stewart's Snow White, on the other hand, shows no signs of knowing or caring what she looks like, and is the avatar of some kind of Aslan-like power that causes flowers to blossom as soon as she comes near. But if her inherent goodness (or divine Queenship, passed down from Mum?) is so strong that it charms the fairies from the trees and Princess Mononoke's forest-spirit from the water, how come there was no evidence of this in the cell she was locked inside those years? Was she unable to photosynthesise?

I couldn't help but compare this aspect of the film unfavourably to Stardust, a movie that, while different in tone, stars a similarly image-obsessed witch as the villain. Another place where SWATH fell down in comparison to Stardust was the cast of cameo characters, headed up by Bob Hoskins as a blind dwarf soothsayer. Hoskins had the unenviable role of saying things like, "She is... the one," in portentious tones while making it abundantly clear that he was only there for the paycheque. While the ghostly princes in Stardust provided witty comic relief, the dwarves in SWATH (all of them famous character-actors, and all utterly wasted in the roles they were given) were embarrassing and could just as well have been cut from the film entirely. Not to mention how uncomfortable it was to realise that eight average-sized actors had been hired to play dwarves, something that seems dangerously similar to racebending.

If this post seems overly negative, it's only because I had such high hopes for this film before I saw it. In fact there were many things that I did enjoy once I got past the clunky pacing and the inexplicable inclusion of terrible characters like Ravenna's ambiguously incest-y albino brother (ugh). Charlize Theron's intense/camp supervillain meltdowns were awesome, and I have a lot of admiration for Kristen Stewart's ability to work so well with what she was given. SWATH would have benefited hugely from a scene or two where Snow White either learns some more tangible skills or gives a Game Of Thrones-esque speech to her troops before battle, but Kristen Stewart still came across as an appealing and unusual hero. This film had many flaws, but casting wasn't one of them. I haven't seen Twilight, but I'm beginning to see why Stewart was chosen to be Bella Swan. I've heard that Bella is a character whose success hinges on the actor's ability to silently emote for five movies in a row while still retaining audience interest, and having seen Kristen Stewart's Snow White I'm inclined to believe that she can do it. I only wish that she'd been given more dialogue in this movie, for all that she managed to wring as much emotional truth from her running-and-fighting scenes as possible.

This was a Costume Movie. It's been out for less than a week and I've already had several people ask me if I'm going to review the costumes, but I honestly don't think there's much to say about them other than that they were stunning. The strongest aspect of SWATH was the visuals, from the supernatural forests to the hyper-real troll attack to the scene where a flock of ravens coalesce to form an oil-slick filthy Ravenna wearing a glistening raven-feather dress. For anyone with any interest in clothes, Ravenna's gowns are the standout costumes, and I suspect that the designer (Colleen Atwood) is a shoo-in for another Oscar nomination. Combining a Marie Antoinette-like opulence with spiky, venomous imagery, Ravenna's loosely medieval-inspired gowns are destined for fashion magazine photo spreads. This is the kind of costume design that works very well in a broad, "that looks awesome" sense because Ravenna's clothes are so obviously beautiful and intricately complex, even out of context. I don't mean to imply that this type of costume design is somehow less worthy than subtler, more character-specific costuming -- just that it's a good example of the kind of attention-grabbing work that gets nominated for awards year after year.

Detail shot of Ravenna's beetle-carapace dress.

All these ferociously uncomfortable-looking costumes fit well with Charlize's over-the-top, campy performance, and serve to highlight Ravenna's vanity and lack of care for the fate of the less fortunate. Thousands starve while Ravenna sits in her chambers wearing 30lbs of silk and reapplying her blood-of-virgins lipstick. I like to imagine that after she's drained a young woman of her life-force, her victim is then put to work in a sweatshop full of other young/old women sewing thousands of sequins and feathers onto Ravenna's next sartorial masterpiece. The white wedding dress she wears at the beginning of the film is almost "historical"-looking and comparatively soft in appearance, but once she becomes queen her own style takes over and it's sexy glam-rock Nazgul corsetry from there on in.

Fairytale by way of Gareth Pugh?

While Ravenna's gowns were beautiful examples of craftsmanship and design they were, in a way, the easy choice. The queen in Snow White has to look evil and sexy and rich, whereas Snow White herself is a far more difficult character to quantify. The dirty hand-me-down dress, though, looked great on Kristen Stewart, and handily transformed into a more practical tunic/leggings outfit with a bit of help from Thor's the Huntsman's knife. And her practical, flat-chested armour? Wonderful. I was actually disappointed when she finally reached her victorious coronation moment at the end and had to wear a Queen dress instead.

