The Huntsman: Winter's War Review

Snow White and the Huntsman was released back in 2012 and was surprisingly decent for what it was, despite having Kristen Stewart as one of the leads. Charlize Theron as Ravenna, the evil queen, stole the show and made it exciting and interesting; I wanted to see more of this amazing actress in this interesting role. Well, a movie pegged as a prequel to Snow White and the Huntsman was released and I was psyched to see more of Charlize Theron as Ravenna. Unfortunately, The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016) is a major flop and seems to go out of its way to avoid showing us what made the previous movie decent.

Betrayed by her evil sister Ravenna (Charlize Theron), heartbroken Freya (Emily Blunt) retreats to a northern kingdom to raise an army of huntsmen as her protectors. Gifted with the ability to freeze her enemies in ice, Freya teaches her young soldiers to never fall in love. When Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and fellow warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain) defy this rule, the angry queen orders them to be killed. Eric escapes, believing Sara to be dead. Many years later after Snow White had defeated Ravenna, The Magic Mirror Ravenna used as the source of her powers is stolen before it can be destroyed. Fearing the return of the Evil Queen, Eric is ordered to seek out the Mirror and destroy it. Accompanied by dwarves Nion (Nick Frost) and Gryff (Rob Brydon), Eric sets out to find and destroy The Mirror. But Freya also seeks The Magic Mirror for its power, and she sends one of her most lethal Huntsman to retrieve it first and kill Eric along the way if necessary.

The Huntsman: Winter's War was marketed and promoted as a prequel to Snow White and the Huntsman. That's just fine, of course. However, the story is more of a prequel/sequel mash up. The first fourth of the movie is a prequel and we are introduced to Freya, Sara, and Eric, and we see Ravenna's relationship with her sister. Then we get "Seven Years Later" on the screen and from that point on, everything is supposed to have happened after Snow White and the Huntsman, effectively making it a sequel. A sequel is also fine. But doing both in one movie is both confusing from a narrative perspective and a blatant cash grab from a film making perspective. Yeah, I wanted to see Ravenna's fantastic villain in action again, but this was a convoluted way to make it happen. Yes, it's just fine to have a few years pass in a story to shorten the span of time between important related events. But it's sloppy story telling if within that elapsed time, which we gloss over, a whole other movie's worth of events occur, the likes of which have a significant impact on rest of the story. I can appreciate a movie expecting it's audience to have seen the previous movie, but there's so much that The Huntsman assumes the audience knows and doesn't bother to explain. It makes the story confusing, convoluted, and poorly presented. The dreadful quality coupled with rehashed good quality special effects and big name actors makes this seem like a cash grab; there's no heart in it. It feels like it was thrown together at the last minute just to sell tickets.

The trailers for The Huntsman were pretty exciting. We got to see some shots of Freya and Ravenna throw down against each other with flashy special effects and action. That's the kind of larger-than-life stunts I appreciated about the first movie and wanted to see more of them in this second movie. Unfortunately, nearly every scene in which that sort of action occurred was shown in the trailer. I wanted to see lots of Ravenna doing her crazy thing; using beauty as a weapon, harnessing the power of The Magic Mirror, and manipulating blood in disturbing ways. Sure, we see some of that and what we see is pretty cool, but what we see is only toward the end during the climactic fight. We see a whole lot more of Freya, but we don't really see her use her powers much either. Granted, what made Ravenna so menacing in the first movie was how powerful and manipulative she was before she even resorted to using magic. Here, she's all super powers with none of the sophisticated subtlety of the previous film. The big fight at the end is probably the best part of the movie; but, it spends too much time with uninteresting characters mucking about in the woods doing very little pertaining to their intended quest.

The Huntsman does have a pretty good cast. Chris Hemsworth has shown us some good acting in the past. Charlize Theron is reprising a role I adored, and she was incredible in Mad Max: Fury Road. Emily Blunt is great actress as well. Nick Frost plays an excellent comic relief as usual. Really, the whole cast is good, they just had a horrible script to work with. The few characters returning from the previous film aren't as interesting or well developed as they were before. I actually feel sorry for the cast involved. It seems like they were present only to fulfill contractual obligations, not because they thought this would be a good movie. The best part of The Huntsman is that while Snow White is mentioned nominally a few times, Kristen Stewart does not appear in the movie.

