Willow (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #20 extract: Willow (1988)



Quite starkly a re-imagining of Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, Willow, whilst not completely original, is a wondrous movie and one of the very few epic fantasy movies that actually work. With its ties to Lord Of The Rings comes the classical tale of an archetypal good, both feminine and masculine, doing battle with evil whilst virtue from the most unlikely of places guides the way for the innocent. This is captured brilliantly by the intelligent script and brought to life with near-perfection through the acting, direction, cinematography and general art design. Kilmer and Davis are in particularly good as a trade-off Aragorn and Frodo. 
The only faults in this movie are minute and technical; there are a few special effects shots and bits of ADR that don't hold up. Beyond this, Willow, in my books, whilst not as iconic, sits up there with Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings as an almost flawless epic of rare proportions.

Popular Posts