Snow White and the Huntsman

Everything is copy. Everything is recycled.

There’s a scene in the third act of the Hollywood blockbuster ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ when the eponymous heroine and her escort, the huntsman, meet the merry band of eight dwarves (one of them will die soon and we will have just seven of them as the fairy tale mentioned it), and travel to the land of the fairies. The next morning, Snow White wakes up to meet a huge stag, with enormous antlers. The beast is supposed to be the spirit of the forest, the life itself… and one of the dwarves says, “No one’s ever seen this before.”

Now, that’s a lie. We have seen it before. In another movie. The scene, including the stag and the tree under which it manifests, we have seen the scene before, in the well known Japanese animation film, Studio Gibli’s ‘Princess Mononoke’, where the protagonist is visited by the spirit of the forest.

Everything is copy.