Is this sequel to a rather average telling of the story of Snow White actually worth the bother?
Who:
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain
What:
Fantasy Adventure
Why:
Both a prequel and a sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman
When:
Released 2016
Where:
Set in a mystical fairy tale world
When Snow White and the Huntsman made double its budget at the box office you could bet that the studio would consider turning this into a franchise and expanding on the mythology. Whilst I didn't particularly think this was a good film, I did find it passable for a bit of light entertainment. Kristen Stewart might have been as annoying as hell but both Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron were quite pleasant.
My main issue was that I felt it would have made for a better film overall if it wasn't weighed down with being a Snow White story. I thought with a bit of tweaking this could have been more of an original work while still taking some cues from the brothers Grimm Snow White fairy tale. After all the screenwriters didn't follow that tale to the letter anyway so why not go the whole hog and make this its own thing?
The answer to this question is quite simply that Snow White is an easily recognisable name and fantasy films do not normally perform well at the box office unless there is something already there that audiences are aware of. Without having Snow White I also doubt they would have ended up with the cast they did.
Regardless of all that, a Snow White tale is what we did end up with. The Huntsman also got top billing and after Hemsworth's swashbuckling efforts were reasonably well praised; it came as no surprise that the focus of the sequel would revolve around his character.
In the first movie there was mention that Hemsworth's character Eric had lost his wife but how that tragic event had occurred was not explained. Winter's War uses that premise for one of its storylines. We will find out how Eric and his bride Sara, played by Jessica Chastain, first meet and fall in love. Love will be the main theme of the film as it is the betrayal of love that causes the main antagonist Freya to turn into the evil Ice Queen.
Freya is played by Emily Blunt who first appears to be a young sweet girl who has fell for an already married man. After giving birth to an illegitimate daughter from this relationship, things take a turn for the worse as Freya unleashes her inner powers and kills her lover after he confesses to murdering their child. None of this is a spoiler as it all takes place in the first ten minutes of the film to set up what comes later.
Needless to say Ravenna encourages her sister to harness her powers so she can be a strong ally for her ever growing ambition. Freya as the Ice Queen moves north and proceeds to conquer this territory with her army. It is at this time that she takes in the orphaned children of the villages she conquers; with both Eric and Sara being amongst them. These children are then trained to become part of her expanding forces.
As our two heroes grow they naturally fall for one another; which is something that Freya won't allow and Eric is cast from her realm to become the drunkard we see in the Snow White and the Huntsman film. Events then fast forward to seven years after the events that were depicted in that movie.
Sam Claflin's King William sends Eric on a mission from Queen Snow White to retrieve the stolen mirror and take it to Sanctuary; the idyllic place where the dwarves took both Eric and Snow White in the first film.
This then becomes the focus for the remainder of the film as we learn that Freya is also trying to get her hands on the mirror so she can harness its power for herself. Eric will reluctantly be helped in his quest by the returning Nick Frost as the dwarf Nion along with his half-brother Gryff who is portrayed by Rob Brydon.
Along the way this trio will be joined by two female dwarves in the form of Doreena and Bromwyn as played by Alexandra Roach and Sheridan Smith respectively. Both of these characters are welcome additions to the cast, particularly Bromwyn who has some of the best moments of the film with her interaction with Gryff. Smith and Brydon both look like they had fun playing off one another and I am sure there would be a decent gag reel out there from the scenes that these two share together.
Even though the budget for this sequel was only two thirds of the original they still manage to excel in the costuming department. The outfits and design are excellent particularly the design for Freya which had to be suitably different to that of her sister Ravenna. They both complement one another rather well despite the difference in look.
The special effects aren't up to the same standard as the original but are still visually appealing, especially in the icy landscape of Freya's kingdom and the spells and tricks she uses. Once again Sanctuary looks like something straight out of a fairy tale; suiting the subject matter to a tee.
Chris Hemsworth slides seamlessly back into the role of Eric which shouldn't be too hard a task for him considering the character isn't a million miles away from his portrayal of Thor; just a bit more crude and tipsy! He seems to breeze through these types of roles, but the material he is working with is not exactly Shakespeare. Still he does light up what is otherwise dire fare and has one of the best moments of the film when asking Sara if she was suitably impressed by the way he dispatches one particular foe.
Where do I begin with what I found to be wrong with this particular tale? Let us start with the studio.
Snow White and the Huntsman was not a huge success; a moderate one, but not so successful that it warranted a sequel. Obviously though, Universal felt differently and thought the cash it brought in was adequate enough to milk this cow for all it was worth.
