Willow
I honestly don’t remember how I truly felt about Ron Howard’s “Willow” when it came out in 1988, and thereafter. I’m fairly certain that I enjoyed it, but didn’t have an overwhelming sense of affection for it like I have other films from my childhood. That made revisiting it on the eve of Howard’s reunion with LucasFilm, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” important for me. How would the film feel to 40-year-old me?
Before I get into discussing the film on a larger level, I have to point out the person who is this film’s MVP, in my opinion- composer James Horner. That feels disrespectful to the film’s star, Warwick Davis, who plays the titular character, but Horner’s score to this film sells what is an otherwise silly fantasy adventure in ways that few film composers have been capable of. It also reminds me of what a wonderful talent film music lost when he died in a plane crash in 2015. I have no doubt he would have been on Howard’s short list for “Solo,” and I would love to have heard what the “Titanic” Oscar-winner would have written for the “Star Wars” universe. Yes, you can hear motifs and orchestral coloration familiar to the composer’s work on films such as “The Wrath of Khan” and “Aliens,” but his triumphant fanfare for this film makes the adventure in this film mean something in a way that the film was not quite able to sell on its own. It’s no wonder that Howard would continue to go back to him again and again as a composer, and their collaboration led to special moments, although few on the level of “Willow.”
The story for “Willow” came from George Lucas, who first wrote it in 1972 as he was making “American Graffiti” and also developing the bones of what would become “Star Wars.” After he played Wicket the Ewok in “Return of the Jedi,” Lucas developed the film as a starring vehicle for Davis, with him playing the title character, a farmer and family man who must go on a mission to protect a baby who, it is prophecized, will destroy the current queen and usher in a new, more benevolent rein. Along the way of his journey, he comes across a mercenary named Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) locked in a cage; reluctantly, Madmartigan aides Willow in his quest to keep the baby, Elora, safe from Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) and her army looking out for them.
The screenplay from Lucas’s story by Bob Dolman (a comedy writer who also wrote “Far and Away” for Howard later) is basically Tolkien-lite, and while it’s perfectly fine to have a fantasy film the skews more towards a family crowd, Howard is never really able to find the right balance of light and dark in this film, and Dolman’s screenplay does not help him. Of course, at the time, fantasy will still an uncertain commodity in films, and it really wasn’t until “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” over a decade later (when technology had caught up to what could happen in such escapism) until a movie like “Willow” would have thrived. Even though the franchise got better, and more mature, as it went on, if Howard and Dolman had been able to balance family entertainment with dark fantasy like Chris Columbus did in the first “Harry Potter,” this film would be worthy of consideration in the same discussion with that series. But being PG really hampers this film, especially when it starts to get darker in the second half. Visually, I actually love this film in terms of the production design and Adrien Biddle’s cinematography, and while the ILM visual effects look really dated and cheesy, I like what they are going for. The visuals, though, are telling a darker story than the script wants to, and that disparity is the big problem “Willow” has, and it’s a shame when you have actors like Davis (who is as charismatic as he’s ever been), Kilmer (who is fun), Joanne Whalley (as the Queen’s daughter, who becomes a romantic interest for Madmartigan), and Patricia Hayes as Fin Raziel, a sorceress who has been stuck in the body of an animal for too long, doing their best to make this entertaining and something we can follow to a predictable conclusion. “Willow” has the pieces in place, and a wonderful symphony by James Horner driving it along, but as talented as Howard and his collaborators are, they just couldn’t quite put everything together to take it to the next level this film so very wants to get to.
