Film Review - Willow (1988)

Willow is produced by George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard and tells of the tale of the infant Elora who is foretold to one day grow up and overthrow the evil Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) but the baby is safely hidden from her Empire and is found by the Elwyn farmer Willow (Warwick Davis) who is then sent on a quest to help the good people overthrow the evil Queen.

Hmmmmm, I got to be honest and say that this movie has not held up very well since its original release in 1988 (December 15th 1988 in Australian Cinemas to be precise) and the main reason I feel this way is that the story and the characters are not that interesting but before I delve into those points with more detail I want to talk about what I did like and that is the overall look of the film.

Visually the film looks great with real sets, locations and practical effects and makeup not once do you feel bored whilst just looking at the film in a purely visual sense and there is also a nice musical score by the late James Horner which helps to pump up some of the action scenes and Howard's direction in those battles is also nice.

But in the end as I pointed out the story and the characters are not interesting to watch nor do you feel any compelling reason to care about any of it and the blame for those failures falls on one man and one man alone: George Lucas despite having a screenwriter and a director to do his bidding this time.

And re-watching this film I felt that there is a very compelling case as to this movie being the planting of the seeds from which his Star Wars prequels grew:

- The chosen one prophecy
- The muddled storytelling
- The overreliance on battle sequences and special effects
- The bland and boring characters
- The signs of a great man losing his way

And like I said he had a screenwriter (Bob Dolman) and a director (Howard) this time around but in the end it makes no real difference to the overall quality of this movie and nor do I believe that it would have made any difference on the Prequels as Lucas would have most likely pulled rank on his hired director and screenwriter given he had all the power at the point in his career (there has to be a reason Lawrence Kasdan chose not to return for the Prequels.)

But coming back to this movie Willow himself is boring to watch and that was never the case with Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movies (heck Mark Hamill has pretty much become a role model to an entire generation of film fans at this point), Mad Martigan is Indy 2.0, the Brownies are the Droids, the Queen is the Emperor, The Wizard in Willow's Village is Master Yoda (he even sounds like him) and General Kael is a poor man's Lord Darth Vader.

And wait there's more the Elwyn's are effectively the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi (if you confuse the 2 I don't blame you as I've done the same) and the use of Magic in this movie just doesn't have the impact that A) it ought to have had and B) doesn't compare with the use of the Force in the original Star Wars movies where it did feel like a crucial element of the story in that trilogy.

And again to elaborate on that comparison those 3 films (I know this review is running a little long so I'll be as quick as they can) whilst they had the groundbreaking visual effects and the advances in terms of sound design and editing (Jedi was edited on the EditDroid which was an early version of a digital editing system and the sound design was done with the TAP system which would later become the THX system) they also had characters that we came to love like family and a myth that we wanted to learn in and of ourselves in the Force.

Willow by comparison doesn't have any of those elements and as a result whilst it looks great the absence of the human heart and imaginative myth brings it down in a big way that includes all the reasons I stated above in this review, I cannot recommend this film for either a first watch or a revisit, 1 out of 5.