Let’s be real for a minute. The trailer for Relativity Media’s Mirror, Mirror Snow White project was secondhand embarrassing, right? The buzz coming off of it is not helpful to the studio at all, but one blogger suggests they might be taking matters into their own hands . . . with astroturfing.

First off, the site notes that the term “astroturfing” is defined like so:

Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a “grassroots” movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.

Next, Movie Mavericks writes that several comments were posted with different names and the same IP address to their own site, supporting the film and exhibiting excitement over seeing the movie.  They also did a little digging around the web and found the same to be true for several other sites’ posts about Mirror, Mirror.

Read the full story here.

Obviously, there’s no way to tell who’s out there making these comments, especially not for the Hypable team, but wouldn’t it be a little sad if the suggestion here is correct?

I mean, a few months ago, Mirror, Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman were considered competitive projects. Relativity and Universal had a back-and-forth release date change-up debacle that made headlines everywhere, and no one was sure which film would come out on top in the box office.

It’s pretty clear, though, after seeing both trailers which will get the most traction. The tide obviously and deservedly favors SWATH. Its sleek, action-packed, visually dynamic trailer was a jaw-dropper, whereas I could hardly even finish the trailer for Mirror, Mirror let alone set ten bucks on reserve to watch the blimey thing.

And remember how dirty Relativity was about getting this project off the ground, in a pure effort to hurt Universal’s project? Yeah, maybe it’s not really that sad that Relativity’s now being accused of astroturfing so much as it is humorous.

[From Laura: Another side to be considered is that perhaps the studio is further in a panic given the cool reception Tarsem’s The Immortals is receiving at the box office from critics and moviegoers alike. Tarsem started his career in music videos to great success. His signature style that consists of bold, creative, and surreal imagery is nothing short of visually intoxicating. On a music video where a linear story is not key, rather tone and mood take precedence, this style is a winning mix. On the other hand, two hour films that explore well known myths can’t rely on visual spectacle alone. Though visually impressive, The Immortals is stunningly lacking in plot, characterization, and other substantive qualities. In short what may be compelling in a brief music video isn’t going to satiate viewers of a two hour film despite it being populated with a buff, all-star cast. In that much of the Mirror, Mirror’s initial marketing strategy seems to have been based on the look and director, and those two things aren’t delivering on The Immortals , it’s easy to see where they may need to change gears.]

Snow White and the Huntsman is the fairest of them all . . . and Mirror, Mirror hung itself on the wall.