by GollumsLunch ยป Thu Jul 1 2010 08:10:57
IMDb member since March 2006
I frequently see this movie referenced as a terrible 80's fantasy movie. I've often seen in reviews where people write things like "Not since Willow has there been a fantasy film this bad..."
I just read a scathing review for The Last Airbender that included the gem: "The Last Airbender feels like throwback to the pre-Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter era when fantasy was a joke (the bastard son of science fiction) and when movies like Willow dotted the landscape and set unwatchably low expectations for the genre."
I don't get it. At one time I thought it might be one of those movies you love as a kid, but when you watch it as an adult it really doesn't hold up. I've found that to be the case for a lot of movies. This wasn't one of them for me. I bought it on DVD a couple of years ago, and didn't find it to be a masterpiece, but still really enjoyed it.
An intern I was working with who shot rap videos in the 80s here in San Francisco and Oakland, made the one comment about Willow that "it was all money, dude..."
I always thought that was unfair. Admittedly it wasn't the great adventure that a lot of mature film goers were hoping for and expecting, but it was still a decent movie.
Like I stated in another post, the movie was aimed at a Disney audience, and that was intentional. I think the film makers had hoped to draw in the mainstream fantasy fan base into a film that really didn't cater to your typical hack-n-slash fantasy game type who expected a little more bloodshed and themes of honor and romance as opposed to what felt like a kind of bubble-gum romance embedded into film that was aimed at children and a family audience.
I look at it now through that perspective, and I think it's decent. If I had shot it ... I would have injected a little more realism into the combat sequences, I would have toned down the baby-angle by a notch ... maybe replaced Val Kilmer with a traditional handsome leading man type ... probably showed him suffer a bit more ... maybe give the baby a magical power of some kind ... totally replace that dragon (no offense meant, but it was stupid looking, and that sequence was a little ham fisted)... and maybe let Willow keep his friends. But, that's all hindsight. It would have been a bigger, and perhaps slightly longer, film, but I think it would have been more successful than this film.
I hear Lucas doesn't like beautiful actors, and I tend to agree that when you're shooting a film that you want the common man to connect with, you need to cast regular looking folks. Willow however, I think, needed some traditional good looking types, but not models striving to be actors, but actual talented actors who were very attractive. Imagine Michelle Pfeiffer as Sorsha, or David Hasselhoff as Mad Mardigan. Or, perhaps not those specific actors, but actors who had more comliness. I think that would have sold this movie a bit more.
I can't imagine anyone really disliking this film. It wasn't as stirring as Star Wars for the aforementioned reasons, but it's not a real bad film. It could have used a little more exposition to explain some things, but it hangs together as is.
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