All fairytales come with moral lessons that are perfect for children but too simplistic for adult minds. The Huntsman: Winter’s War is a fairytale with a twist, and is supposed to be a dark take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs .
But the problem with the Huntsman series — this and Snow White and the Huntsman — is that their darkness feels like it is for effect. A few plot points of the original Grimm’s fairytale are altered: Snow White isn’t rescued by the Prince but by an ordinary huntsman who had an important but much lesser role in the story. That may sound like a great subaltern intervention. But not when you have a hunky Chris Hemsworth strutting about wearing mud and dirt like it is grunge chic.
While the surfaces of the Huntsman series may scream ‘realism’, there is none to be found at its core.
Winter’s War is being, inexplicably, called a prequel. The only thing in the film that happens chronologically before Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) is a mere 15 minutes of back-story about Freya (Emily Blunt), who we haven’t met in the earlier movie. She rules the North, has powers to freeze people and things at will, much like Princess Elsa from Frozen . An army of children is raised in the icy kingdom, where love is forbidden. Two of them grow up to be Eric/The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) who fall in love with each other.
This is where the ‘prequel’ bit ends. The story moves to seven years later, after Snow White has vanquished Ravenna (Charlize Theron), but there is new trouble in the world: the mirror — which possesses great powers — has vanished from Snow White’s kingdom. And thus begins the search for it and the various things that are attached to it.
Except for a couple of twists, the journey is utterly predictable. I kept thinking of Game of Thrones, and how it is what it is because it subverts familiar fantasy tropes. Huntsman ticks all those boxes, but it doesn’t do them right. All the while, it is pretending to be something else.
The writing is uninspired as well. There is too much unexplained magic, especially involving the mirror’s hidden powers, and a major twist.
But what fails the film the most are the characters. Ravenna, whose magical powers include, being able to disintegrate into ravens, is as evil as an Evil Queen can get, without any of shade of grey (although it’s Theron, to her credit, who amps things up in the second half of the film). Huntsman’s deepening relationship with Snow White, shown in the previous film, is also conveniently bypassed.
The film’s biggest failing is its inability to explore Freya, the most interesting character here. She is known as the ice queen, a role that is a manifestation of her ice-cold heart. She is bereft of love, only because her heart was full of it once, until her sister Ravenna tricked her into believing she was betrayed by her lover.
Blunt does a fine job of channelling the conflicted emotions through her pale exterior. But Freya’s relationship with Ravenna isn’t given the roundedness it deserves.
As a result, some relief comes in the form of an odd visual stretch here and there. But except the icy kingdom, there is nothing new in that either. We get to spend more time in the magical, enchanting sanctuary; the greenest part of this degenerating world is throbbing with an abundance of life, full of fat squirrels, rabbits, tortoises, flowers, butterflies, elves and goblins. And the much-needed humour comes from the banter between the band of dwarfs, with two female dwarfs joining in.
There are a lot of situations that should have been tense. Instead, it all feels utterly cold and bloodless.
It’s futile to compare The Huntsman: Winter’s War with the sequel (or prequel) because of the sheer pointlessness of both.
But, going by the film’s ending, which leaves us on an ominous note, we may have to endure another one.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Cast: Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain
Genre: Fantasy
Run time: 114 minutes
