8. Blockbusters Based On Fairytales
I suppose that, once upon a time, at least, this must've seemed like something of a novel idea. Now, I think, fairytale movies have run their course and it's time to stop for a while. The nail in the coffin?
Jack the Giant Slayer, which kind of makes a perfect case for never making another oneĀ not because it was particularly bad, but because it was so particularly average. It just existed, neither proving why fairytales make good movies, nor explaining why they don't. "Meh" in every sense. And that's the point. Before that, we were given a version of
Hansel and Gretel so bad that it lay dormant in a vault for two years whilst the marketing people figured out what to do with it, and a re-telling of
Snow White starring that moody girl from the
Twilight movies and Thor. New interpretations of both Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast await us next year, the latter of which is rumoured to star Harry Potter alumni Emma Watson. But the only thing Hollywood seems to know how to do with these things is make them "darker," and that's not really working anymore, because blah, who cares? It's not like making the stories darker is making them better or anything. Inherently, most of them are pretty dark anyway, but the word "fairytale" has been throwing us off for years. Anyway, if I have to watch another trailer that pits Amanda Seyfried against Gary Oldman, (
'cause ooooooh, what's Gary Oldman doing in a fairytale movie?), I'm going to be very, very angry.