Of Mice and “Women”: how does 2020’s The Witches hold up?
By Abbie Wong
Be warned: this review contains spoilers .
(Left to right) Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci in ‘The Witches’ (From Warner Bros. Pictures)
Today’s a pretty good day. It would be a shame if a witch snatched you away and permanently ruined your life. In 1983, ‘The Witches’ by Roald Dahl was published, which was a novel that turned that outrageous statement into a reality for its protagonist. The recent movie adaptation only emphasises the “reality” of it, making this the second time ‘The Witches’ has been adapted into a movie, the first being in 1990.
Before I start, I want to state that I have not read the original Roald Dahl novel as of writing this. This will however include interviews with people who have read and seen the novel and movie. Though, I had heard that there were various differences between the original Roald Dahl novel and this adaptation, such as the country the story takes place in, the race and nationality of the protagonist and his grandmother along with the design of the Grand High Witch, but I presumed these were differences that didn’t affect the story too much. I was sort of right, and the only change out of those three that affected me was Anne Hathaway’s Grand High Witch, being so glamorous and ready-to-kill. She had the look that screams “I will eat your soul, take over the world with my gals, and look stunning while doing it.”
Hathaway’s outfits can be accredited to Joanna Johnston, the costume designer of ‘The Witches’ whose work is seen in ‘The BFG,’ another Roald Dahl movie adaptation as well as ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ Her makeup and hair, on the other hand are thanks to Peter Swords King and Paula Price, the hair and makeup designers of the movie. King’s work is seen throughout ‘The Lord of the Rings’ adaptations and Price has contributed to ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ and ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron.’
I went to see ‘The Witches’ with my friends, fittingly on Halloween. My expectations weren’t that high, but I was hoping to enjoy myself. Did I care that Robert Zemeckis, the director of this movie, had also directed great movies like ‘Cast Away’ and ‘The Polar Express?’ If I did, I would’ve had high expectations for the movie but I didn’t know about his role until after watching it.
Now onto the actual plot of the movie. The overarching story stays the same: boy and grandmother encounter witches and move to a hotel for their safety, boy turns into a mouse because of the witches, but they defeat the witches with another boy who turned into a mouse by turning them into rats. However as mentioned briefly, there are lots of details that were changed for this movie, some larger than others.
One of the bigger changes to the plot was the inclusion of the character Daisy. The movie introduces her as the protagonist’s pet mouse who is revealed to be a girl transformed by a witch, while in the novel, the protagonist’s only sidekicks are his grandmother and Bruno, who was the other boy who was turned into a mouse by the witches. Additionally, the protagonist’s pet mice stay only as mice. From my perspective, Daisy was made to be the token girl character that the audience of young girls could look up to, although there are plenty other movies that have characters like this. While the execution of this concept wasn’t bad enough to stick out like a bump on someones’ head, Daisy still felt somewhat unnecessary and pandering to me even before I knew she was a movie original character.
Another big change was the ending, which saw the protagonist growing up to be an adult to tell the story of the witches to children so that they can kill them. The novel’s end still told us the protagonist’s plan to kill witches, but he and his grandmother were more relaxed about the future of his life and how despite the fact that he will only live for about nine years, he’s satisfied as he hopes to live and die with his grandmother. Both endings, in my opinion, have their own charm to them. The movie’s ending encourages its young audience to take action against the problems of the world, while the novel’s ending tells us to appreciate the time we have with the people in our lives.
A final change was the hands of the witches, that while not major, stirred controversy upon the movie’s release. Described as “thin curvy claws like a cat” in the novel, their hands in the movie were modified to not have a full set of fingers, like the Grand High Witch having only three claw-fingers on each hand. The reason this caused a lashback was because the modification resembles the real-life condition Ectrodactyly, which had the implication that those with said physical disability are scary or evil like the witches. “Was there much thought given to how this representation of limb differences would [affect] the limb difference community?!” Paralympian Amy Marren asked in a Tweet. Although Anne Hathaway and a Warner Bros. spokesperson apologised for the depiction, many people responded to Marren’s Tweet accusing her of over-reacting and telling her that she should move on.
All of these changes, while they might have seemed unimportant to you, were quite important to one RCHK student who stated: “They changed so much in the [movie] which made me despise it.” Although I personally cannot sympathise with this, having not read the novel before seeing the movie, it’s a struggle I can understand with the 2017 and 2019 adaptations of ‘It’ by Stephen King, though not to such extent to “despise” director Andy Muschietti for ruining the novel.
Overall, I’d give ‘The Witches’ a 6/10. While I think that ‘The Witches’ wasn’t a terrible movie, it wasn’t interesting enough to have a lasting legacy. Sure, I liked bits of it and the actors were convincing in a way that roped me into the story, but nothing apart from Anne Hathaway’s outfit stood out to me. I’d say this adaptation is comparable to last year’s ‘The Addams Family’ - spooky for children, funky visuals, but not memorable. At least ‘The Witches’ has one up on ‘The Addams Family’ by not being a shameless cash-grab movie, right?