THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER'S WAR (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

I remember being less impressed with this film-- henceforth abbreviated to WINTER'S-- than with its 2012 predecessor. However, when I got hold of a DVD that offered an extended version, I elected to view that, though as of this writing I don't know what scenes were added. 

The biggest hump one has to get over, to enjoy WINTER'S, is to accept that the villainess of the first film, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), had a sister not mentioned in the 2012 movie. This sibling, Queen Freyja (Emily Blunt), had an experience that hardened her heart as much or more than had transpired with Ravenna. As a result, Freyja moved to a northern wasteland and became the Ice Queen. Her main act of tyranny was to abduct children and train them to be her peerless warriors, who were expected to renounce love, as Freyja had.

Clearly, though the title "Ice Queen" is not used often, the writers-- not the same as those on HUNTSMAN-- were patterning Freyja on Hans Christian Anderson's "Snow Queen." In that story, the titular royal abducted a male child and alienated him from his female playmate, but the female child remained true and managed to overcome the Snow Queen's ensorcelment. But in WINTER'S, two of Freyja's abductees, despite becoming her knights, break the princess's rule and join in the act of love. One of them is the female warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain), while the other is Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth). The first half-hour of WINTER'S comprises something of an origin-story for Eric, and then he's separated from Sara, thinking her dead due to the Queen's deceptive magic. This section also stands as a prequel to the action of HUNTSMAN, while the rest takes place after Ravenna is slain in the 2012 film.

Seven years after Eric escapes Freyja, and some time after he helped Snow White defeat Ravenna, he's living in the forest a la Robin Hood. He's summoned by knights serving Snow (who has no new footage in this film). The queen, fearing the influence of Ravenna's magic mirror, had a detachment of knights transport it to another cynosure. However, persons unknown-- possibly allied to Freyja-- slaughtered the knights and absconded with the mirror. Eric reluctantly accepts the task of finding the mirror to keep its power out of Freyja's hands. He gains the "help" of two comic-relief male dwarves, one of whom appeared in the 2012 film, and during the trek two other dwarves, this time females, also join the coterie.

The most important addition to the group, though, is Sara. Not only is she not dead, she was deceived by Freyja into believing Eric deserted her-- and she's not shy about expressing her extreme revulsion toward her common-law husband. These scenes do a lot to build up the character of Eric, whom I described as "the most thinly-drawn" of 2012's three major characters, with Hemsworth and Chastain putting across good chemistry in their interactions. The group soon learns that a gang of goblins stole the magic mirror. But after Eric's band trounces the goblins-- who, for once, are given a non-traditional design-- Freyja and her forces appear to seize the object of desire. It seems one among the merry band is a traitor-- one guess as to who. However, Eric survives an apparent execution, and he and the dwarves follow Freyja to her snowy lair. There he, Sara and the dwarves are able to usurp Freyja's control over her abducted knights.

WINTER'S clearly followed the template of HUNTSMAN, with two young heroes overcoming a tyrannical female ruler. That part of the film works by making its "Snow Queen" an embittered woman who has turned her back on love. One element that doesn't work quite as well comes about as a consequence of Freyja gaining the mirror: the Ice Queen chants the familiar "mirror mirror" refrain, and as a result Ravenna comes back to life, and starts taking control. This has the unfortunate effect of diluting Freyja's arc, even though the recrudescence of Ravenna is meant to reveal Ravenna's role in bringing about Freyja's trauma. I assume that the writers didn't think that Blunt's Freyja would prove as "hiss-worthy" as Theron's Ravenna. But I still think that it would have been better for Eric and Sara, who symbolized "deferred children" to Freyja, to have broken through the cold reserves of the Ice Queen. 

Nevertheless, this is better than average magical fantasy, and it's possible that the theatrical version skimped on some of the character-scenes that built up the relations of Eric, Sara and Freyja. Indeed, the Eric-Sara romance is improved by the funny male-female interactions of the four dwarves: a rare instance of comedy relief-characters contributing to the main plot. Emily Blunt is particularly memorable as the frosty tyrant, and even though I didn't want Ravenna to be a literal presence in the movie, the use of the mirror to reveal the truth that Freyja's hidden from herself provides a good blend of motifs from "Snow Queen" and "Snow White." Curiously, the last words of WINTER'S, spoken by an occasionally-heard narrator, asserts that even fairy tales never really end, despite the "happily ever after" assertion. But WINTER'S underperformed at the box office, so as of this writing this particular tale has had no further follow-ups.