Mirror, mirror on the wall… what’s the fairest film of them all? Well, it ain’t the Huntsman. Here are five things you need to know about the Snow White sequel…
THING 1 – It’s kind of boring
It’s just… [Sigh] Stuff happens. Some of it is okay, some of it is meh. All of that mixed together it’s just [non-committal noise]. But there are some fun set pieces that might make you smile featuring the new dwarves and Chris Hemsworth’s Huntsman. Actually, they probably won’t make you physically smile. You’ll be smiling on the inside, or thinking, oh this bit is quite fun. But honestly, it’s about as exciting as you’d expect from a sequel to Snow White And The Huntsman, which was also [non-committal noise].
THING 2 – The accents aren’t very good
Obviously Charlize Theron’s English accent is still really good because she can do anything, and Emily Blunt’s accent is amazing because she’s just using her actual voice. But Chris Hemsworth’s Scottish one still needs some work. It’s fun and sweet but it’s also sometimes hard to understand what he’s saying. He’ll be doing a big majestic speech, but you’ll be too busy being like, ‘What’s that? You’re going to do what?!’ Jessica Chastain’s is also kind of weird. At one point it sounded like she called the Hunstman a twat. Maybe she did. I don’t know what else it could have been.
THING 3 – It’s extremely pretty
I know it’s early in the year, but The Huntsman might be 2016’s prettiest big budget film so far. Everything is gorgeous. The cast is gorgeous. The sets are gorgeous. The costumes are gorgeous. The digital effects are mind blowing. It’s aesthetics are the best things it’s got going for it. If the film was presented in a picture book format, or as a series of photographs in an art exhibition, it would be really good. But the fact that it’s a film with sound and movement and stuff kind of ruin it.
THING 4 – It doesn’t really make sense
Some of the story is a bit strange. There are a lot of weird get-out clauses, like when characters die and come back to life again. I know it’s a fantasy, with magic and ‘love conquers all’ and all that shit, but sometimes it just seems a bit lazy. The first time something highly unlikely happens, it’s like ‘okay, all right, I’m down, I’ll let you have that one,’ but when it happens a second and third time it’s like ‘are you freaking kidding me? What is this shit? You’d be dead. Just leave now and don’t come back.’
THING 5 – It sort of disregards everything that happened in Snow White And The Huntsman
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the first film was blah, but it seems a bit of a waste. It back-peddles as opposed to doing more world-building. The Huntsman starts as a prequel, with Chris Hemsworth’s origin story and him as a child, and then as an adult in training with an axe and stuff, but then there is literally a title card that says “seven years later” or whatever, during which the whole of the first film is supposed to have taken place. And then it hardly references anything that happened it that. It’s just like, why would you do that?
So that’s everything you need to know about The Huntsman: Winter’s War. Go see it. Or don’t. I don’t care. But if you do, tell us what you thought in the comments below. See you next time!
Read our full review here.
