Taglines: Classic tale. New twist.
Catching up with Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) 15 years after the traumatic incident involving a gingerbread house, the siblings have evolved into vengeful bounty hunters dedicated to exterminating witches. Over the years, the siblings became expert hunters, famous for their proficiency at tracking and taking down their prey. Although still recovering from their ordeal, their work is relatively easy as for an unknown reason harmful spells and curses do not work well against them.
The Mayor of Augsburg recruits them to rid the town and nearby forests of an evil sorceress (Famke Janssen) who is planning to sacrifice many local children at the witches’ gathering during the upcoming ‘Blood Moon’ night in two days time. To make things worse, the duo also has to deal with the brutal Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare) who has taken power in Augsburg and conducts a very indiscriminate witch-hunt of his own.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an American-German action-horror film written and directed by Tommy Wirkola. It is a continuation to the German folk fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel”, which was recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. The film stars Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare, Thomas Mann, and Derek Mears.
About the Story (2013)
Abandoned by their father deep in a forest, young Hansel and Gretel enter a gingerbread house and are captured by an old witch. The witch forces Hansel to continuously eat candy while making Gretel prepare the oven, but the siblings outsmart her and incinerate her in the fire of the oven. In the fifteen years that follow, Hansel and Gretel become famed witch hunters, slaying hundreds of witches. The pair find that they are somehow immune to spells and curses, but the incident in the gingerbread house has left Hansel diabetic. He needs a shot of insulin every few hours or he will get sick and die.[N 1]
Hansel and Gretel arrive in the town of Augsburg and immediately prevent Sheriff Berringer from executing a young woman named Mina for witchcraft. Mayor Englemann tells the crowd that he has hired the siblings to rescue several children presumed abducted by witches. Berringer hires trackers for the same mission in the hopes of disgracing the mayor and cementing his power. All but one of the sheriff’s party are killed that night by the powerful grand witch Muriel, who sends one man back to the town tavern as a warning to the locals.
Hansel and Gretel, along with the Mayor’s deputy Jackson, capture one of Muriel’s witches and interrogate her. They discover that the witches are preparing for the coming Blood Moon, where they plan to sacrifice twelve children in order to gain an immunity to fire. Muriel, accompanied by her witches and a troll named Edward, attack the town and abduct the final child. Muriel kills Jackson and launches Gretel out a window, rendering her unconscious. Gretel is rescued by Ben, a local teenager who is a fan of theirs and plans to be a witch hunter himself. Hansel grabs onto a fleeing witch by her broomstick, but falls and is lost in the forest.
The next morning, Hansel is found hanging from a tree by Mina. She takes him to a nearby spring where she heals his wounds and makes love to him. Gretel searches for Hansel in the forest but is attacked by Sheriff Berringer and his posse. The men capture and beat Gretel before being stopped by Edward, who kills the sheriff and his men. Edward tends Gretel’s wounds and tells her that he helped her because trolls serve witches. Hansel and Gretel reunite at an abandoned cabin, which they discover is both a witch’s lair and their childhood home.
Muriel appears in front of them, telling them the truth of their past. She reveals that Hansel and Gretel’s mother was a grand white witch named Adrianna who married a farmer. On the night of the last Blood Moon, Muriel planned to use the heart of the white witch to complete her potion. She found Adrianna too powerful and decided to use Gretel’s heart instead. To get rid of Adrianna, Muriel revealed to the townspeople that Adrianna was a witch. The townspeople burned her alive and hanged Hansel and Gretel’s father. Following this revelation, the siblings battle Muriel before she stabs Hansel and abducts Gretel for the ceremony.
Hansel wakes up with Mina, who reveals herself to be a white witch. She heals his wounds again and uses a grimoire to bless Hansel’s arsenal of weapons. Hansel, Mina, and Ben head out to disrupt the Blood Moon Sabbath. Mina begins slaughtering dark witches with a Gatling gun, while Hansel squares off against Muriel’s witches and frees the children. Edward defies Muriel’s orders and releases Gretel before Muriel throws him off the cliff. Muriel flees on a broomstick, but Ben manages to shoot her and forces her to crash.
Filming (2013)
Wirkola got the idea to create a film based on the adult lives of Hansel and Gretel in 2007 while at film school in Australia. After being discovered by Gary Sanchez Productions, Wirkola pitched the idea at a meeting with Paramount Pictures and won a contract. Production began in March 2011 at the Babelsberg Studios in Germany and included extensive use of traditional special effects. In addition, Renner and Arterton had a month of training beforehand to prepare for the physical demands of their roles. In terms of the weapons and wardrobe, Wirkola wanted an old-world look with a modern touch, and he was adamant about filming outdoors in European nature rather than in a studio. The project was filmed in Germany and featured an international cast and crew.
The film’s visual effects were created using mostly practical effects, supplemented by computer-generated imagery (CGI) created by Hammerhead VFX[74] for about 15% of the film’s special effects, such as the transformations. Wirkola said: “I’m a big believer in just using CGI to polish what you get on camera. For me that’s the ideal use of CGI. We have a troll in the film that is animatronic. I loved him. It took some convincing to get the studio along with the animatronic creature. There have been bad experiences with animatronics throughout various productions but I saw this company Spectral Motion. They did the Hellboy movies and I just loved it.” Wirkola added: “I come from Norway where we can’t afford CGI. But this is a fantastical world of witches and trolls and I wanted to ground the movie where I could. The blood should look real.”
Janssen, however, despite Wirkola’s warnings, “was not entirely prepared for how involved and long that was going to be” and “actually wanted to burn the prosthetic make-up by the end of the movie.”[14] She recalled being “so overwhelmed by what this prosthetic business was all about”, saying: “Acting has been so specific for me and what I’ve learned – eyes, facial expressions, all of that stuff – and with something like this, you’re robbed of all of this. Or I could no [longer] rely on things I’ve done in the past. It was different and frustrating at times because I had this circus of people around me in case something became unglued.”[76] Muriel and the other principal witches were prepared by Mike Elizalde’s Spectral Motion, who also created and handled the animatronic troll. Jon Farhat was the visual effects supervisor and aerial second unit director.
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Directed by: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Famke Janssen, Gemma Arterton, Peter Stormare, Thomas Mann, Pihla Viitala, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal
Screenplay by: Tommy Wirkola, D.W. Harper
Production Design by: Stephen Scott
Cinematography by: Michael Bonvillain
Film Editing by: Jim Page
Costume Design by: Marlene Stewart
Set Decoration by: Bernhard Henrich
Music by: Atli Örvarsson
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence.
Studio: Paramount Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Release Date: January 25, 2013
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