the huntsman: winters war

Going in the complete opposite direction from her gritty turn as Imperator Furiosa in last year’s Academy Award-nominated ‘Mad Max: Fury Road‘, Charlize Theron is back in full glam mode as Ravenna, the wicked queen from 2012’s ‘Snow White and the Huntsman‘.  Joining her is Chris Hemsworth as Eric the titular Huntsman in ‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’.

Not joining her are ‘Snow White’ director Rupert Sanders or Kristen Stewart who played Snow White.  Replacing Sanders is Cedric Nicolas-Troyan.  On the screen, Theron and Hemsworth are huntswoman Jessica Chastain as Sara and Emily Blunt as Ravenna’s sister Freya, the Ice Queen.

Joe Roth, producer of ‘Maleficent‘ and ‘Alice In Wonderland’ is back for this installment.

It seems that Ravenna’s jealousy once more causes hardship.  This time, she causes her sister Freya’s frosty powers to become unleashed.  Once she gains control of her powers, Freya sets up an icy kingdom where she trains an army of warriors from childhood, including Eric and Sara, who break her cardinal rule; they fall in love.

Now it falls on Eric and Sara and their ragtag alliance to stop the power-hungry Freya and Ravenna, who still commands the power of the magic mirror.

Watch the new trailer below:

Long before the evil Queen Ravenna (Theron) was thought vanquished by Snow White’s blade, she watched silently as her sister, Freya (Blunt), suffered a heartbreaking betrayal and fled their kingdom. With Freya’s ability to freeze any enemy, the young ice queen has spent decades in a remote wintry palace raising a legion of deadly huntsmen — including Eric (Hemsworth) and warrior Sara (Chastain) — only to find that her prized two defied her one demand: Forever harden your hearts to love.

When Freya learns of her sister’s demise, she summons her remaining soldiers to bring the Magic Mirror home to the only sorceress left who can harness its power. But once she discovers Ravenna can be resurrected from its golden depths, the wicked sisters threaten this enchanted land with twice the darkest force it’s ever seen. Now, their amassing army shall prove undefeatable… unless the banished huntsmen who broke their queen’s cardinal rule can fight their way back to one another.

‘The Huntsman: Winter’s War’ directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, starring Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Emily Blunt, Sam Claflin, Colin Morgan and Nick Frost will ice theaters on April 22, 2016.

Are you ready for a return to this fantasy realm?