Kristen Stewart's Snow White and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games are the only mainstream blockbuster heroines I can think of who really have no idea of personal vanity or prettiness, which is kind of marvellous. Now all we need to do is work on making more movies like this that don't implicitly demonise women who like to dress up and look pretty.

I have mixed feelings about the love-triangle situation. I find it refreshing to watch a movie like this and not feel that a romance subplot has been shoehorned in just for the sake of it, and I appreciated that the Huntsman didn't immediately abandon his drinking problem and the memory of his wife as soon as he began to have feelings for Snow White. However, the ending already seemed abrupt enough without some hint of a romantic resolution, especially since it might have balanced out the creepily non-participatory nature of Snow White's earlier kisses. Even though I suspect that those kisses were meant to be a cut-and-dried "true love's kiss" deal, I'd rather interpret them as being about trust. When Snow White first escapes, she wants to get to William because she has nowhere else to turn, and although she accepts the Huntsman's help she still keeps her cards close to the chest. Her trust in him grows organically, and is finally proven when he shows up by her side when her army attacks the castle. The reason why the Huntsman's kiss works while William's fails is because William's feelings for Snow White are mostly based on guilt and childhood obsession, whereas the Huntsman actually knows Snow White as an adult.

(Alternatively, the kisses were just coincidental and Snow White woke up of her own damn accord because the Force is strong with her.)

The Huntsman has the Aragorn-esque look of a man who smells really intensely terrible but is handsome enough to get away with it (because we can't smell him). When we first see him he's swilling ale and being pushed into a trough full of dirty water, and for the rest of the movie he marinades gently in his no-doubt old and sweaty leather jerkin. The men of SWATH are very obviously second-tier to Charlize Theron in terms of costume design, most of them clad in the kind of dirty faux-medieval fare one would expect. William is more of a traditional knight-in-shining-armour than the more lower-class Huntsman, but both of their costumes fall into the nonspecific medieval fantasy category.

photo from here.

A friend pointed out to me that the romance in SWATH reads a lot like the first volume in a Young Adult trilogy. Both of the guys have been introduced, but while they both seem to have sorted out their own feelings for the heroine by the end of the story, she's still barely aware that she's in the middle of a potential love triangle. The implication is that the Huntsman is the favoured suitor, but William is no less heroic or appealing, leaving options open for a possible sequel. And, you know, even though this film was far from the high-quality Game Of Thrones drama I was hoping for, I would watch a sequel. But not to find out whether Snow White is Team William or Team Huntsman, because I'm still firmly in Team Snow White.

Links

Photo gallery of Colleen Atwood's costumes for Snow White & The Huntsman.
HuffPo: 'Snow White and the Huntsman' Is A New Twist On An Old Tale.
Early concept art for Ravenna. 

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Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story.

I'm taking a small break from our regularly scheduled Avengers overanalysis to bring you some LADIES IN ARMOUR.

Today Florence + The Machine released their theme song/music video for Snow White & The Huntsman. I'm not really a Florence fan, but this video is just TOO GOOD FOR ME TO COPE WITH because it combines clips from the (completely awesome-looking) Snow White trailer with war drums and dramatic Valkyrie wailing and somehow, somehow... I am totally sold. After listening to this song and rewatching the trailer, not only am I 100% prepared to declare Kristen Stewart my Khaleesi For Life, but I'm also convinced that I've somehow regressed to the age of 11 because OMG new feminist role-model. Which is slightly embarrassing because I just googled Kristen Stewart and it turns out she's several months younger than I am. But what can I do? I've already sworn fealty. I'm taking up my spear and following Snow White into battle. And so are you.

MY KHALEESI.

Can I just say how awesome it is that they've made a freaking war movie out of a fairytale that's popularly known as the story of a bitter old lady who poisons a girl for being prettier than she is? In these trailers we see Snow White being betrayed and abandoned and strong and sliding through the mud and LEADING AN ARMY. The thing that blows me away the most -- more than the Guillermo Del Toro-esque troll creatures; more than Charlize Theron's fabulous costumes -- is the fact that Snow White is a passionate warrior. The #1 flaw in action/adventure movies is that their protagonists run the risk of ending up as two-dimensional badasses. A lot of the time the emotional hook just isn't truthful enough to engage audiences outside of the basic demographic of "people who like to watch things blow up". Which, by the way, isn't a criticism of that demographic because I fully intend to watch any and all Die Hard sequels, even if they rate 3% on Rotten Tomatoes and consist of a 76-year-old Bruce Willis standing in front of a blue-screen and yelling nonsensical one-liners while people frantically Photoshop burning cars into the background.

