Willow

Dir: Ron Howard

1988

****

Back in the late 80's, the big question at school and the one that caused the most lunch-break arguments was which is best, The Princess Bride or Ron Howard's Willow? It's a difficult question with no real definitive answer and simply asking it would always end in tears. It is everything you could want from a fantasy adventure film with a contemporary twist but without modern (1980s) interference. A kid wasn't transported back in time to the medieval era and nor did he have to try and find his way home, Willow is a fantasy film in its purest form and all the better for it. If you wanted romance and comedy you'd go to The Princess Bride but if you wanted action, danger and fast-paced thrills then you watched Willow. George Lucas thought of making a fantasy adventure long before he made Star Wars, but it wasn't until the last days of filming Return of the Jedi did he seriously think about it. He mentioned the title role of Willow to Warwick Davis while he was on Ewok duties but it wasn't confirmed until five years later. Lucas said at the time that he "thought it would be great to use a little person in a lead role. A lot of my movies are about a little guy against the system, and this was just a more literal interpretation of that idea". No offense was made and Warwick accepted the main part and it is fair to say it was an important moment for little people in the industry. Lucas had approached actor turned director Ron Howard fairly early on after meeting him at Industrial Light & Magic where he was finalizing 1985's Cocoon. Howard wanted to make a fantasy film and the two directors hit it off. Lucas has said he waited until 1988 to make the movie because that was when the technology he needed to produce the film's special effects was first available which I'm not sure was accurate, the truth was, the big studios saw fantasy films as a financially unsuccessful genre. Films such as Krull, Legend, Dragonslyer and Labyrinth had under-performed at the box office, by 1988 they believed the genre had had its day. Maybe 1987's The Princess Bride help swing the decision and maybe the winning team of Lucas and Howard convinced them but it was Alan Ladd of MGM who advanced his old friend and colleague the money, even though MGM were in financial crisis. Ladd took cinema and TV sales and Lucas took the VHS market and both ended up making profit, although the film wasn't quite the hit they had hoped it would be. However, Willow has since become an 80s classic and something of a cult hit. The special effects were at times amazing and sometimes a bit too simplistic, very much an 80s thing and something that I love now as a nostalgic look back but not something that proved positive in 1988. It isn't the best of Lucas or of the genre but there is plenty to enjoy and as critic Mike Clark said at the time "Willow is probably too much for young children and possibly too much for the cynics but any 6-13 year old who sees it may be bitten by the movie bug for life". I love it personally. I love the chemistry between Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis, Pat Roach in a skull mask as General Kael (named after film critic Pauline Kael), Val Kilmer and the rest of the cast being turned into pigs, Jean Marsh's Queen Bavmorda and her battle between Patricia Hayes' Fin Razie, Sispert the two-headed dragon (named after film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert), the faces baby Elora pulls, Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton as Rool and Franjean, a couple of French-sounding thumb-sized warriors and the brilliant scene where the audience is introduced to the fairy Queen, the list is endless. Almost the perfect family adventure, pretty damn close anyway.