Harry's long gone, but wands are still selling. 2013, comme 2012, promises a score of classic fairytale film adaptations – a legion of Pinocchios, Peter Pans, Cinderellas and Wizards of Oz. A cursory squint into the crystal ball that is the Imdb website confirms that most of the upcoming fairytale films will be tormented, adult-oriented affairs; expect the adjective "twisted' to appear with some frequency. The sort of films in which for every lie, Pinocchio has to wash blood off his hands. With sandpaper mittens. That sort of thing.
The Dark Heart of Fairy Tales, a season of older films currently playing at the Barbican, proves Hollywood isn't doing anything new. The screenings mark the bicentenary of the first publication of the Brothers Grimm stories, while acknowledging that popular fairy stories mainly derive from centuries-old European folklore that predates the Grimms. These oral tales were "visceral, sexually explicit and totally inappropriate for children". In early versions, a charming prince raped a comatose Sleeping Beauty who, still unconscious, gave birth to multiple children; Snow White's evil stepmother attempted to cannibalise the heart, lungs and liver of her step-daughter. The Barbican's programming – from Neil Jordan's densely symbolic and bloodthirsty The Company of Wolves to Kim Jee-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters – demonstrates that fairytales are meant to be unsettling.
Some of the first film-makers to push these familiar stories in harder, unorthodox directions have been female directors overturning the tradition of passive, victimised women. The Company of Wolves, adapted by novelist Angela Carter from her collection The Bloody Chamber, was a vindication of unruly female sexuality. More recently, Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard and last year's Sleeping Beauty by Julia Leigh took a different tack, frustrating prurient expectations. In the latter film, Emily Browning plays an angelically beautiful yet passive student who starts work as an upmarket prostitute. Her wealthy, usually elderly clients desire a sexual partner who is young – and unconscious. The film, like its subject, is too opaque to moralise, but with its less than orgasmic smorgasbord of deflated buttocks and receding penises, male potency has a poor showing.
It can't be argued that either Sleeping Beauty or The Company of Wolves are Disney-esque multiplex-stuffers. While Hollywood attempts to answer a contemporary vogue for fairytale films, will its reliance on big stars and big dollars cause it to miss the sinister subtleties of the stories?
Well, Joe Wright has vowed to rescue The Little Mermaid from her Disney incarnation, while Angelina Jolie will show us a hard-working evil stepmum's perspective in the forthcoming Maleficent. Aaron Eckhart has signed on to play Captain Hook, recast as a detective tracking down notorious child abductor Peter Pan. "Edgy reboots" are already familiar from their over-deployment in the reigning fantasy genre, the superhero movie. Following the hoofprints of a similar trend in US television – which sees Grimm and Once Upon a Time placing their fairytale conceits in the modern world – these deconstructed fairy stories wear their postmodernity on their sleeves. (They've got sleeves now. It's not all jerkins any more). Knowing winks and trope-riffs, which reached a height in Shrek more than 10 years ago, now feel sweet but insubstantial.
Brooding, post-Freudian psychodramas are today's norm, darkness de rigeur. Pairing big names and big money with talented film-makers can produce great work, with visual appeal and emotional depth. (Since writing and directing chthonic modern fairytale Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro has been attached to more projects than a paperclip, including Beauty and the Beast and a stop-motion Pinocchio. And Neil Gaiman was allowed to follow Stardust – darker on the page than screen – with the disturbing 3D fantasy Coraline.) But "adult" does not necessarily mean intelligent. More often, Tinseltown's commercial interpretation of "dark and modern" equates to leather trousers, an Eton mess of body parts and people punching each other at night. As for feminism, the rise of female action heroes indicates a customary nod to women's lib, but always within a non-radical, girl-power mould: a sassy line here, kicking a cartoon sexist in the balls there, and always ultra-hot. ("What great legs you have!" "All the better for kicking your ass with.")
The clue is often in the titles. Instead of Jack and the Beanstalk, we get Bryan Singer's Jack: The Giant Killer. This Jack isn't dithering around with magic beans like a nincompoop – he's kicking ass! Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters' release date was pushed back by a year until the world is ready/standards have dropped, but the trailer indicates there's going to be some witch asses being squarely kicked. You want Saoirse Ronan and live-action kung-fu dwarves? Snow White and the Order of Seven … oh, apparently that one has actually been cancelled.
Blockbuster culture is frequently criticised for its escapist immaturity. The ongoing impetus for fairytale adaptations remains primarily economic – after the runaway success of Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland, studios believe there's more than one way to skin a cat. And they're skinning the cat more ways than Freddy Krueger. As for the shades of grey, America's cinema has a longstanding crush on its antiheroes – rising to eminence after the second world war, gaining further popularity in the wake of the cold war and Vietnam – who challenged previously clear ideas of good and bad. With America's invulnerability on the world stage a shattered myth, nowadays no one expects a fairytale ending. That's why happy ever after is still important: no matter how black the night, the dawn awaits.
For psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the scary and unsettling aspects of fairy stories are vital. In The Uses of Enchantment, he argues that the guaranteed triumph of good over evil allows children to safely broach the darker side of life, to confront death, fear and negative thoughts about parents in the knowledge that growth and psychological wholeness will be the reward.
Like a disenchanted child becoming aware of its limitations, , the west is seeking solace in fanstasy. But after 50 years of lost innocence, comfort is harder to come by. Hollywood has its work cut out.