Not gonna lie: I basically want both of their outfits to wear in real life.

But Kristen Stewart's Snow White isn't just a badass. During every action clip included in those trailers, you can see the desperation and determination on her face. You feel -- or at least I felt -- a genuine desire to find out why she's having to fight, rather than just treating the fight clips as a sort of placeholder code for "this film includes battle scenes". Is this what movies are like in a post-Game Of Thrones world? We can only hope. 

Unusually for me and my habit of nerding out over behind-the-scenes details, I don't actually know much about SW&TH. And in contrast with more specifically geek-oriented films like Prometheus or the Avengers franchise, I don't really feel that info-dumping is even necessary. Unlike Tarsem's visually wonderful but otherwise unappealing Mirror Mirror earlier this year, the marketing for SW&TH has managed the ideal maneuver for a fairytale adaptation: they've made a familiar story seem intriguing without changing it so much that it seems unrecognisable.

These days, movies based on well-known myths tend to go one of two ways: egregious levels of grittiness, or tongue-in-cheek parody. This follows the same mould as superhero movies, wherein the Batman myth evolves from Adam West cartoonishness to Christopher Nolan's apparent belief that as long as you include enough shots of grim Chicago skyscrapers in the rain, you can make a 100% "realistic" urban epic about people who dress up in pleather catsuits in order to fight crime. For me, gritty superhero adaptations can sometimes work, but gritty fairytales? Not so much. Just look at Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, which removed everything that was ever charming or appealing about Robin Hood and replaced it with endless footage of Russell Crowe glaring at mud. The greatest source of tension in that movie was me desperately waiting for Russell Crowe to take a bath because he clearly smelled so bad, but that never happened. Even when Cate Blanchett's servants poured him a bath he just splashed some of the water on his face and was like, "well, I guess that takes care of all the Saracen blood I've accrued over the past decade of war-mongering". HE NEVER DID TAKE THAT BATH, YOU GUYS.

This is literally the cleanest he ever is in this entire movie.

(Oh, and another thing that bugged me about that movie was that all the supposed realism was meant to add a "historical" edge to the mostly-fictional Robin Hood we know and love, except none of the history was remotely accurate. As in, the film ended with -- spoiler alert for a movie you definitely shouldn't see! -- Robin Hood revealing that his dad wrote the Magna Carta and Cate Blanchett leading an army of tree-dwelling orphan boys to fight off a French invasion on a beach in Dover. For realsies.)

"But Hello, Tailor!" you may (possibly) be asking. "Snow White & The Huntsman looks like it's all about muddy people in nonspecifically medieval armour as well! How can you say it's going to be any better than Russell Crowe's embarrassing attempts to modernise an English folk-hero?"

The answer is: because SW&TH gives every impression of having reached a happy middle ground. Disney already has the market cornered on happy, colourful fairytales, and we know from Robin Hood and Clive Owen's King Arthur that going all-out "historical" (sorry, I can't help but stick some sarcastic air-quotes in there, I'm an asshole) is unpopular. With this film, the trailer gives a darker, more adult hook for Snow White in the form of her new role as a Bourne-esque fugitive and fighter, but we still get to have the more fantastic elements of unicorns, trolls, magic mirrors and so on. Sometimes Kristen Stewart wears a bodice and floor-length skirt that distantly resemble a dirtier version of Snow White's outfit from the Disney cartoon, but when she rides into battle she's wearing armour. Real armour, as opposed to the leather bikini Keira Knightly had to wear when she was playing Pagan Guinevere in the oh-so-historical King Arthur movie. You know that Kristen Stewart's character is Snow White because she looks like Snow White, but you also know she's a warrior because she looks like a warrior as well.

Seems legit. This is basically how everyone dresses in the UK.

Postscript: As of just now, this is the first news headline that comes up when you google Snow White & The Huntsman: "Charlize Theron v Kristen Stewart at Snow White premiere: Hot or Not?" Wow, Internet. I think you just summarised in one sentence everything that's going to be wrong about all the coverage for this movie!

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