Roots and Beginnings: Willow (dir. Ron Howard)

Overlooked and off-brand for years now, Willow, the 1988 fantasy not-quite-a-flop helmed by Hollywood’s genial genericist Ron Howard, is due for re-evaluation, I think. Not despite the fact that it’s not much more than a discount mash-up of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings that happens to be graced with gorgeously dated go-motion creature animation and Val Kilmer’s most roguishly charismatic performance this side of Chris Knight in Real Genius, but because of it. Since 2001, LotR, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and even the Hot Topic blockbusters of Tim Burton’s baroque period have prepped mass audiences to appreciate fantasy spectacle in a variety of settings. My feeling is that maybe they’re more receptive to appreciate fantasy spectacle regardless of setting – to appreciate it in and of itself. And brother, Willow delivers.

This climate is very different now from what it used to be. My friend Tom Spurgeon likes to point out when contemplating today’s omnipresent and homogenized “geek culture” that in the not-too-distant past anyone interested in the literature of the fantastic pretty much clung to any lifeline tossed in their general direction. You had to. I certainly did. Back when I was 10 and the closest we could get to a live-action depiction of Frodo’s quest was Ralph Bakshi’s rotoscoped cartoon thereof, watching the flesh-and-blood performers of Willow do battle with monsters in castles was mother’s milk. 

Looking back, two things stick with me from Willow – an eros-and-thanatos two-step. On the latter score, there were bits of Willow that were among the grossest, ugliest things I’d ever seen on screen up to that point in my young life. I’m thinking in particular of the scene where wand-wielding Willow Ufgood blasts a nasty, squealing troll (man, what a marvelous design on those things; you could practically see how badly they smelled). The troll collapses to the ground, curls up in a heap…and his flesh starts bubbling off. He turns into a truly revolting mound of brain-like gelatin before getting kicked off the bridge on which Willow’s battling. At that point he transforms into a two-headed dragon with big gross brain-like protrusions on each head. It’s a thrilling sequence, and one of the most intensely and originally imagined creature-action scenes in Lucasfilm history, but it also made me very uncomfortable. The trolls in Tolkien turned to stone, not to visera. It’s a welcome discordant note in fantasy’s fanfare.

The second thing I remember from Willow, and by thing I mean person, and by person I mean UNF, is Sorsha, the evil warrior princess whose face turn is one of the film’s big character beats. I didn’t realize it then, of course, but the beat hit as hard as it did because it was explicitly eroticized. Sorsha betrays her sorcerous mother Bavmorda and joins Team Good Guys because she and Val Kilmer’s incorrigible swordsman character Madmartigan are super, super hot for each other. The chemistry was real, too: Actress Joanne Whalley became Joanne Whalley-Kilmer shortly after filming, and looking at them together you could see why, even in the innocence of youth. The shot above, where she staggers out of her tent in a white nightgown, all pale skin and big dark eyes and ember-red hair against a backdrop of snow, was one that I clearly imprinted on like a goddamn T-1000 looking for John Connor. She’s the earliest movie crush I can remember, and movie crushes are worth having, particularly in this genre, because they remind you of a part of life it’s way too easy to forget. Amid all the clashing swords and bellowing beasts, locking lips are important, too.