So how does a studio go about maximising profits from an undeserved follow up? What generally happens with sequels is that they work on the law of diminishing returns; so understandably the budget for this follow up was cut dramatically to help maximise profits. The budget was still adequate enough that it didn't affect their ability to put together another top notch cast to draw the audience in.
Those cuts though definitely affected one area where the first film was particularly strong and that was in the effects department. While some of the effects as I have mentioned were fine, others certainly were not up to scratch. I found them to be really substandard when it came to Ravenna but more on that later. Not only was it apparent here but also with some of the creature creations too. It was definitely damaging to the overall enjoyment of an already weak story.
This brings us to the screenplay which I found to be a big issue. This is obviously another area where costs were saved. The original had Hossein Amini amongst its writers who has some respectable screenwriting credits; amongst them Nicolas Winding Refn's excellent Drive. John Lee Hancock who was the writer and director of The Blind Side; which was nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards, was also part of the writing team.
Now compare those credentials to that of the two men charged with writing The Huntsman Winters War: Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin. The former has at least half a dozen, direct to DVD, money grabbing sequels to his name and the only film of any note is Hercules starring Dwayne Johnson. Craig Mazin's credits are even more disheartening as he was involved in writing a bunch of spoof movies including some of the Scary Movie sequels. While I found the original The Hangover to be quite refreshing I felt that it was a one shot film that did not require any further additions; however the studio obviously saw the dollars coming in and thought differently. And Mr Mazin was one of the writers responsible for not one but both of the atrocious follow ups.
Is it any wonder then that the screenplay for this movie is plain and simply just terrible? Tonally it is all over the place with its character development. Freya at first appears to be a humble, innocent person who is caught up in a romantic liaison and then turns into a love hating tyrant. By the end I am not sure if she is supposed to redeem herself or not. I cannot fathom how the audience is supposed to feel any pity for her character when she is responsible for conquering the whole of the northern realms of this land by committing what is basically genocide?
Although we don't actually see them committing these crimes, it is heavily insinuated but in a way that the younger viewer probably won't pick up on it. We then have a scene where Eric connects with another frightened child who has probably seen her parents butchered by if not Eric, then one of his cohorts, but we are supposed to see his soft side as he coaxes this child to join the rest of the slave children as they enter Freya's servitude.
This storyline takes away all the goodwill and swashbuckling heroism of Eric that had been built during the first instalment of the series. Instead when viewed correctly Eric is actually a brutal killer. Even though he was taken away as a child and raised to take part in mass murder it does not excuse his character at all and the same goes for Sara. To try and distract us from this depiction, we are fed the love story of Eric and Sara and their plans to run away from Freya's kingdom where love has been banned under her rule!
What's that I hear you say, Freya has banned anyone from falling in love? Yes, considering she was betrayed by love it means no one else is allowed to feel love in her realm. Apparently that is a good enough reason for her army to commit the atrocities they do and so ensure that love does not rear its ugly head as long as Freya reigns.
I have seen some pretty flimsy premises before in films but this one is right up near the top for sheer ridiculousness. I know this is supposed to be a fairy tale and that in the end love is supposed to conquer all; but come on how are you supposed to take such a ruling seriously? It is simply preposterous. How would her realm prosper and grow without population growth?
Well it seems that it doesn't matter because any hint of a family unit gets destroyed once her huntsmen roll into town. I cannot stress enough how much this storyline annoyed me and destroyed any chance I had of investing in these characters.
Now that I have vented about that particular gripe let us move onto the subject of Freya and Ravenna. In Snow White and the Huntsman we saw the uncomfortably close relationship that Ravenna and her brother Finn shared but at no time, even during the flashback scene to when they were young, did we have any mention of a younger sister.
However, here the writers had no problem conveniently doing a little retcon and adding in this sibling to service the plot they had come up with. They could hardly use Finn due to his death in the first film but it is interesting that he makes no appearance and nor does he get any mention in the prequel scenes establishing the story. Not a lot of people return for this sequel though so it is not surprising that Finn has disappeared from the story.
From the six dwarves we only have Nick Frost's Nion appear in Winter's War. I guess they couldn't afford six of them this time around and went for the cheapest one. They still introduce a new dwarf though, Nion's half-brother Gryff; played by the equally cost effective Rob Brydon. Now Gryff himself is okay but why would you cast Brydon with his distinct Welsh accent to play the half-brother to Nick Frost who has an obvious London accent?
