The Huntsman: Winter’s War

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Ravenna (Charlize Theron) is the sister we know: kinda evil, not above killing kings in order to usurp their kingdoms. Ravenna is the one who the-huntsmantormented Snow White in the last movie, the wicked step mother, if you will. Her younger and less-known sister Freya (Emily Blunt) has powers that resemble Elsa’s, from Frozen, and they’re awakened when she undergoes a personal tragedy. She flees in grief, and tortured by sad and angry thoughts, she establishes her own land, her own army, all ruled with the vengeance in her heart. The best of her army turn out to be Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) and they attract Freya’s unwelcome attention. They also attract each other and there’s a little bow-chicka-bow-wow. But Freya, scorned by love, can’t bear to seem them together, and slays Sara.

Meanwhile, back at home with Ravenna are the events of the previous movie. Ravenna recruits Eric, aka, The Hunstman, to capture Snow White after her escape, and promises to bring his wife back to life as a reward. a-sneak-peek-at-the-gorgeous-costumes-in-the-huntsman-winters-war-1740031-1461183847_640x0cHowever, he quickly switches allegiance and together they defeat and kill the Evil Queen, and Snow White is crowned in her place.

In this movie, an unseen Snow White (Kristen Stewart does not reprise her role) asks The Hunstman to do one final thing: to get rid of Ravenna’s magic mirror, still a source of evil.

You’ve probably already heard that this movie is not super good, and I’m not able to tell you any different. I’m also pretty grumbly about the fact that a movie with 3 strong female leads is still named after the man.

I’m going to focus on the thing that this movie does right, and that’s noticeably its costuming. It should be a surprise to none of you that Colleen Atwood is behind the genius designs.

a-sneak-peek-at-the-gorgeous-costumes-in-the-huntsman-winters-war-1740028-1461183847_640x0cOn Freya’s costumes, Atwood says: I sourced a lot of fabric in Italy for the dresses that she wears. She has a lot of Italian velvets and silk in her dress and croquets from different vendors in Italy. Some of her fabric is vintage fabric I had in my stock. We wanted Freya to have something that wasn’t a crown. I have a 3-D printer in my crafts department, and this guy is a genius at operating it. I said, “Let’s do little tiny feathers and glue themmaxresdefault together.” So we grew that mask as separate elements in a 3-D printer and applied them to a facemask.

On Ravenna’s look: We built a different kind of cloak with feathers that I had all hand-foiled and made into the cape. It was quite an a-sneak-peek-at-the-gorgeous-costumes-in-the-huntsman-winters-war-1740032-1461183847_640x0cordeal for the people who had to feather it. I had a feather room, where it was just feathers stuck into Styrofoam. It was really beautiful, you walked in and there were all these shelves with gold feathers stuck in foam before we applied them to the cape.

On working in the fantasy\period genre: The big challenge is that you’re working with modern bodies, you’re working with people that are three times the size what people were in the actual periods. When you look at all the costumes from historical figures, you realize how small they were. You have to adapt that period or that fantasy silhouette to a modern body so that it doesn’t look charlizereally goofy. You back away from it to get the proportions right, so that you feel it’s historical, even though it’s on somebody eight inches taller than the average man was in that period, and it’s a woman.

29 thoughts on “The Huntsman: Winter’s War”

  3. Carrie Rubin

    I had higher hopes for this movie given the cast, but since the reviews were so mediocre, I never saw it. Very interesting to learn about the costumes though. I’m going to spout the bit about fitting period costumes to modern-day bodies to my film-buff son. Maybe I’ll impress him. That would be a first. 😉

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    1. Jay Post author

      Last week I read that they couldn’t find period shoes for Meryl Streep to wear in Suffragette but luckily she’d saved the shoes she wore in Out of Africa 30 years before!

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      1. Carrie Rubin

        Sometimes it pays to be a hoarder.

        I just told my film son about the period piece costumes. He actually seemed interested in something I was saying for once. I owe you.

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  6. Sarah Ferguson and Choppy

    At least good costuming gives me something to watch in an otherwise bad movie. I’ve seen more than a couple of these in my lifetime! I feel like I saw something at some point where the costumes were so good that I kept getting distracted from the movie. I can’t remember what it was now, but I will think about it and see if I can remember.

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      1. Sarah Ferguson and Choppy

        I haven’t been able to think of it! It has been bugging me since I commented yesterday. I keep thinking it’s a period piece, but then all I get in my head is the Annie Lennox video for Walking on Broken Glass. And then I can’t think of anything but John Malkovich movies, which doesn’t help at all.

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      3. Sarah Ferguson and Choppy

        Well, I can tell you what movie I’m not thinking of – Con Air.

        Seriously, though. This is really bugging me. I’ll probably be on vacation in a couple weeks, and will think of it then. Ugh. Frustrating!

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  7. Birgit

    With 3 major female leads you wonder how it could ever be so screwed up but that is the writing. The costumes look amazing. I do want to see this but will wait for video.

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  8. bigandpinkytoes

    You are right on the money, beautiful costumes and the movie kind of just fell flat. And why didn’t I notice that there were three female leads and the title is about the dude? Thanks for pointing that out!

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  12. John Charet

    Great post 🙂 Have not seen this yet, but you know what director has made some unique fantasies? Terry Gilliam 🙂 He did not direct this thank goodness, but check out his filmography. Gilliam is a pretty interesting guy and correct me If I am wrong but I believe Tideland was shot in an area of Canada? Anyway, keep up the great work as always 🙂

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