Rupert Sanders Talks ‘Snow White’ & Kristen With Den Of Geek

Give us your take on Kristen’s character. Do you see her as a Christian hero?

There’s definitely a spiritual side, I’d say. It’s the Joseph Campbell The Hero With a Thousand Faces you know, she’s the archetypal mythical hero, so they are always given those characteristics. In hindsight, there’s a few things in there, in that she’s walking on water and these things are quite religious but I think ultimately she is a spiritual being, she is drawn by that and people are drawn to her because of that.

That’s the reason I cast Kristen, she is kind of wild and spirited and rebellious and she’s so young, she’s got so much weight on her, she’s out there on her own and surrounded by all these people guiding her and steering her and she’s a tough little thing and that’s what Snow White needs to be.

A big, fun, summer action movie about death and loss maybe?

Yeah, well it’s all about loss really. Every character has lost so much and it’s really how each of them deal with loss and it’s really the parallel between Snow White and the Queen, they’re both running on these two tracks of the same kind of loss at the beginning and these three drops of blood connect them all the way through the story, the Huntsman’s lost his wife, the dwarfs have lost everything. I think the original story really is how do you deal with mortality, how do we as humans cope with the fact that we’re all going to die?

And you packaged that for what audience?

Anyone who wants to see it really. We didn’t say, right, we’re going to cast Kristen Stewart and only want the Twilight fans, it wasn’t the choice for us. We chose Kristen more for her other body of work than Twilight. To me I think it really is 12 up to whatever. People who are my parents’ age, who came and saw it last night and were really blown away, and then my little nieces and nephews who are 10-14 were bouncing up and down with excitement.

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