Fairy Tales Started Dark, Got Cute, and Are Now Getting Dark Again

The action-packed Snow White and the Huntsman is less a subversion of an old story than a return to one.

"I guess you think you know this story.

You don't. The real one's much more gory.

The phoney one, the one you know

Was cooked up years and years ago,

And made to sound all soft and sappy

Just to keep the children happy."

–"Cinderella," by Roald Dahl

In the first minute of the for , Charlize Theron's evil queen Ravenna strips naked, sucks the "youth" out of a teenage girl, and plots to rip Snow White's heart from her