Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunter Trailer and Grimm's Fairy Tale Summary

This Friday, January 25th, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunter is being released and I am very excited for this movies, because one Hansel and Gretel has always been one of my favorite fairy tale and that in this movie they seem to kick some serious butt. 
Hansel and Gretel is a Brother's Grimm story first published in 1812.  It starts with Hansel and Gretel living with their woodcutter father and evil stepmother, because they are poor the stepmother convinces their father to take Hansel and Gretel into the forest and leave them their. Hansel and Gretel overhear this conversation, so Hansel sneaks outside and gathers pebbles that are easily seen in the moonlight. The next day when their father takes them deep into the forest, Hansel drops the stones, which the children follow back to their house after they are left in the forest by their father. The next night Hansel tries once to go outside and get some pebbles but the door is locked.  As they are taken back into the forest, Hansel drooped bit of bread on the ground hopping to follow them back home, but during the day they are eaten by birds and that they are lost in the woods.  As they wonder, they come across a house made up of gingerbread, cookies, and candies, which Hansel and Gretel start to eat.  They are caught by the elderly women who lives in the house, who offers the children a place to sleep but in the morning she locks Hansel in a cage in order to fatten him up before she eats him and makes Gretel work as her slaves.  Hansel eats only what he has to and convinces the witch that he does not have any meat on his bones, after several weeks she decides she is going to eat him anyway.  As she gets the oven ready to cook Hansel, she decides she wants to eat Gretel as well and tells her that she needs Gretel to get into the oven to see it if it is hot enough, expecting to shut her in, but Gretel pretends she doesn't know how and tricks the witch into demonstrating, when the witch crawls into the oven, Gretel shuts the door on her, and the witch screams until she is burned to ashes.  Gretel lets Hansel out of the cage, they find the witches treasures, and then return home to their father and a step mother who has died.
Growing up, I would watch the Cloris Leachman version of Hansel and Gretel (1987) over and over, and it was always one of my favorite fairy tales, especially because Gretel is the one who ends up tricking the witch.  When I think of Hansel and Gretel this is the version I think of.  Because I have always liked this story I was super excited when I heard that it was the latest story that was being updated with the current witch, vampire, werewolf craze. 

Watch the trailer for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunter here:

 

This movie picks up fifteen years after the Grimm's Fairy Tale but changes the ending.  Hansel and Gretel don't make it back home to their father, they become witch hunters, with a vendetta to kill all the witches they come across and seem to be in the business of being hired to come to a town to hunt and kill the raining witch.  They are hired to come to a town that is infested with a witch and discover that they are back at their old home and that they were not abandoned by their parents, but that they are murdered.  The trailer seems to focus on the set up of the story, but I have a feeling that the main witch the will be battling is the evil step mother.  I will see for sure this weekend, as I will be seeing this movie.  Stick around for my review.  I hope that it is awesome and with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton I am expecting some serious butt kicking.

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