Sometimes when you go to a movie the best part ends up being the trailers that came before it. One movie that is likely to fall into the category is “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” which is opening today, April 22, depending on what trailers they show before it. Movie trailers don’t have credits attached to it, but whoever put this one together ended up putting in a major spoiler.
“The Huntsman: Winter’s War” serves as a prequel to “Snow White and the Huntsman.” It is an origin story of how The Huntsman/Eric (Chris Hemsworth ) became the man we met in the first movie. It turns out he got his training and guidance from Queen Freya (Emily Blunt) who just happens to be the sister of Ravenna (Charlize Theron ) the evil queen from the original. One fact we find out is that Eric had a female counterpart, Sara (Jessica Chastain ) who joins him on this adventure.
While the trailer to “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” contained a major spoiler to the movie, it won’t be revealed here. Can you imagine if the trailer to “Ghost” revealed that Carl was the one who set Sam up? It’s on that level. Whoever gave the okay to the trailer should lose their job.
The movie is so bad that you should just watch the trailer and save yourself some money. As the movie goes along you first ask yourself, “When is this going to get good?” Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. Then you ask yourself, “When is the story going to start?” Answer: eventually, but that’s never a good question to ask when watching a movie.
Whichever executive approved the cut of the trailer should not be the only one to become unemployed. Something else “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” suffers from is the hiring of a first time director to oversee a major franchise. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, whose main experience is in visual effects was given the reins for this movie and it is very apparent he had no freaking idea what he was doing outside of the visual effects. He has some second unit direction, but that doesn’t mean he was ready for a project like this. None of the action scenes were remotely entertaining and apparently the direction he kept giving Charlize Theron was “Just give a weird stare.” The whole movie lacked story structure and was completely underwhelming.
There was an opportunity to make a good movie here. They could have explored the reasoning of why Ravenna has always been so obsessed of being the “Fairest of them all.” Maybe the origins of the magic mirror could have been revealed. Alas, this movie had no guts to show any depth.
Some dwarves return to provide a few laughs, but do you want to spend your hard earned cash for a few laughs? “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” was a bad idea to start and the execution ended up being even worse. If Universal cleans a little house after this movie, then maybe it was worth it. It is rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence and some sensuality.
