Both Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt seem to be developing a thing for starring in movies ostensibly centering on male characters, then completely dominating the screen. Last summer, Theron outshone and out-shot Tom Hardy in Mad Max: Fury Road; Blunt out-swole Tom Cruise in 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow. If the new trailer for The Huntsman: Winter’s War is any indication, both women are at it again, pulling the rug out from beneath our burly protagonist Chris Hemsworth, then vomiting black sludge all over it.
For those who haven’t been following the hourly marketing updates on The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the film is a follow-up to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman, starring Kristen Stewart and Hemsworth in the titular roles. The sequel was originally titled The Huntsman, but no less than two days ago, it picked up the tacked-on, facepalm-worthy subtitle. (It’s not even clear whether the colon is actually supposed to be in there or not, but I’m putting it there, because The Huntsman Winter’s War is too grammatically fraught for me to deal with right now.) We’ve been gifted with this stunningly awkward new title for one of two reasons: The Powers That Be are hoping to turn this into a long-running franchise (likely because the original pulled in almost $400 million on a $170 million budget) or The Powers That Be hope audiences will confuse this movie with Game of Thrones. Winter [‘s war] is coming!
A quick refresher to help you make sense of this new, vaguely batshit concept and its accompanying trailer: Snow White and the Huntsman followed a particularly badass version of Snow White — this one trained with said Huntsman in order to ultimately defeat the evil Queen Ravenna (Theron), who was hell-bent on destroying Snow White because she was too hot. In Winter’s War, Emily Blunt plays Queen Ravenna’s pissed-off sister Freya, who figures out how to resurrect her dead sibling, then helps her round up an army to get the Magic Mirror back. Hemsworth’s Eric returns to partner up with another banished huntsman (huntswoman?), played by Jessica Chastain, to fight the surly duo. Also, everything is frozen, because that worked for Frozen.
The trailer itself is surreal — almost campy — in its commitment to its own insanity. Somehow, someone convinced Emily Blunt to utter deadly serious fairytale rhymes at the bottom of her register, Jessica Chastain to dress up like Katniss from The Hunger Games, Charlize Theron to kill people with her nails, and Chris Hemsworth to, I don’t know, watch as they all beat the hell out of each other? But, like, not in a weird way.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War hits theaters on April 22, 2016.
