2. Vasilisa The Beautiful
Vasilisa The Beautiful is a Russian fairy tale. Aleksandr Rou beat me to a film adaptation in 1939 but I reckon we could make it more Awesome and less Soviet chic. The story starts with a young girl, Vasilisa who lost her mother at the young age of eight years old. On her deathbed the mother gave Vasilisa a tiny doll .If she ever needed help she only had to feed the doll a bit of food and it would comfot her. Vasilisa did this on the day her mother passed away and the doll showed her great comfort. Vasilisas dad remarried. Enter two ugly step-sisters and a mean old stepmother who enforce task after task on Vasilisa. Luckily the doll chips in and Vasilisa is able to manage the work load. When Vasilisa's dad goes off on a business trip, the step mum relocates the girls to a dismal log cabin in the woods. They experience a power cut (they run out of candles) and Vasilisa is told to go ask Baba Yaga for some light. Baba Yaga is a weird old witch who lives alone in the woods. The kind of weird old witch you try to avoid at all costs. Baba Yagas house is covered in skulls with eyes that light up. Vasilisa bravely enters this haunted abode. Once inside, Baba Yaga makes our heroine do all sorts of chores or else she'll be killed. Again, the doll chips in so Vasilisa doesn't suffer. The doll cleans and Vasilisa cooks. When Babs finally asks the young girl how she is able to complete all the chores Vasilisa's shares the story of her mother and the blessed doll. This sends Baba Yaga into a bit of a state she doesn't want anyone who bears a blessing to enter her cursed house. Vasilla returns to her stepmothers home with a skull lantern from Baba Yaga but once inside the skull burns the stepmother and sisters to ashes. So what happens to our girl? Well only great things after all this tragedy. She moves to the capital, becomes a cloth maker and marries the Tsar.
How To Make It Awesome: The filmmakers should go down the route of kick-ass female protagonist with a painful past. This fairy tale has already been interpreted by critics as a story of female liberation; Vasilisa grows out of her subservience into a strong and dominating force to be reckoned with. Her encounter with Baba Yaga puts her in touch her with wild and unruly feminine side. The stepsister could have a more serious reason to hate on Vasilisa: shes not just a pretty face but she was the only child who would spend vast amounts of time with the father who trained her with some expert fighting and assassin skills in case she needed to protect the family home. Perhaps the father had other, more sinister plans for his daughter? The murder of the stepmother and sisters wasn't just some freak voodoo accident. Vasilisa may have been trained for a greater and more twisted plot.
Dream Team: Vasilisa: Emily Browning (think Sucker Punch and A Series Of Unfortunate Events) Baba Yaga: Emma Thompson (think Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter) Director: Matthew Vaughn (think Stardust)