Tue
Oct 16 2012 9:45am

A Trail of Breadcrumbs and an Automatic Weapon

Math has never been my strong suit, which might be why the following equation doesn’t make sense to me:

Classic Work + Supernatural Stuff = Fresh Idea

Call it the Mashup Theorem. It gave us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I know was very popular, but still seems a little silly to me. It also gave us Little Women and Werewolves. (Exactly.) Thus, while I understand why smart people revel in the absolute nature of mathematics, I have to insist that even established theorems should not be applied to every situation.

To wit: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, in which Gretel’s a head-butting, crossbow-wielding girl in tight clothing (Gemma Arterton in a role that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Noomi Rapace apparently decided to forgo) and Hansel’s Jeremy Renner. (Never mind, Jeremy, we’ll always have The Hurt Locker.) The writer-director is Tommy Wirkola whose previous credits include Dead Snow. (Two words: Nazi zombies.)

H+G:WH is set to come out in January 2013.

Does the concept add up for you?

Hat tip to Filmofilia

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1. annathepiper

view all by annathepiper | Tuesday October 16, 2012 10:08am EDT

There was a particular strip in Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin is fantasizing about T-Rexes flying F-14s. He's seen to exult, "THIS IS SO AWESOME!" And Hobbes is all "This is SO stupid."

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and indeed the entire classics + monsters mashup genre, is exactly like that. The trick is to get the awesome parts to outweigh the stupid parts. P&P&Z mostly pulled that off, though it had bits that didn't.

I'm not convinced that Hansel and Gretel as grownup monster hunters quite fits into the classics + monsters genre, though...? This strikes me more as a straight-up fairy tale reinterpretation, something which was not at all uncommon in speculative fiction even before the mashups craze came along. And you could make a decent argument that the original Hansel and Gretel story certainly has monstrous elements to play off of--after all, that witch was eating kids! Grimm's fairy tales in general are great for that.

2. DanaKing

view all by DanaKing | Tuesday October 16, 2012 10:12am EDT

Anna beat me to the good parts of my comment. I'll just say things like this--Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes to mind--can be a lot of fun, if they're treated that way. Start taking things at all seriously and the creator is staring down the barrel of a colossal stupid.

3. LauraKCurtis

view all by LauraKCurtis | Tuesday October 16, 2012 12:43pm EDT

This strikes me as more along the Van Helsing line than the P&P&Z line. But I do take your point.

4. Leslie Gilbert Elman

view all by Leslie Gilbert Elman | Tuesday October 16, 2012 09:55pm EDT

If I remember correctly, the way Hansel and Gretel finally do away with the witch in the Grimm story is pretty gruesome. So yes, it is definitely monstrous. The cross-bows and head-butts in this seem silly to me. If it's played for laughs though, maybe it works.

5. Allison_Brennan

view all by Allison_Brennan | Wednesday October 17, 2012 07:41pm EDT

I love supernatural crime shows ... GRIMM, SUPERNATURAL, and to a lessor degree (because some of their storylines are silly), ALPHAS.

I'll see Jeremy Renner in anything; I can't wait to see how they spin this classic fairy tale.