The Huntsman & the Ice Queen

The Huntsman: Winters War doesn't work well as a prequel to 'Snow White and the Huntsman' due to a number of anomalies pointed out by others, mainly relating to the lack of Ravenna's brother Finn in her past and the presence of a new sister. However, treat it as a separate film and it's pretty good. Chris Hemsworth plays his part well and Charlize Theron is the fairest of them all, if not the nicest. The special effects are well wrought and the adventure keeps you watching. As in the previous film, the dwarfs provide light entertainment. Enjoyable hokum and great escapism. I enjoyed it.

'Snow White and the Huntsman' from personal opinion was neither a good or awful film. It was visually stunning and had a terrific Charlize Theron, but suffered from a badly miscast Kristen Stewart, a clunky script and muddled story.

'Huntsman: Winter's War' was at times enjoyable, but uneven prequel/sequel. It has elements that are superior, but also some inferior elements too. The best asset is the production values. The film is very beautiful to look at, with luscious but also atmospheric photography, Gothic but also elegant and rustic set and scenery design and lavish costumes, particularly Ravenna and Freya. Most of the special effects are fine, especially the ones for the golden mirror liquid and ice. There is an exception and that was the forest beast, which had a cheaply rendered video game look and didn't mesh with the background.

Once again, James Newton Howard's score complements very well, it's beautifully orchestrated, rousing, elegiac, atmosphere-enhancing and very involving. This said, the one for 'Snow White and the Huntsman' is better and more inspired, the score here also has a few forgettable moments and doesn't really stand out among other fantasy-adventure scores and occasionally derivative. There are good performances here, Emily Blunt's sinister and moving Freya standing out. Another standout is Charlize Theron, Ravenna is far less developed (Freya is a much more interesting character here, and the only one that's developed well) and somewhat one-dimensional as a villain, but Theron makes the most of her limited screen time, bringing great energy, an at times camp edge (though mostly there is more subtlety) and menace.

Rob Brydon, Nick Frost and Sheridan Smith bring some welcome comic relief, this could have easily jarred but was actually a breath of fresh air. The final twenty minutes are thrilling, and the action is slickly edited and choreographed.

Other elements are mixed. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan's direction has solid moments and shows a mastery of visual style, more so than Rupert Sanders for 'Snow White and the Huntsman', but he isn't quite so good stopping the pace flagging or smoothing over narrative cracks. Was mixed on Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain. Hemsworth does have brooding charisma and looks more comfortable, but has a tendency to slur his words and his accent sounds like three different ones constantly changing. Chastain is a great actress and does bring pathos and nuances to her character, but again her accent is unconvincing, with a mix of Scottish and Irish. Their chemistry is much stronger than Hemsworth's and Stewart in 'Snow White and the Huntsman', due to that there actually is some.

Elements here underwhelm drastically. The script is underwritten, simplistic and clunky, with many awkward parts and only properly shining with the dwarfs. The story has some exciting moments, but the pace badly flags too often with a rambling beginning, over-explanatory narration and stretches that feel meandering and muddled. Again the forest beast is poorly done, only Freya is developed well, there are continuity errors meaning that the film just doesn't fit within the storytelling and time-line of 'Snow White and the Huntsman' (while it was a good idea not having Stewart's dead-weight presence in the film, the absence of Snow White- mentioned only in passing fleetingly- does leave a gaping hole in the plot) and Sam Claflin is both underused and out of place.

All in all, uneven film with things that are both good and bad. 5.5-6/10 Bethany Cox

The Huntsman: Winter's War is great fodder for fans of the genre; the slenderly plotted film moves along at a nice pace and the cast do a decent job with what they're given. Although it's undoubtedly a cash-grab sequel (do not believe the "before Snow White" marketing), it manages to argue its case for existing fairly well. Contractual obligations aside, Hemsworth and Theron resume their roles with great gusto, with Hemsworth arguably vastly improving on his performance in the first film. Throw in Emily Blunt and Jessica Chastain and you're confronted with a pretty enviable - if surprising - cast for a film of this level.

The basic driving plot of the film is centred on Eric's (the previously anonymous Huntsman from the first outing) dubiously arranged quest to locate and return the powerful magic mirror, before it falls into the wrong (icy) hands. Accompanied by some foul-mouthed dwarfs, the scenes in the forests and fields are probably some of the better sequences in the film, if only for their tonal consistency rather than their originality. These portions of the film focus on action and comedy, and the camaraderie comes across well enough.

This quest is framed at both the start and end of the film by a strange and rather hastily delivered - yet nonetheless enjoyable - story of two sisters and a sad betrayal. Ravenna (Theron) and Freya (Blunt) are supposedly the closest of siblings who become parted by a very dark event that awakens a great power within Freya. Fleeing her sister's kingdom in a mix of despair, anger and confusion, Freya sets up home in the mysterious "North" and uses her new strength to gather children to train as her army. It is here that the two stories are tied together, with stolen children Eric and Sara (Chastain) growing to become two of her trusted Huntsmen. The scenes in the North are mostly effective and judiciously used; the muted colour palette here isn't allowed to become boring, and this mini saga is undoubtedly uplifted by Blunt's delicate performance.

