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2012 produced two different live-action Snow White movies: the colorful, musical .nightsandweekends.com/articles/12/NW1200118.php>Mirror Mirror and the darker, edgier Snow White and the Huntsman. Somehow, the latter, a beautiful but rambling and messy twisted fairy tale, was deemed worthy of a sequel—The Huntsman: Winter’s War—which is, unsurprisingly, beautiful and rambling and messy.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War tells the story of Emily Blunt’s Freya, the younger sister of Snow White’s evil stepmother, Ravenna (Charlize Theron). After Freya is betrayed by the man she loves, she finds her magic and becomes a powerful ice queen. She then builds an army of huntsmen to protect her frozen kingdom, teaching her warriors that loyalty is a virtue and love is a sin. But when her two best warriors, Eric and Sara (Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain), fall in love, they begin a chain of events that leads to a battle against the bitter queen and her sister.
Really, though, that’s just a small part of the story, which is set both before and after Snow White and the Huntsman. Along the way, there are love stories, moments of comic silliness (courtesy of a collection of bickering dwarves), and battles with strange mythical creatures. The plot meanders from one topic to another, shifting its focus at random—and that makes the film feel longer than it really is.
To be fair, though, the rambling story does have its entertaining moments, and the sets and costumes are striking. It’s definitely a pretty film to look at, but its beauty is only on the surface. The characters here simply aren’t as interesting as they were in the original. The male characters are little more than bumbling jokers. They may be talented fighters, but they’re also goofy and gullible and generally lovesick.
The female characters, meanwhile, are meant to be bold and powerful (like Kristen Stewart’s Snow White was in the original), marching into battle beside their male counterparts—and, to their credit, they are generally strong and feisty. But they also come off as wishy-washy and often even weak, using a tough facade to try to cover up broken hearts and other insecurities. Ravenna seems to be the only unwavering female character, but she’s also so over-the-top (and her magic is so perplexing) that her parts are actually some of the film’s worst.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War is certainly a good-looking adventure—but once you get beyond the striking settings and attention-grabbing costumes, the magic fades. And what’s left is another pretty mess of a fractured fairy tale. Let’s just hope that Ravenna has run out of siblings to boss around, so we can be done with this franchise.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
