Mermaids! Monstrous Murder! Musical Numbers! It's All Here In The Lure!

Remember that brief period in the early 2010's when we had gritty reimaginings of fairy tales? It didn't last long, mostly because more classical retellings of those fairy tales proved to be far more financially lucrative, but for a moment, we got just enough of these titles to qualify as a mini-trend in American cinema. Jack The Giant Slayer, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Snow White & The Huntsman all emerged as attempts to rework children's fairy tales into dark PG-13 or R-rated cinema. In the end though, most of these attempts to be "adult" just ended up feeling derivative of other movies or tv shows and resulted in lackluster motion pictures (I do remember Giant Slayer being decent, to be fair).

Saw Is Back And Its Eighth Movie Is Stealing Its Title From The Second Tron Movie. That Bastard.

In this day and age of franchises, where even Snow White & The Huntsman can get a high-profile theatrical sequel, it's interesting how long-standing horror movie franchises seem to be the one place Hollywood decides to show some frugality. Interestingly, 2009 and 2010 are the two years where Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees were last seen slicing up teenagers. Oh sure, sequels are in development, but Michel Myers and Jason Vorhees have been stuck in development hell for ages. Pinhead? MIA at the box office for years now. Chucky? Aside from one direct-to-video sequel back in 2013, he's also been missing for the past decade. At least Leatherface will be back to terrify audiences in his own prequel depicting a younger Leatherface in High School.

The Huntsman: Winter's War Review

Despite what the television advertisements and trailers have told you (to the point that the majority of the marketing materials have a voice-over declaring that this is "The story before Snow White"), The Huntsman: Winter's War is not entirely a prequel to the profitable but mostly forgotten 2012 feature Snow White & The Huntsman. Now, it's first act is indeed set prior to that original movie, but that's mostly an extended prologue to the film proper. The part of the story that is indeed "the story before Snow White" mostly concerns itself with establishing that The Evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) from the first movie had a sister, Freya (Emily Blunt), who was a normal individual until her infant child was murdered by the offspring's father.

Chill Out (I'm So Sorry For That Pun) With The First Trailer For The Huntsman: Winter's War

I didn't really care all that much for Snow White And The Huntsman, a forgettable feature that I freely admit wasn't a torturous experience, but was certainly a cookie-cutter experience that wasted the talents of its two lead actors (Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth), with only Charlize Theron getting to go hog-wild as a scenery chewing bad guy. Normally, a sequel wouldn't be anywhere near my radar, but this follow-up, entitled The Huntsman: Winter's War, has made a number of smart decisions to get my interest.

Snow White & The Huntsman Prequel Adds Emily Blunt & Jessica Chastain, Toys With My Emotions

I've always found the 2016 feature The Huntsman, a prequel to 2012's Snow White & The Huntsman, to be a peculiar project. I didn't hate the aforementioned fantasy film from three years back, and it did make almost $400 million worldwide, but I didn't feel like it had that much of a fanbase to warrant a continuation. Apparently, it has, with the project being developed for several years now and finally being released next year, specifically on April 22, 2016.