Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Snow White... Is That You?

Synopsis of a movie coming in 2008:
"The story, a fantasy adventure, centers on a British girl being raised in 19th century Hong Kong. When she realizes her destiny is to conquer an evil force, she must prepare to fight by being trained by seven Shaolin monks." --- from Rotten Tomatoes

Sound quite promising, though there are many other movies with similar storyline. The same report also stated that Francis Lawrence, the director for Keanu Reeves's Constantine in 2005 and Will Smith's I Am Legend coming up this December will take over the Director seat for that movie. Plus, Yuen Woo-ping will be designing the fight sequences. Yuen designed the fight sequences for The Banquet, Jet Li's Fearless, Kill Bill 1 & 2, the Matrix and many of the earlier Wong Fei-hung movies in Hong Kong. So you know you are getting the guarantee of great action.

Sound really awesome...

Except the movie is supposed to be the live-action action drama of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it's produced by Disney with the title of Snow and the Seven. If you check out its IMDB entry, you'll find other big names like Natalie Portman and Jet Li rumored to be involved as well.


Disney is revamping (or maybe destroying?) the image of Snow White.
Image from The Art of Mike Kupka.

When I first read about the news, I just couldn't believe my eyes. The East-meets-West movie genre can't be more crazier than this one. I would feel a lot more comfortable if Disney just ditch the connection with the fairy tale character and create an entirely unrelated one instead.

As a matter in fact, Disney should use alternate movie title as well. My suggestions as below:
(1) Snow not White
(2) Snowena: Warrior Princess
(3) The Curse of the Poison Apple
(4) Snowoman
(5) The Return of the Snow
(6) Snow White, Blood Red
(7) The Seven Monks and the Deathly Snow
(8) Fantastic Snow
(9) S-War (Snow War)
(10) The Rise of the Snow


Fight scene coordinator Yuen Woo-ping might be facing his toughest challenge in this movie XD
Image from JackieChan.com

I can't stop myself from imagining that after this movie, the following scene might happens when parents read their children the story of Snow White during bedtime.
Mother: ...and so Snow White and the Prince live happily ever after...
Son: but Mom, Snow White knows Kung Fu
Mother: ?!
Son: Yeah, and she was trained by Shaolin monks too~
Mother: -_-++