The Huntsman – Winter’s War: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
Charlize Theron is the evil Queen Ravenna. She betrays her good sister Freya (Emily Blunt) with an unforgivable act, freezing Freya’s heart to love and unleashing in her an icy power she never knew she possessed. Retreating to a kingdom far to the north, Freya raises an army of Huntsmen as her protectors, with the only rule that no two of them should ever fall in love. As a war for domination escalates between the two queens, the hero standing between good and evil is Freya’s most elite Huntsman, Eric (Chris Hemsworth). Alongside fellow warrior Sara (Jessica Chastain) — the only woman who has ever captured his heart — Eric must help Freya vanquish her sister or Ravenna’s wickedness will rule for eternity.
Right out of the gate I can easily say that this movie looks fantastic! The Director of Photography deserves to be given a pizza party or something because everything about the way that it was shot looks absolutely amazing. As for the story, I thought it was good. It was definitely way more entertaining than the original film but it did have it’s flaws. I actually liked the fact that this time around it felt more like an action movie with fantasy mixed in rather than a fantasy movie with action mixed in. I still do think that Hemsworth is playing Thor with a different weapon and accent though but he’s still good at what he does. Chastain was excellent as well and she showed that she could definitely hold her own in a big budget popcorn movie. The big disappointment however came when Charlize Theron hit the screen and even though she was only around for a slight bit (or at least that’s what it felt like) it just felt like they tried to make her character attempt to take over the plot of the film. I would’ve much rather seen a legitimate showdown between Freya, Eric and Sara in the third act. Either way the movie was super entertaining, looked gorgeous and in my opinion was better than its predecessor so that certainly makes this worth watching. 7/10
4k Presentation:
This was honestly my first 4K experience and I couldn’t have asked for a better film to watch in this new format. The clarity of the picture was great and every color that was shown throughout the film popped beautifully. The best example of this was during the finale battle scene. There was a wall of ice present and you could literally see every single indentation in the ice including cracks at all. I was immensely impressed by the 4K format and if this was any indication of what it can do then I’m looking forward to experiencing more films the same way.
Special Features:
*These were present on the Blu-ray disc of the film.
Deleted Scenes – A handful of scenes that are present. Some of them are actually pretty good but the rest fail to anything extra to the narrative.
Gag Reel – Hilarious collection of goof offs, missed cues and fun on set.
Winter’s Vistas: The Making of The Huntsman: Winter’s War – A five part Behind The Scenes feature that gives a really great in depth look at the production of the film and a look at its characters.
Director’s Commentary With Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
