Review of The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016) by Dave M — 21 Apr 2016

Help! The movies are merging! The movies are merging! The release of 2016's "The Huntsman: Winter's War" (PG-13, 1:54) comes shortly before the release of "Captain America: Civil War", which is a sequel to 2014's "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"! What's more, "The Huntsman: Winter's War", which appears from its theatrical trailers to be a prequel to 2012's "Snow White and the Huntsman", is actually part prequel and part sequel, much like 2014's "300: Rise of an Empire" was to 2006's "300"! To top it off, the 2016 "Huntsman" film features two royal sisters becoming estranged, with one of them (who has powers to create ice with a wave of her hand) moving into the wilderness, causing the kingdom to fall into a never-ending winter - very similar to 2003's "Frozen" - and both movies are partially based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fairy tale "The Snow Queen"! It's a good thing the "Huntsman" films aren't also animated (although, with all the CGI in them, they might as well be)! After seeing and reviewing well over 500 movies in the past few years alone, keeping all this straight is a bit challenging for me... but I'll do my best to hold it together long enough to give you my original, fair and open-minded review of the 2016 sequel / prequel / sidequel (yes, it's a word) "The Huntsman: Winter's War".

The film begins with the story of how the beautiful but evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) used her (unexplained) evil powers to rise to evil power. (Apparently regicide was not new to Ravenna when we saw her do it in the first film.) The only person for whom Ravenna has feelings (evil feelings, but less evil than her run-of-the-mill evil) is her sweet and loving sister, Freya (Emily Blunt). However, a family tragedy results in the emergence of Freya's (unexplained) power to freeze things... people... the air... even entire kingdoms, as she embarks on the slippery slope of her own kind of evil. Seceding from her sister's kingdom and establishing one of her own up north, she immediately has many of her new subjects murdered and steals their children. She sets the boys (and girls) to training as an elite fighting force of "huntsmen", capable of plundering neighboring kingdoms, killing their leaders and taking their lands. (Freya calls the huntsmen her "army", but we never see more of them together than could form a small platoon.) And she has one major unbreakable rule ("sin", as she calls it): Don't love - at all. "Love is a trick played by the cruel on the foolish and the weak," she says. (Sounds like someone needs a hug!).

Many years later, Freya's best male huntsman, Eric (Chris Hemsworth), and best female huntsman, Sara (Jessica Chastain), are all grown up - and in love. (Kids just don't listen.) When Freya finds out about the affair, Eric is (literally) thrown out of the kingdom. He is left to roam the forest, pining for his lost love - for seven years - the period of time in which the events of "Snow White and the Huntsman" are said to take place. (Snow White is virtually ignored in this movie - and Ravenna's loyal and ruthless brother from the first film isn't even mentioned.) Eric is found by King William (Sam Claflin) who enlists his help in finding Ravenna's old evil mirror, which is now missing, and take it to a safe place called "sanctuary", which is never shown. He is joined by two male dwarfs (Nick Frost and Rob Brydon) and then by two female dwarfs (Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach) and by one more huntsman. They take on a pack of ugly, murdering goblins, and then Freya and her elite warriors. (Well, it really IS a very nice mirror.).

Out of respect for the film's impressive plot twists sprinkled throughout its second and third acts, I'll refrain from explaining anything else about the story in any detail, but, to finish my plot summary, I've prepared a list of "10 Things I Learned in 'The Huntsman: Winter's War'". I have made these statements purposely vague and stripped them of any details that might otherwise qualify as spoilers, in order to make a point about the movie with this paragraph. Here are the "Top 10": (10) Breaking a mirror can give you seven years of bad luck retroactively. (That must be called the "grandfather queen" clause.) (9) Images viewed through clear ice can be unreliable. (8) "Sanctuary" is a place where goblins store magic mirrors that they kill for, but don't use. (7) Little people of opposite genders find each other repulsive, but they still have babies. (6) Some families just randomly develop evil powers. (5) A person can bleed out onto a flat surface 12" in front of him with no visible wounds on the man's body. (4) An arrow can be stopped by a metal object, yet still lodge in someone's chest - and do so without killing that person. (3) There's a state of being somewhere between life and death that doesn't involve zombies or Elvis Presley sightings. (2) A ruler can remove love from an entire kingdom just by pronouncing it banned. (1) Back in the day, they had wi-fi in the forest and the routers looked a lot like white owls. (Have I made my point?).

"The Huntsman: Winter's War" reflects poorly on the original film. Many of the details and plot points are silly (see previous paragraph) and the story is formulaic and uninspired. This film has fewer dwarves, but more creatures than the last one, the stepped-up use of CGI feeling as if it's intended to make up for what's lacking in the story. On the other hand, the visual effects are impressive, the fight scenes and other action are entertaining and the plot twists really are cool. None of that totally makes up for what is mostly a dumb and derivative exercise in cinematic mediocrity, but it's enough to keep me from totally trashing the film. "C-".