Movie Review: The Huntsman: Winter’s War
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
It’s easy to forget about 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman. Even though the film went on to gross nearly $400 million worldwide and was moderately received, it got lost in the shuffle of other huge blockbusters like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, and Skyfall. It was just not very memorable, and although the announcement of a sequel from Universal was not very surprising, it was surprising that they would not bring back Snow White herself, Kristen Stewart, and instead focus on the Huntsman, Chris Hemsworth. A cheating scandal with the film’s director, Rupert Sanders, is seen as the reasoning behind the decision, but it still seems odd 
that Universal would take that type of gamble when trying to build a franchise. No matter how strange the decision might seem, the world has been given another Snow White/Huntsman movie four years later in the form of The Huntsman: Winter’s War. With Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron as the only big names returning, the prequel/sequel also stars Jessica Chastain and Emily Blunt, and features a first-time director in Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. With all of the behind the scenes controversy, a change in the lead role, a new director, and four years in between installments, does The Huntsman: Winter’s War make a strong case for its relevancy? Not really.
In what’s being marketed as a prequel to the first film, The Huntsman is oddly both a prequel and a sequel to Snow White, yet does not require anyone to have seen that movie. Seems weird? Yeah, just a little bit. The film’s first act is set before the events of Snow White and shows the conflict between Theron’s Ravenna and her sister Freya, played by Blunt, whose daughter and lover are mysteriously killed. This unleashes Freya’s superpowers and she runs away to build her own ice kingdom, almost exactly like Elsa in Frozen (except she doesn’t sing to herself to let it go, thankfully). She decides to raid villages and steal the children to raise an army, which introduces us to Eric (Hemsworth) and Sara (Chastain). The film flashes forward to show Eric and Sara falling in love, which is forbidden by Freya, and separates the two of them. Just when you thought the flash forwarding was finished, the film does it one more time and jumps to after the events of Snow White where the audience finds Eric being asked to do a favor for Snow White (who, again, is not in this film). Although none of this is particularly confusing, it is just plain sloppy storytelling by both the writers and director. The marketing team decided to sell this as a straightforward prequel to Snow White by focusing on the conflict between Ravenna and Freya, but that is not what this film is about. The timeline changes multiple times throughout the first hour and it just feels like an excessive amount of exposition and set-up that, ultimately, does not pay-off.
Sloppy storytelling and directing aside, there is actually some fun to be had in The Huntsman: Winter’s War. One of the highlights of the film is the star-studded, and female driven cast. Hemsworth is fine, but the three main female leads are more dynamic and seem to be having more fun. Theron, whose performance in Snow White was arguably the best thing about that bleak movie, gives another fine performance as the evil and intimidating Ravenna. Chastain and Blunt match the level of her performance, especially Blunt. Her cold, sinister and heartless turn as Freya is both surprising and entertaining coming from an actress who normally does not portray those characteristics in her films. Along with the solid acting from the cast, the film does feature a couple of entertaining moments. The first half hour or so is actually pretty enjoyable, but because of the odd time jumps and weird story choices, it never really pays off in a satisfying way. It seems that the studio wanted to make a sequel, they wrote it, but then the cheating scandal happened so they had to figure out a way to get rid of Snow White, so they wrote a prequel and at the last minute decided to combine the two. It’s a very odd choice, one that has some cool moments, but ultimately is more strange than good.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War is not the disaster that some people thought it would be, but it’s not a recommendable film either. Too many weird plot decisions, directing choices, and not enough payoffs make for a pretty frustrating viewing experience. The cast is all top notch and tries to make the material better than what it is, but that is unfortunately not enough to justify this prequel, or sequel, or whatever The Huntsman: Winter War is.
Scott Davis
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