No, really. We’ve got Once Upon A Time on TV, which centers around Snow White (ok, and her family). Mirror, Mirror just released. And in June, we get Snow White and the Huntsman.
Three separate production companies decided independently to work with the Snow White legend at almost the same time. Is it something in the water?
There’s a big trend in fairy tale stories these days, and it’s not just Snow White. There’s also Grimm on TV, and I’ve seen at least two “fractured fairy tales” magazines/anthologies out recently (I have a story in one due out in May).
It’s been going on for awhile, started possibly with Shrek. There was also Hoodwinked, Tangled and Puss in Boots. The Princess and the Frog and Ella Enchanted are original, but follow the form of a classic fairy tale.
So the form is popular. Snow White is a popular story for making a modern fairy tale.
The movie companies are desperately afraid of trying anything new because they might flop–but they’re also desperately afraid of not getting their piece of a market pie. So when they know somebody else is working on a project, they give similar projects the go-ahead. The first time I noticed this was Deep Impact and Armageddon coming out at basically the same time.
The Princess and the Frog and Ella Enchanted are both based on fairy tales, or am I misunderstanding what you mean by “original”?
I saw Mirror Mirror the other day because I love Tarsem and I knew that even if the movie wasn’t that good, the LOOK of it (art direction/costumes/staging/animations) demanded a high-quality big screen. Well, it was fun enough, the story kinda corny and silly and not taken seriously at all. I laughed sometimes, grimaced sometimes, rolled my eyes sometimes, but above all I often boggled with delight, awe and wonder at the production of it. If the script had been up to the visuals, it could have been one of the years best movies. It fell short for me, but I’d still like to see it again in the theater one more time. I hope it does well for him so he can make his own movies (like the brilliant The Fall) again.
I’m very much looking forward to Snow White and the Huntsman.
Ya’ know, Little Red Riding Hood had so much potential as a dark fairy tale. But damn if they didn’t F’ that up.
Haven’t the Windling anthologies of reworked folk and fairy tales been appearing since long before Shrek?
Fantasy writers have mined folklore and fakelore since, well, forever.
So have Disney movies…Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty came out in my very early childhood, a long time ago. I love a well-done book or movie based on fairy tales; my complaint with Once Upon a Time is that it incorporates literary sources, like Pinocchio, with the fairy tales, and, oh, it all looks way too glossy. And that HEAL is not at all a happy land.
Most fairy tales are very dark, gruesome, bloody, and violent. Especially Little Red Riding Hood. D’j’ever read Jack Zipes book on variants of the story, and how it’s been bowdlerized over the centuries?
I mean that neither movie was just retelling a fairy tale; but rather an original story with fairy tales as the base.
The Windling anthologies certainly are a precursor, but they were too limited in audience to be considered the start of the trend. Shreck would clearly be the place where entered the mass media for the current cycle of fairy tale stories.
I agree, we’re in a cycle of fantasy: fairy-tale stories and superheroes. The movie studios are very very repetitive, especially of what they think will be block-buster, big-budget movies. Big profit movies like SHREK and LORD OF THE RINGS prompts the studios and film financers to try to copy and reach for the same market. It’s hard to convince people to shell out millions of dollars for something untried (remember the difficulty Peter Jackson had in getting RINGS started?) … but the pitch is way easier if you say, “Hey, it’s just like So-and-So that made umpteen million last month.”)
So, the cycle is larger than just Snow White. Interesting that there haven’t been more Cinderella revisions (although, arguably, Cinderella gets remade often enough as romantic comedy.) I wonder if fairy tales and superheroes (basically, the same fantasy genre, n’est-ce pas?) being so popular (and so over-done) says somthing about current society?
Don’t forget Grimm’s Snow White, from the people who brought you Transmorphers and The Day the Earth Stopped.
It looks like this version’s got dinosaurs in, why not.
Please note: Mirror Mirror is NOT based on Maguire’s book.
And the success of the novel/musical Wicked. Which isn’t based off a “fairy tale” but might as well be for today’s audiences who grew up with the Wizard of Oz just as much as they grew up with Snow White or Cinderella.
I think it says more about the computing power available to even your low level special effects nerds than it does about current society.
There’s also a brand new ballet of Snow White which just premiered in Washington D.C. to critical acclaim. (Although there’s plenty of precedent for ballets based on fairy tales.)
There’s a popular series of children’s books by Michael Buckley called The Sisters Grimm, which began years before the new Grimm series on TV, to which it bears certain similarities. Two sisters discover that they’re descended from the Brothers Grimm, and they have to watch over assorted fairy tale characters who all live in this small town.
Titles?
The one with my story will be at Penumbra Online in May.
The other is still accepting submissions.