“The Huntsman: Winter’s War” is the sequel to “Snow White and the Huntsman”. Actually, it’s a prequel/sequel; or to be more specific, if “The Huntsman” was an ice cream sandwich, “Winter’s War” would be the chocolate wafers.
This film is a magical tale that testifies to the power of love. Charlize Theron reprises her role as Ravenna, along with Chris Hemsworth as The Huntsman. Oddly, Snow White is not in this film; though, she is referenced and Ravenna still wants her dead.
The prequel part
Charlize Theron is joined by Emily Blunt, who plays her sister Freya. This sets up Freya’s descent into evilness as she runs off and creates an ice palace, gathering up an army. Her powers are fun to watch. The visuals on her effects, like the way she turns anything she wants into ice or can create ice walls, was well done.
But when Freya left Ravenna, the story detoured from the two sisters. Unfortunate, because I found the relationship interesting and wanted to see more of it. Instead, the the story moved on to set up Freya’s rule, which in turn sets up how The Huntsman came to be The Huntsman, which then introduced his love interest and fellow warrior, Jessica Chastain as Sara.
The lovebirds were trained to fight and kill for their queen. But love is forbidden in Freya’s kingdom and so events happen that find The Huntsman on the run.
Fast Forward to the sequel portion…
A lot has happened up to this point with a couple of different story lines: Freya and her sister, Freya building her army, Eric being The Huntsman and falling in love, Freya conquering lands, a mention of Freya’s sister and Snow White exists somewhere.
And now, The Huntsman needs to find the mirror before Freya does or else she will be even more unstoppable.
The search for the mirror plot point is rather thin. It felt more like giving The Huntsman something to do while building up his personal relationship, not because of his importance in the story as a hero, but more about what he and his relationship represents—which is that it’s crucial to Freya’s ultimate development. But Hemsworth does such a nice job in the role and he found a couple of fun dwarfs to help him out—even though the humor is more miss than hit.
And so he finds himself back at the ice palace and the theme of “love conquers all” solidifies itself. We are even left with this quote:
“But even buried under ice and snow, love survives”
“The Huntsman: Winter’s War” excels in its character interactions and conflicts. The action and visuals are good. But the story is a combination of small plots sewn together that ends up feeling more like cliff notes instead of a denser tale, which left some story lines, mostly the two sisters, feeling underdevloped.
Score: 5/10
