Charlize Theron reprises her role as Ravenna, the evil queen from the film Snow White and the Huntsman. Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as Eric the Huntsman. Joining them in the film are Jessica Chastain as Sara, Eric's wife and fellow Huntsman, and Emily Blunt as Queen Freya, an Elsa wannabe. With a cast this good, there were high expectations for this film.
Plans for a Snow White and the Huntsman sequel had been announced, but the whole lead actress/director cheating scandal were revealed and Rupert Sanders was immediately fired from directing its sequel. While nothing was ever said of Kristen Stewart being fired from the project, her Snow White is only mentioned and seen briefly in this prequel/sequel. Whether the scandal changed the nature of the sequel may never be known, the film focuses solely on the Huntsman. In fact, the Huntsman is the only character from the original film to get majority of the screen time. Ravenna is reduced to the beginning and ending the film with the new characters getting more of the focus.
The Huntsman: Winter's War is a prequel and a sequel as it tells the story of the huntsman getting his training years before helping Snow White defeat the evil queen. He and the other huntsmen were child soldiers enlisted by Ravenna's sister, Queen Freya. While Freya is cool, her powers are overshadowed by Disney's Elsa. Elsa is still on audience's radar and any ice queen to come after Elsa will be given unfair comparisons. It's a shame as Emily Blunt does a fine job as the ice queen, but her powers seem like a gimmick to draw fans of the Disney queen into this film.
Eric and Sara (Chastain) fall in love and after years of fighting for the queen decide to leave her kingdom together. Freya hates love and decides to kill Sara and exile Eric. After the exile, we fast forward seven years. Ravenna has been defeated and Snow White rules the South. Freya decides to steal her sister's mirror in order to be all powerful and able to conquer Snow White's kingdom. The film should have stuck to being either a prequel or a sequel, not both as this added unnecessary plot elements.
The film constantly has to explain loose threads in the story to keep it cohesive. It's an interesting story, but one that does try hard at times to be cool.
The Huntsman: Winter's War is directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. While he makes the film visually interesting, there are other things that needed to be fixed. Charlize Theron is a wonderful actress, but she seemed stuck in playing evil and nothing else. Other great talents, namely the dwarves, were reduced to nothing more than comedic relief when it's obvious they could have added more overall fun to the film.
It is possible this is not the sequel the filmmakers planned to make when they wrapped Snow White and the Huntsman. The story could have worked better had the cast had more material to work with and had the storytellers decided to focus on one thing or another. As it is, the film tries too hard to keep the story tied to the original instead of focusing on the Huntsman's story no matter where it led.
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