The Huntsman: Winter's War boasts some nice special effects and a stellar cast, but neither one is enough to make up for the sloppy storytelling, lousy script, and convoluted nature of this entirely unnecessary sequel. This movie is disappointing no matter how you look at it. The returning characters aren't as interesting or fleshed out as they previously were, new characters were weak and bland, and important points of the story are left out under the assumption you've seen the previous movie. It seems like the producers thought that Elsa in Disney's Frozen was popular and tried to shoehorn a rip off of that character into a half-baked sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman. This movie lacks the heart and epic quality of its predecessor, and even that movie wasn't all that good to start with. I cannot recommend seeing The Huntsman: Winter's War even if you did like Snow White and the Huntsman. It's a blatant cash grab which I can't imagine anyone involved in it enjoyed making.

Mad Max: Fury Road Review

A couple of weeks ago a group of my guy friends got together with the express purpose of watching an over the top action movie. We ended up watching Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) which was in theaters in the spring earlier this year. I have never seen a Mad Max movie before and only had marginal interest in seeing them ever. Fury Road was insane, over the top, and completely amazing! Not only that, but it's possibly the cleanest R-rated move I've ever seen.

Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress, the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads the dictator's five wives in a daring escape, she forges an alliance with a loner and former captive of Immortan Joe, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), and one of Joe's religious zealot "War Boys," Nux (Nicholas Hoult) . Fortified in the massive armored truck, the War Rig, they try to outrun the ruthless warlord and his henchmen in a deadly high-speed chase through the Wasteland.

There are three Mad Max movies out there already, all of which star a young Mel Gibson. Originally, Gibson was intended to reprise the titular role. Fury Road's director, George Miller, ended up recasting the role because of controversies surrounding Gibson and because he really wanted Max to remain at a younger age. Tom Hardy took on the role and he was great. Granted, I don't know how his portrayal of the character compares to Mel Gibson's; I haven't seen the old Mad Max movies. Hardy was fantastic in The Dark Knight Rises and Inception, and he is still a dramatic force to be reckoned with here. Fury Road harkens back to the original films, usually in the form of Max's hallucinating about people he was unable to save. It is also a complete story on its own that doesn't rely on the assumption that you've seen the previous movies that were originally released over a quarter of a century ago. That's good, because a lot of people have been born in the last 30 years and not all movie attendees have seen the Mad Max movie. This introduces the world setting and character to a new audience. Fury Road wasn't an attempt to rekindle interest in the original films, but I certainly want to see them now!

This is a Mad Max movie; it features the titular character and the iconic post-apocalyptic world setting he inhabits. But oddly, Max himself isn't what the story revolves around. I'd argue that even though Max is the first character we're introduced to, Furiosa is the main character. It's her story, it's her adventure, it's her quest. Max is picked up and kind of tags along in the interest of their mutual survival and as a means of Furiosa achieving her quest to free Immortan Joe's wives from abuse and to find a safe place to call home. Max is mostly present only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fury Road doesn't hint at a sequel, though there is probably enough material to make a couple. If that were to be done, I could see Furiosa eventually taking the helm of the stories set in the Mad Max universe because she is so remarkably interesting and such a highly compelling character. Max was great and all, but I'd be up for seeing more of Furiosa.

