Winter’s War is based on the characters from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Snow White”, as well as Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”. But Eric survives when he’s thrown into a river, a journey that sends him into “Snow White and The Huntsman”. Ravenna (Theron) and her more reserved sister Freya (Blunt) live a lovely life together until Freya falls in love and gets pregnant.
Advertisement
Emily Blunt plays the ice queen Freya in The Huntsman: Winter’s War. That’s how we ended up with a movie named after some unknown huntsman, instead of the universally known Snow White. Along the way there’s a stormy love story between the Huntsman and Jessica Chastain’s expert archer warrior, Sara. But love is forbidden in Freya’s world and she deceives and separates them. Eric and a couple of dwarves – a comedy team that brings to mind R2D2 and C3PO from “Star Wars” – set out to find the mirror that’s been stolen.
Another film was inevitable, but how do you make a sequel when KStew busy making art films and Ravenna didn’t make it to the end credits? All the marketing suggests that this happened before the 2012 film, but that’s true for about 15 minutes; then a cheesy narration sums what Eric has been doing all of those years.
Parents should know that this film features extended fantasy peril and violence, characters injured and killed including an infant, monster, some disturbing images, sexual references and situation, some strong language and crude comments.
In fact, the only ones to impress are the little men, and women, of the film. There’s some comic relief, which of course comes in the form of dwarves. And the waste of a quality cast just makes things worse. Blunt’s chilly performance is a welcome foil to Theron’s histrionics, but the bond between the sisters is about as convincing as the icicle-laden romance between Eric and Sara. She is over-the-top, but she understands her role for what it is (a fantasy character), and she embraces that.
The second plus is because this prequel/sequel is spun off from the “Snow White” storyline, it has the freedom to be more original and less beholden to all of our preconceived fairytale notions of charming princes and magical kisses.
This is the Huntsman’s origin story, too.
By phone, Hemsworth recalls the scene exactly.
Advertisement
The other big face of the marketing campaign is a huge bust as well. She was the only good part of Snow White and the Huntsman and having her in this film might have worked. Even though the film went on to gross almost $400 million worldwide and was moderately received, it got lost in the shuffle of other huge blockbusters like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, and Skyfall. “Whereas there was a lot more comedy (in Winter’s War), and that’s what I wanted to do from the beginning, have it be more fun adventure”.
