The best thing about 2012’s not-very-good Snow White and the Huntsman was Charlize Theron’s evil queen Ravenna, with a backstory that suggested something promising if the story focused on her coming-of-witch. But Ravenna is already evil as Winter’s War opens, and then she isn’t in much of the rest of the film, except for one big showdown with her sorcerous ice-queen sister Freya (Emily Blunt) that calls to mind a fantasy perfume advertisement. This is mostly the tale of the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), and mostly takes place after the events of Snow White—and even ultimately negates much of what we learned in that film. Very little of this movie makes sense on even the most basic level, and the most lucid bits are the ones we don’t even see. Like how Snow White accidentally discovers that Ravenna’s magic mirror is, like, totally the One Ring to Rule Them All or something. We don’t witness this, of course, because Kristen Stewart has not returned for this movie; someone just tells us about this unpleasant event. But it was really bad, promise. You would have loved how scary it was. Seriously. By MaryAnn Johanson