Surely you have seen Indiana Jones. Remember that crazy car chase where Indy falls down the front of a moving car, slides underneath said car to the back, climbs into the back and takes out the driver? It's a fantastic scene and highly enjoyable. Mad Max: Fury Road is basically two hours of that kind of scene. There is tons of over the top crazy action and it is relentless! Scene after scene of high stakes action, with just barely enough downtime to catch your breath before the next one starts. The stunts are nothing shy of incredible. People are constantly jumping from vehicle to vehicle, firing guns, things are exploding, enemies are defeated, allies are wounded or lost, vehicles spew fire and smoke as they accelerate, storms encroach upon the chaos, and it is absolutely fun! There's even some guy strapped to the top of a vehicle who inexplicably plays an electric guitar that also inexplicably shoots flames. Why? Who cares!? It's awesome! The stunts were unlike anything I'd ever seen before, and 90% of the special effects and stunts were practical; no CGI used for most of the whole movie. Due to the intensity of the stunts used in the movie, 150 stunt performers were used which included Cirque du Soleil performers and Olympic athletes. There are insane vehicles and cars used in the movie which defy reason, all of which were fully functional, again no CGI here.  This truly is a cinema spectacle to behold.

Fury Road was lauded as a pro-feminist film, though I'm not sure I agree with that entirely. Yes, it was fantastic to see a "women taking the reins" sort of movie. It features some women who choose to live without men, eventually fighting those men they chose to live away from. It highlights most men as villains complicit in the manufacturing of women designed to be breeders (none of this is depicted; only spoken about, or rather shouted about over the sound of cars and trucks racing at 90 mph). To be perfectly honest, the women (other than Furiosa) were not a big part of the movie and neither were their acting chops. The wives were a plot device that got some bits of dialogue. The wives' characters hardly had enough material to incorporate deeper issues. I still loved Furiosa, but I can't imagine women anywhere feeling empowered as feminists watching this movie. It's entertaining, absolutely, and it has a surprising amount of narrative heft, but Fury Road is basically a two-hour car chase and doesn't really tackle issues of feminism.

Fury Road might be the cleanest R-rated movies I've ever seen. It's "rated R for intense sequences of violence throughout, and for disturbing images." There is no sex scenes and little nudity (I'm sure I've seen worse in PG-13 movies). The action is very intense, but the violence is not gory nor visually explicit; anything notably gruesome takes place off camera, or in a few cases shows us just enough to get the gist of what has happened without dwelling on how grotesque it probably was. Furthermore, while this seems the perfect situation for it, I don't recall hearing a single word of profanity. There is talk of things that of a mature nature, but it's never shown. For example, the wives are basically sex slaves, treated as objects, abused, and intended for breeding purposes, but none of that is ever shown. It is more or less deserving of an R-rating, but Fury Road lies in the gray area between R and PG-13.

Mad Max: Fury Road was positively amazing. It's like a relentless two-hour assault on both the eardrums and the eyeballs. The structure is solid and even, at no point does it feel repetitive or drawn out. The supporting cast lacks refinement and depth, but Max and Furiosa are great characters that you can't help but be drawn to. The story is simple, but it's the action that is the backbone of this movie; it's simply fascinating. I'd love to see Tom Hardy continue in the Mad Max franchise, but more than that, I'd like to see Charlize Theron as Furiosa move it forward. I love good, strong, female protagonists, and Furiosa is great! All of the insane, over the top action sequences are positively incredible. This has got to earn awards for stunt work, and if none exists one should be made for the express purpose of giving it to this film. This is like action as art. I highly recommend seeing Mad Max: Fury Road. It's also worth owning if you enjoy action films at all.

Are you a fan of the old Mad Max films? What did you think of Mel Gibson being replaced by Tom Hardy? Comment below and let me know!

Snow White and the Huntsman Movie Review

How on earth does Kristen Stewart keep getting acting jobs? There hasn’t been acting as bad as hers since William Shatner. She just can’t act! Fortunately for her, Stewart’s signature blank expressions and pathetic delivery actually works for her in Rupert Sanders’ first major motion picture, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012).

