Here it is: the least anticipated prequel-slash-sequel of the year. In 2012, Snow White and the Huntsman was an unimaginative reimagining of the Snow White legend that played up an implied Twilight-y contest between two suitors, and in fact owed its commercial existence to the presence of Kristen Stewart as Snow White. But Snow White and Stewart have been chillingly banished from this new film. A plumply sonorous voiceover introduces us to the fantastically dull backstory: the battle between Evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and her relatively nice sister, Freya (Emily Blunt), who has turned into a bitter, ice-hearted villainess with ice-related superpowers pinched from Frozen – and indeed Frozone from The Incredibles. She raises an army that she oddly calls “Huntsmen” – they don’t do any hunting per se – and two of these huntspersons fall in love. They are Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain), the one and only flame-haired queen of his heart, a bit like the girl in Brave. The two leads themselves have graduated from the Russell Crowe school of pseudo-British elocution. Hemsworth and Chastain, meanwhile, speak notional English with a bizarre Brigadoon accent, for which they must have prepared by spending a month in Motherwell, a fortnight in Belfast and then a year with a Scots-Gaelic-speaking community in Welwyn Garden City.
