‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’ review: Tolerably ever after

 

Hollywood has inexplicably mastered the art of the stretch.

Snow White used to have an uncomplicated existence. She was just the passive victim of the dastardly machinations of an envious stepmother who recruited a huntsman to get rid of her. Of course, as with most other fairy tales, she gets rescued by a prince and they live happily ever after.

Then Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) happened, turning Snow White, played by a dour and humorless Kristen Stewart, into a warrior-princess who rids the land of the stepmother, now named Ravenna and played deliriously by Charlize Theron. (WATCH: The return of Charlize Theron’s beautiful baddie, Queen Ravenna)

A mere footnote in the original tale, the huntsman Eric (Chris Hemsworth) is molded into a side attraction for moviegoers in the reimagined bedtime story.

 

A prequel

Another film needs to be squeezed out of the Snow White universe, except that Stewart’s out probably because of the controversy she was embroiled in. The character that’s left to carry whatever legacy Snow White and the Huntsman established is Hemsworth’s Eric, whose only backstory from the original film is that he’s the best huntsman in the land.

Writers Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin have all the freedom to invent an entire history for the new film, and the story they come up with is as rehashed as their hero. It is essentially Disney’s Frozen reimagined as Mexican telenovela.

Now, Ravenna actually has a younger sister, the hate-filled ice queen Freya, played by Emily Blunt. Freya wasn’t always cold-hearted. She used to have a baby, who was mysteriously dispatched causing her to spew icicles out of her angry fingertips.

She sets up a kingdom up North where she kidnaps boys and girls to build an army whose only tenet is to deject love. Eric is one of those kidnapped boys who were trained to fight.

At the training camp, he falls in love with a girl named Sara, played as an adult by Jessica Chastain. They marry. Freya finds out. They are separated. Snow White happens. (WATCH: Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain talk betrayal and second chances)

 

A sequel

The main plot of Winter’s War happens right after Snow White defeats Ravenna. With Snow White conveniently losing her marbles to the enchanted mirror which got lost, the titular hero goes on a quest to recover it before Freya does.

Accompanying him are your standard-issue comic relief characters: dwarves Nion and Gryff, played by digitally-shrunk British comedians Nick Frost and Rob Brydon, and their respective pairs, Doreena and Bromwyn (Alexandra Roach and Sheridan Smith).

If there is any subversive element Snow White and the Huntsman has, it is its insistence on flipping the coin by turning Snow White into a proper heroine rather than the original damsel-in-distress. Absent Stewart, Winter’s War risks wasting away whatever progressive stance the first film contributed. Thankfully, Winter’s War maintains the franchise’s feminist slant, even if only for show.

Eric turns out to be not as adept with fights as we think he is, and eventually gets rescued a few times by his wife. The male characters here seem to be subservient to the women.

Also, with part of its storyline focusing on disgruntled lovers trying to decide whether they still want to give their romance another chance while facing perils, the film feels like it is touching on gender politics within marriage.

If only director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan treated the material with a better mix of levity and gravity. As it is, the film feels like its all-too-ornate costumes and all-too-kitschy special effects are hiding a clear deficiency in plot and thought. The film is a well-garbed wimp, a work whose opportunities at subversion is betrayed by its thin aspirations to be as bombastic as most comic book blockbusters.

A drag

Winter’s War isn’t that huge a failure. There are moments of pleasure here and there.

For one, Blunt’s portrayal of tragic Freya gives an impression that her storyline could have offered a lot more dramatic tension than the tired tale of former lovers reuniting.

Sadly, the film is focused elsewhere. Nicolas-Troyan is far too busy creating ice castles and golden gowns to grant his film a palpable soul. The spectacle’s initially entertaining, but when the eyes get used to all the trickery, it all becomes a drag – tolerable but essentially empty. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.