Young Snow White (Kristen Stewart) has lost her mother. Her father, King Magnus (Noah Huntley) eventually falls in love with the beautiful Ravenna (Charlize Theron) after rescuing her from the Dark Army, and the two are married. But Ravenna is in fact a powerful sorceress and the Dark Army's master. She kills Magnus on their wedding night. Ravenna sizes control of the kingdom and locks Snow White in the dungeons. Ravenna uses a Magic Mirror (Christopher Obi Ogugua) to capture all the women whose beauty might surpass her own and drain them of their youth. This allows her to use her beauty as a weapon as long as she is “the fairest of them all.” Years later, The Mirror eventually warns Ravenna that the now grown-up Snow White is destined to surpass her and that she must consume the princess’s heart in order to become immortal. Snow White escapes into the Dark Forrest where Ravenna has no power. The Queen enlists the aid of a mead-guzzling hunter (Chris Hemsworth) to brave the Dark Forrest and bring Snow White back to the castle. The Huntsman doesn’t trust the Queen, and intentionally betrays her by helping Snow White. After meeting up with a band of dwarves the group begins to form a rebellion to overthrow the evil queen.

Everyone knows the original story of Snow White by the Brothers Grimm, even if it’s the sugar coated version Disney produced back in 1937. Snow White and the Huntsman features everything from the original tale from magic mirrors, dwarves, poison apples, and evil queens, to tender hearted huntsmen. This really is a respectable adaptation of the original fairy tale. It’s dark, action packed, fanciful, exciting, and features some above average medieval battle scenes with a siege of the castle which is always exciting. Snow White and the Huntsman captivates some of the menace of the Brothers Grimm tales that were meant to frighten children rather than comfort them.

The characters in Snow White and the Huntsman range from interesting to drab. Ravenna is a fantastic villain; the way she speaks and acts really helps you understand how she actually uses beauty as a weapon. She’s beautiful and evil, and makes a wonderful villain that you just love to hate. The Huntsman is an endearing survivalist drunkard widower with whom we can sympathize over his lost love. Chris Hemsworth has shown us some good acting in Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2012), and he doesn’t let us down in Snow White and the Huntsman.

Then there is Snow White. If you’ve seen any of the Twilight movies you’ll know how vacant Kristen Stewart’s expressions are and how devoid of feeling her delivery is. She does basically the same thing in Snow White and the Huntsman. As a child Snow White witnesses her father’s murder, sees many people she trusts and depends on killed or driven away, and then is locked in a dungeon for fifteen years. She’s a damaged character, and Stewart’s dreadful acting actually works for this character. She’s not easy to care about because she doesn’t do much on her own until the end of the movie. She’s the least developed--odd since she is a titular character-- but she’s not as horrible in this role as she has been in everything else she’s appeared in. She even smiles several times in this movie. I didn’t know she could do that! She actually has quite a nice smile!

The dwarves are played by several familiar actors whose faces are placed over some actual dwarves' bodies. These actors include Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Nick Frost, and Toby Jones. It’s an amazing CGI technique, but deprives some real actors of jobs, which isn’t very fair.

Like Twilight (2008), there is a love triangle set up among the characters. Snow White reminds the Huntsman of his deceased wife. Snow White’s childhood friend William (Sam Claflin) wants to rekindle an old love interest. Fortunately this is a subplot at most, not the whole story. It’s also a pretty weak subplot; not one character seems impassioned enough for us to believe their love. The kisses in the movie are as innocuous as the snow is white.

Snow White and the Huntsman was a respectable effort as its director's first major motion picture. It was intensified with excellent application of the latest cinematic technology and featured an all star cast. It wasn’t bad in spite of Kristen Stewart. It gets pretty slow in the middle, but has a strong opening and ending. Some characters and plot devices were a bit weak which made it difficult to really care about them. We’re given a warrior princess for our day, though she could stand to be a more rounded character. Charlize Theron stole the show and made it exciting and interesting. Snow White and the Huntsman isn’t a great movie. Yet while it may not be as dynamic as we were expecting, it seems to achieve what it sets out to be. It’s an above average renter, and may be worth a matinee ticket. If you’re a big fan of dark fantasy, you may even consider buying a copy on Blu-Ray.

What do you think of these dark fantasy fairy tale revisions?  Are they too dark? Are they at odds with your concept of a fairy tale? Are they perfect? Comment below and tell me all about it!