Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that this follow-up to 2012’s SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is a prequel that shows us where The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) came from and how the evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) got her magic mirror and all the powers it afforded her. That is to say, those things are a part of THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR, but only for about the first 20 minutes, during which we pack in a quite a lot of pre-history. First we find out that Ravenna had a sister, Freya (Emily Blunt), whose magic powers only revealed themselves after a terrible tragedy in her life that turned her from a good person into a vengeful queen of an ice-covered realm.
If this is sounding a bit too FROZEN-ish for your tastes, join the club. Freya and her army kidnap children from her lands and train them to be an unstoppable band of fighters. Among these troops are the would-be Huntsman and his best friend Sara (Jessica Chastain). Even though falling in love is forbidden among this army, they do just that and Freya punishes them severely, making him believe Sara is dead, while she believes he ran away from danger like a coward, betraying their promise to each other to never leave each other’s side. Somewhere right around here in make-believe history, the Snow White story happens, resulting in Ravenna getting killed. The strangest part of WINTER’S WAR is that Snow White is very much alive and talked about but never seen (since Kristen Stewart opted out of this tale).
Also not returning to the fray was the original director Rupert Sanders. Instead the film is helmed by the original film’s visual effects supervisor Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, who certainly has made a lovely looking film, likely to make up for an unnecessarily convoluted plot and shallowly drawn characters. But boy those costumes sure are pretty. I’m not saying any director could have substantially improved WINTER’S WAR, but these conspicuous absences don’t exactly go unnoticed either. In truth, most of this movie is a proper sequel, with Ravenna finding a way to come back from the dead (with the help of the mirror) and even more dwarves returning to the fray, but I think only one from the other film, Nick Frost’s Nion, who has now been paired (quite effectively, I should add) with new dwarf Gryff (Rob Brydon).
It wouldn’t be right to single out any one performance in WINTER’S WAR as better or worse than the rest. Everyone is on equal footing with one another as far as sheer blandness is concerned. Blunt and Theron spend most of the film simply whispering menacingly to one another in British accents. Chastain and Hemsworth get into a little heated slap and tickle before falling back in love with one another. Even the male dwarves get female counterparts to spar with. There are sword fights, special effects (most involving giant ice structures and a black, oily goop coming from Ravenna’s fingertips that get very stabby. There’s horse riding, traps, double crosses, punching, kicking, and did I mention the pretty costumes? I may have…
There’s nothing of any real substance to grab onto and carry us into this by-the-numbers story. Now before you say, “But it’s a silly sequel. Why should it have substance?” This may be true, but you have to have something to hold your interest and justify the film’s existence beyond a cash grab led by the guy that plays Thor. The more upsetting prospect for THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR is that you have a film with three female leads, and while, thank god, they aren’t fighting over a man, they aren’t really doing anything except fighting with each other. I don’t like talking about box office, but if this film doesn’t do well, I really hope people place the blame on poor writing and decidedly average direction, and not at the fact that this was a film with a larger-than-average female cast. That being said, the movie is a bore, with very little fun or anything else to recommend it.