Because they don't care is the only answer I can come up with. They don't care that his character is so different to all the other dwarves that have come before and they don't care that his characterisation is different to the two female dwarves who they meet on their exploration of the north. Their dialect is more in common with Nion and the other dwarves from the first film. Are we just supposed to go along with it and assume that the parent they both share had an affair whilst exploring a different region of the land where people sound like they are from Wales?
You would imagine that at some point Nion and Gryff had some shared living due to them being aware of the other existing. I would assume this close proximity would influence them starting to sound similar as they grow together. I am probably over analysing though but it was a distracting part of their characters. Again I can only come back to the casting director not caring about Brydon's accent because he thought he would be amusing in the role.
The story of Snow White has a large target audience of females of a younger age group. The tone of the original film already alienated children with its darker themes and I doubt many parents would have thought it was suitable for six to nine year olds familiar with Snow White. Therefore the filmmakers are aiming at an audience of both male and female from the age of ten upwards, with a strong focus on the teen market.
Of course having Chris Hemsworth's hulking masculinity on screen will still garner you many female viewers. Hemsworth alone though is not enough to bring the same audience back for a second screening when you take Snow White out of the narrative. Add to this the appeal of Kristen Stewart's fan base from her time playing the heroine in The Twilight Saga. A large portion of those fans would have come to the first film in this series hoping to see a similar fantasy romance featuring the actor.
A large portion still want the romance of the Snow White story in Winter's War but are robbed of seeing what happened between Snow White and Sam Claflin's William as the focus switches solely to the Huntsman's tale. Speaking of Claflin, we get a very brief cameo from him which is so small he might as well have not bothered.
In place of the Snow White/William story we get Eric and Sara's journey of love which is dealt with in such a heavy handed manner. One minute they can't keep their eyes off one another before being kept apart by Freya's machinations. Upon their reunion a few years later they do not reconcile straight away because Eric always promised to be there for Sara; but couldn't keep that promise through no fault of his own. It's another stupid plot point designed so that once they do eventually end up as a couple we are supposed to get all warm and fuzzy inside because they are actually still in love; but it fails miserably.
Jessica Chastain looks like she would rather be elsewhere. Doing a bit of research I found an article about her being contractually obliged to do this role as part of the agreement in place for her getting the role in Crimson Peak. So it is little wonder that she appears to just be going through the motions throughout this film.
There is a distinct passage of time from the prequel section to the films conclusion. Well I don't know what is in the water in the land of Tabor or what their diet consists of but whatever it is, please give me some. No one ages at all. Ravenna and Freya look the same during the flashbacks as to what they look like at the end of the movie. Don't forget that in between all this Freya has kidnapped Eric and Sara as children who have grown into adulthood amongst her troops. Freya has not changed during this whole period. Eric and Sara are separated for at least seven years but in that time don't look like they age a day.
Ravenna has also conquered King Magnus' kingdom while Snow White was a child; who in turn reconquers Tabor when she grows up. Now we know how Ravenna kept her youthful looks but we also know that upon her defeat she ages as she perishes in the first film. However it seems that once you are resurrected you get to come back at your most beautiful best as that is exactly what happens when Ravenna returns.
Charlize Theron's appearance might as well be listed as a cameo for the amount of time she spends on screen. She only agreed to appear again if she was paid the same amount of money as Hemsworth. I don't have anything against equal pay for female actors but when you consider how small her role is, it seems ludicrous her pay was on par with Hemsworth. This is another example of where money could have been better spent on creating a more appealing film.
I said earlier how much I disliked the effects of Ravenna when she regains her strength and power. I have no idea what the black tentacle goop was supposed to be during the climactic battle. I can only surmise that it is supposed to be some sort of throwback to her raven shape shifting ability from the original. If they were meant to be feathers then they failed miserably.
My final issue is with Freya's Ice Queen. Now Elsa from Frozen was originally supposed to turn into an evil snow queen but the writers decided, after a lot of consultation, to change the story to one focussed on true love. It seems that Mazin and Spiliotopoulos took the original concept from Frozen and used it for Winter's War. They made Freya a sibling to the existing Ravenna resulting in two evil sisters; as opposed to the caring relationship depicted in Frozen. They then twist the true love theme to one of love's betrayal and voila had the basis for their screenplay.
I can only imagine that people at Disney have seen the similarity in Winter's War to their first ideas on how to depict Elsa and realise they dodged a bullet by making the changes they did. Shudder at the thought that Frozen might have ended up like this mess!
Verdict:
Grab your pitchforks and torches. Let the cry commence "Burn the Witch!"
Evidence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Huntsman:_Winter%27s_War
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381991/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Huntsman
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