The Huntsman: Winter’s War

So who was asking for this movie to be made? Anyone? Anyone at all?…thought so…

Acting as a prequel/sequel to the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, follows Eric, the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), through his various escapades before and after the original film’s timeline as he attempts to thwart yet another evil queen, all the while trying to find the time to brood over Sara (Jessica Chastain), a lost loved one who fell to the Ice Queen’s (Emily Blunt) wrath many years ago. To be honest, the story is kind of thin and forgettable, so I’ll just leave this summary as is.

While I enjoyed the inherent weirdness and dark fantasy tone of the original, I wasn’t really swept off my feet by much else other than Charlize Theron’s turn as the Evil Queen and the top-notch visuals and inspired art style that the film constantly excelled in. For the sequel, my thoughts are pretty much in line as to what came before. As usual, the antagonistic queens are the real draw of the film with virtually everything else, save for a truly fun third act, doing little to show why this movie needed to be made in the first place.

The acting isn’t bad, but it isn’t really good; same goes for the action. It’s serviceable to be sure, but with nothing new being brought to the table it seems like these scenes could have easily been worth it, but ended up being watered down along with everything else. While there are a few tiny twists in the story that show what this movie could have been, it ultimately fails to deliver on any front. It isn’t until the Evil Queen shows up (in a way that screams being shoehorned in) that things get interesting, but being so far into the movie, this welcome turn of events does little to save what has come before.

In that same vein, every time something new and exciting comes up such as the introduction of two female dwarves to offset the already slimmed down dwarf count from the first movie, things pick up. When the few story twist do pop up and the plot seems to finally be moving in the right direction, it loses steam and brings the movie back down into less than mediocre territory. This type of execution leads me to believe that if this film wasn’t all about a quick cash grab, that something halfway decent or at least on par with the original would have been made, but alas, it is not meant to be.

I will say that a lot of these potential aspects of the film somehow add up at random moments to give the audience a pretty decent movie, but the haphazard nature of it all, mixed with an approach that doesn’t know if it wants to be a straight-up fairy tale, a fun adventure flick, a dark take on a familiar classic, or a heartfelt love story, really hampers the proceedings. I won’t say I expected much, but this isn’t even close to what I was hoping for.

A follow-up far too long in the making, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is completely unnecessary in every sense of the word. It’s not that the movie is such a terrible travesty, it’s just that nearly everyone involved in the production outside of the two evil queens seem to be phoning it in. The story is rather bland with barely enough going on to save it from being a complete disaster, but a genuinely exciting third act shows that if more effort was put forth into creating this film, it could have stood on its own and been quite a fun ride. As it stands now, Winter’s War is a pretty forgettable cash in that doesn’t seem to mask its intentions one bit.