If you have seen the trailers for this film and are keen to experience the full thing, go in with realistic expectations and you'll have a fun two hours; I am certain that the vast majority of prominent critics will despise this film, but it wasn't made for them. Yes, it's a patchwork production of popular elements from other sources and is generally a rather campy affair, but that's what makes it such an inoffensive and entertaining film. There is plenty to like here, if you give it a chance.

I want to say at the very beginning that at the base of this prequel/sequel is a false premise, or a logical fallacy. If one does remember the first movie, there's no way this one can be truly connected to the same story and characters. This is simply a story line that was stretched and contorted so another movie could be created with Charlize Theron as the evil queen and Chris Hemsworth as the huntsman, everything else didn't matter, the producers thought they could get some more money from the struggle between these two and the rest simply had to fit in. I knew that before I went to see this one, and I was practically ready to hate it. I didn't. And once again, the main reason is the acting. To be more precise, it's the three actresses pulling this unlikely story from start to end. Charlize Theron, once again menacing and chilling as the evil queen, with less fragility and less humanity. Which is, in my book the worst fault of this movie: if one does decide to further develop the characters of the first movie, the starting point should've been the origins of Ravena's hate for all men, and of human emotions. The creative team didn't go this way, this in fact made Ravena a two dimensional cartoon. Only Charlize Theron brilliance manages to make her somewhat relatable. Then there's Jessica Chastain as Sara with a performance filled with subtleties and nuances, managing to look like a fierce warrior and still make us feel she has a beating heart in her chest. But both Jessica Chastain and Charlize Theron pale in front of the real standout performance of this film, that's the one of Emily Blunt. The truth is, she does have the best written role in the film, and she carries it and in fact the entire movie all the way through. If only they could do the same for Charlize Theron, this could've been a real something to see. But even as is, the movie is surprisingly engaging and entertaining.

The Huntsman: Winter's War is not too unlike the first movie in one key way: it doesn't really stick too long in the consciousness once it's finished. It's not that there is a lack of quality in the craft in this (sigh) franchise - the first Snow White from 2012 got Oscar nominations for the costume design and visual effects departments, and it's easy to see why: the work put into the mirror on its own, this gold thing that can unfold in liquid on the floor is in the same ball-park as the T-1000 from decades past, and there is attention paid to all of the aesthetics in these 'kingdoms'. But with the stories, especially in the case of Winter's War, there is the sense of sensing a dearth of original plots. It's not even really a full plot in this film but plot points: this happens and then this happens and then and then and so on, and it cribs from Frozen so much that it's hard to ignore.

It's not that everything from the Disney movie is here, but when you start to describe what this story is about - two sisters in royalty are split apart when one of them (Emily Blunt this time as the sister to Charlize Theron's Wicked Queen) loses her son and takes over her kingdom... which is made of ice since she is the Ice Queen, and she decrees there can no longer be love because her love is lost, so then when two people (Hemsworth, returning as the Huntsman, and Jessica Chastain) fall in love, she splits them apart through trickery and then... it's actually not a prequel but a sequel which involves finding the mirror from the last movie (stolen/taken away, I forget which, it's explained in an exposition dump), and when a big reveal happens for Hemsworth that (spoiler! not really) Chastain is alive, they decide to go after the Ice Queen herself.

So there's a lot of plot here, a lot of twists and turns that do occur, but that main spine isn't too engaging. The Frozen element comes mostly with the Ice Queen and other characters having a love story happen where you don't expect it to (or, I should say, they *do* love each other, but things happen that makes one of them question again if it's possible and, oh, nevermind). What does still work is the humor; Nick Frost returns as one of the dwarfs from the last movie (the late Bob Hoskins is sorely missed though) along with Rob Brydon (remember him from The Trip movies), and both are spot-on with their comic timing, their deliveries, just finding the things in the scenes to naturally liven things up. Some of it's from the dialog, but a good deal of it feels improvised and when lady dwarfs get introduced into the film there's some fun stuff there as well.

All the actors are here to work, and I didn't see them exactly bored during this; Blunt does her best to give her Ice Queen Freya conviction and villainy (and, later on, some sense of true confusion and betrayal), but it's hard to go up against Theron when she owns this role once again of Ravenna. She's not on screen too long, and it feels just slightly contrived how she returns, but she makes her mark as a conniving, devilish presence with aplomb. Curiously Kirsten Stewart is out of this movie, though there are points where it feels like she *should* be in this, even as a cameo (there is one scene where technically Snow White is featured, but it's a double of course). This absence gets felt in a narrative that is all about the other characters, which is fine, except that the script lets them down with an adventure-cum-quest-cum-revenge story that feels watered down or half-baked. And there are even some moments, like with a creature that the characters come across to find the mirror, that isn't a terribly convincing special effect.

I almost feel like I need to write this so I don't forget most of the movie in a few days; it's not *bad* in the sense of it being too stupid or too illogical (though there are certainly points where you think 'yeah, that's a bad idea to, say, make that jump and hope to connect with that building even when you know and acknowledge that it's a bad idea'). If it's bad in any way it doesn't have really any artistic reason to exist aside from it being another check box for Universal studio's current Snow White universe property. To put it another way, when you have Liam Neeson narrating and delivering lines about fairy tales that felt hackneyed 60 years ago, you know there's an issue with something that should be made vs could. It's got entertaining bits but isn't worth rushing out to see unless you're a die-hard fantasy fan, and even with that there's the sense of derivation (if not from Frozen there's Game of Thrones as well).