The Huntsman: Winter's War

Some people really need to get over themselves, judging by some of the reviews for this film. It is a fantasy based on children's stories - what the hell were they expecting, Hamlet or Henry V?

It was a fun ride with plenty of action, plenty of humour, and a great cast - Chris Hemsworth brings his usual cheery action hero to the mix, Jessica Chastain was a good addition as The Huntsman's wife, and Emily Blunt played the fragile Ice Queen wonderfully well. The Dwarfs were comic relief as always, but it worked well with fewer of them and a couple of females in the mix.

The story wasn't overcomlicated but if I want that, I'll go watch Memento. Chill out a little, folks.

The cast is nice , Chris Hemsworth , Charlize Theron , Jessica Chastain and Emily Blunt are all accomplished actors and they did their roles well. The story had an obvious ending and an obvious twist but then that's not what the movie was all about. If you want to watch an action packed fantasy drama with some decent CGI effects and decent acting , well you cant discount this film . I personally found this better than the first one as the first one was tad slower and seemed to drag on a bit perhaps more so because of snow white and her frozen acting . Here the frost queen acted more fluidly . I did enjoy the CGI as well because it was not over used and the colouring of the gold with black in contrast with the ice queens blue and white went really well. In my opinion its definitely worth a watch.

This film tells the story of a fierce huntsman who goes on a quest to stop the evil ice queen from getting the magical mirror that will make her invincible.

I am positively surprised by how much I enjoyed watching "The Huntsman: Winter's War". The visuals are stunningly beautiful. I find myself in awe of the marvels of the ice palace. The hairstyles and costumes of the queens, Ravenna and Freya, are super beautiful too. I was amazed by the scene where Charlize Theron has gold on her eyes, the whole image is stunning.

Seeing Emily Blunt as an emotionless icy queen is very interesting as well. After watching her in "Edge of Tomorrow" and "Sicario", I could hardly imagine her as a royally beautiful and majestic queen. Yet, she is perfect as the queen who is deeply hurt and hence deeply cruel.

I enjoyed every minute of "The Huntsman: Winter's War".

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.

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).