Fairy Tale and Film

Oz
prequel. A mooted 
version of the 
Arabian Nights
is perhaps the most audacious rewrite of 
all, making Scheherazade – the frame tale’s narrator and heroine, who 
saves herself through the power of her storytelling – a damsel in distress 
rescued by one of her creations. As ‘postmodern’ as such a reinterpreta-
tion may be, it also affirms the worst tendencies of many cinematic revi-
sions, altering familiar tales with abandon while failing to acknowledge 
their original value, or inspiring new levels of interest or understanding. 
It is not that ‘classic’ tales must remain untouched – they have been 
subject to continued alteration since they were conceived and as such 
there is no direct claim to ownership or originality – it is simply that 
many adaptations seem cynically motivated, creating twists simply to 

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Fairy Tale and Film
add a new spin, and missing the potential to tell an interesting story 
that is liable to have some impact and longevity. All too often, fairy 
tales are optioned simply to showcase special effects (with 3D still a 
cash-cow for the industry), providing easy entertainment, occasionally 
resulting in some irreverent and unusual takes, yet scarcely any that 
might make us think. 
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 
(Tommy Wirkola, 2013) exemplifies 
the worst tendencies of postmodern revisions: repudiating any reason 
to be taken seriously through its title alone, with profanities and anach-
ronisms aiming for hipness yet falling short even as crude entertain-
ment. In this adult (or, more accurately, adolescent) version a grown-up 
Hansel (Jeremy Renner) is diabetic due to having been force-fed sweets 
and filled with bitterness, while sister Gretel (Gemma Arterton) struts 
with attitude yet utterly betrays her folkloric forebear in swiftly acqui-
escing to distress mode, relying on various male helpers throughout. As 
in 
Oz
, good witches are easily told apart due to their attractive looks and 
aversion to violence, legitimating the siblings’ mission to wipe out the 
bad ones. In the new family history that is provided, Hansel and Gretel’s 
mother is rewritten as a martyr, and child ‘abandonment’ explained as 
a means of protecting her children. A powerful white witch, denounced 
to superstitious locals, yet sworn against hurting humans, she instructed 
her husband to hide them in the woods (under a protection spell) 
and sacrificed herself to the mob. The big bad witch who betrayed her 
(Famke Janssen, bizarrely unrecognisable in prosthetics) gets her come-
uppance at a Sabbat where the siblings and their helpers gleefully mas-
sacre the revellers, delivering gore in three dimensions. Inane beyond 
imagining, it is perhaps sufficient to say that the best thing about 
Wirkola’s film is its title sequence, a series of woodcuts hinting at an 
alluring folkloric past which the film sadly betrays. 
Jack the Giant Slayer
(Bryan Singer, 2013) is an equally disappointing 
retread that favours spectacle over story, taking the classic rags-to-riches 
tale of a poor farm-boy who steals from a giant and creating a plot that 
borders on the reactionary. Jack (Nicholas Hoult) has a favourite tale his 
late mother once read to him, the story of giant-slaying King Erik and 
his magic beans, inspiring the dream of emulating his hero. Reality and 
fairy tale collide when he sells his uncle’s horse for a handful of beans. 
One falls beneath a floorboard and grows into a monstrous tree, creat-
ing a pathway to the land of giants above. An added complication is 
that a woman becomes trapped in the house as it ascends with the vine. 
Princess Isabella (Eleanor Tomlinson), aiming to avoid marriage, escapes 
the royal palace at Cloister and finds her way to Jack’s home the night 

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Postmodern Revisions 
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it moves skyward. A rescue party is set up and intrigue provided via her 
intended groom’s actions once he reaches the top. Wearing a crown that 
secures his reign over the giants (dimwits with a taste for human flesh 
and a grovelling attitude to royalty), he intends to use his gargantuan 
subjects to rule the human world below. Although the rogue dies, Jack 
effectively steals his idea, obtaining the crown and putting the giants 
under his rule once they reach the ground. Now a king in his own right, 
the all-conquering (if somewhat questionable) hero marries the princess 
and they raise a family, with ‘King Erik’ their favoured bedtime story. 
An odd final scene claims that the giant-ruling crown is hidden among 
the crown jewels in the Tower of London, a modern cityscape bringing 
us to present-day England, although how we are meant to regard this 
‘revelation’ is unclear. Frustratingly, given Bryan Singer’s collaboration 
with 
Usual Suspects
writer Christopher Mcquarrie, the film is a tire-
some escapade with poor effects and cardboard characters. Isabella’s 
romance with Jack is unconvincing and her role as princess-in-peril 
annoyingly regressive. Jack’s good fortune is still more perplexing. 
His encounter with a holy bean trader intimates divine rule, yet his 
use of force (exploiting the giants to advance himself) does not infer 
enlightened leadership or suggest that life will improve for the gen-
eral populace, with Cloister’s subjects as deferential to the king as the 
mentally diminished giants. While the film may not seek to be taken 
seriously we might ask why an intriguing folk tale has been divested of 
any progressive features, seemingly concocting a romance to legitimate 
tyrannical power. If the aim is to affirm that dreams can come true, and 
poverty is no barrier to aspiration, Jack’s acquisition of the giant-taming 
crown remains difficult to approve, with any intended satire failing to 
coalesce in an adaptation that amounts to little more than another 
wasted opportunity. 
The problem with such examples is that, far from undermining ris-
ible attitudes, they are bizarrely legitimated instead. The unlikely hero 
makes good, the feisty yet vulnerable princess meets her love match, 
and nothing of any greater substance is achieved in vehicles intent 
on delivering big-budget pantomimes to the masses while giving their 
source material lamentably short shrift. We are likely to see many more 
remakes and retellings of well-known fairy tales, with high-profile 
directors and actors involved, as the quest for a potential hit inspires a 
repeated return to familiar territory. A tongue-in-cheek approach and 
willingness to mix things up have clearly proved popular in adapting 
fairy tales for the modern market, affirming that ‘postmodern’ revisions 
have become an effective business strategy, even if the result is variable 

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Fairy Tale and Film
at best. Ethan Gilsdorf (2013) has speculated on why the fairy tale film 
is likely to be a Hollywood mainstay, pointing out that ‘since fairy tales 
tend to be in the public domain, they offer a bonus: no pesky author 
estates with which to negotiate film and toy rights’, a situation enabling 
considerable freedom in rewriting such tales, as well as a wider profit 
margin. Nonetheless, the capacity to provide interesting new versions 
seems relatively rare. Tatar stresses the importance of inspiring new 
modes of thinking, using the term ‘defamiliarization’ as a means of 
‘breaking the magic spell that traditional tales weave around listeners. 
This may take the form of a shift in perspective – retelling a story from 
the point of view of one of its villains – or it may take the form of an 
abrupt reversal in a traditional plot’ (1992: 237). However, although she 
regards such methods as ‘playful disruptions’ (236) of canonical texts, 
they have become increasingly familiar, and do not necessarily have the 
impact they once did.
Providing genuinely innovative rewrites is clearly no easy feat,