The much awaited sequel to the 2012 original, sees two sisters in a struggle for power that will divide them for eternity. “The Huntsman: Winter’s War”, Long before the evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) was thought vanquished by Snow White’s blade, she watched silently as her sister, Freya (Emily Blunt), suffered a heartbreaking betrayayl and fled their kingdom. With Freya’s ability to freeze any enemy, the young ice queen has spent decades in a remote wintry palace raising a legion of deadly huntsmen, including Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain), only to find that the two have fallen in love, breaking Freya’s only command. When Freya learns of her sister’s demise, she summons her remaining soldiers to bring the Magic Mirror home to the only sorceress left who can harness its power. But once she discovers Ravenna can be resurrected from its depths, the wicked sisters threaten this enchanted land with twice the darkest force it’s ever seen. Now, their amassing army shall prove undefeatable, unless the banished huntsmen who broke their queen’s cardinal rule can fight their way back to one another. “The Huntsman: Winter’s War is rated PG-13 for action, violence and light sensuality.
“The Huntsman: Winter’s War” is a disjointed, if not pointless sequel to the 2012 original, which I actually enjoyed. In that film, the re-imagining took on a creative purpose, with an adult spin on a childhood fairy tale. Where the prequel/sequel regresses in its original take, is the film takes vital steps backwards with a bland script, as well as characters who are slaves to a YA novel stature. After seeing the trailer about a hundred times, the film did offer some surprises in its script, but the reptitive way that they set these up becomes tedious by the second time they attempt this trick. What I am talking about of course, is that of a surprising death by one of its main characters. I won’t spoil much, but this kind of shocking bombshell can only happen once within the confined walls of its writer, so the movie never gets back to the kinds of fireworks that it entails with the opening fifteen minutes. I mentioned earlier that a lot of this feels like a Young Adult novel, and that’s because this story focuses on the love story of Eric and Sara, rather than the queen sisters and their abuse of power within this colony and its people. Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan first film reeks of inexperience, mostly because he can’t see where the film’s central priority should be; in two central antagonists who are different because of the power they possess. It’s strange because the trailer and film aren’t quite in- sync, especially when you realize that the trailer gives away more than one vital surprise in the film’s third act. Because you have seen the trailer, you wait and wait for the plot that the trailer gave you, giving away any kind of emotional climax to the rest of the film’s material.
On the tone of the film, Nicolas-Troyan holds us prisoner to a tug-of-war that feels very straining on the overall direction that this movie is trying to take. I expect there to be some comedy in the movie, but considering these two films are supposed to appeal more to the adults who grew up with the Snow White tale, the movie contradicts itself with a cheesy schtick that makes it hard to take anything seriously. If it wants to be a comedy, go all out with ridiculous juvenile humor that you can laugh with. If it wants to be dramatic, keep out the goofy dialogue, complete with hijinks background music to go with it. This normally wouldn’t bother me as much, but the two contrasting directions made it difficult for me to grasp the severity for the impending doom that these people are facing. Without ever finding a comfortable medium, the film searches the whole movie for an identity that it can’t even find comfortably after two hours.
That brings me to the performances of the film. There isn’t anything that the cast did to further bury the film’s paper thin structure, but rather the way these people are presented creatively to the audience. Chris Hemsworth really does his most charasmatic of jobs to present Eric as something different than the brutish muscle. Chris adds a very welcome touch of light-hearted humor to the movie’s screenplay, and that’s one thing that I enjoyed more than the dry aspects of the original film. Jessica Chastain is solid enough, but her Scottish accent leaves a little more to be desire, with many long spots of inconsistency. Chastain is definitely emitting the best acting turn of the movie, but it’s never enough to really command this movie in the right direction. Emily Blunt was strong in her performance, and it certainly was a different change of pace to see her as a villain in a movie. Emily’s change of attitude is certainly documented understandably, as this is a woman who lost everything, and now doesn’t believe in love as a result of it. Her character, while performed to the fullest of Emily’s abilities, comes across as completely laughable when you witness some of the cliches that follow her character. If it wasn’t enough to completely rip off the way her character ties to Elsa from “Frozen”, complete with ice- building commands and being a sister to someone equally gifted, it certainly made me laugh when she rides a polar bear when everyone else is atop a horse. People might not understand what I find so laughably bad about this, but I compare it to Mr Freeze eating frozen TV dinners, or having penguins in his ice lair, in “Batman and Robin”. It’s effects for the hell of it, and it really presents a handicap for taking this character seriously. My biggest problem with characters however, came surprisingly with Charlize Theron’s Queen Ravenna. Her performance is decent, but we don’t get a lot of time with it. In a near two hour movie, Theron graces us for no more than twenty minutes of the movie. Keep in mind that she is given second billing on the film’s marquee. How did they screw up a character and actress so emotionally gifted, in favor of a direction that is anything but intriguing? Charlize was the one reason I was looking forward to this film, and somehow they even screwed that up.
On the subject of effects and set design, there is some pretty exceptional work here by production designer Dominic Watkins. There was surprisingly not as many CGI backgrounds to the movie as I had anticipated, and many of the outdoor shots are on-location to the kinds of forrests and towns that the film displays. This, in addition to a costume design by Colleen Atwood, and you can really find yourself giving in and getting lost in the very 16th century representations to the wardrobe and three-dimensional coloring that the movie makes for itself.
Overall, “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” is a film that has plenty to offer on its visual aspects, but its boring narrative gives the movie more holes than it can climb out of. Simply put, this is one sequel that is definitely the ugliest of them all. It’s a silly, shallow mess of an edit, that leaves more to be desired from its final presentation.
4/10