Willow is Dead (TV Review)

 

I hate Willow because I love Willow.

When I was a boy, my parents got divorced.  One weekend with my mom, she took us all out to the movies.  As you can imagine, it was a difficult time for all of us.  But those sorrows melted away when we sat in the theater and watched Willow.  It seems too close to a pun to say that the experience was "magical."  But the movie filled me with wonder.  

My father would often take us on road trips, but he set up a TV and VCR in our van back when things like that weren't built in.  More often than not, on that road trip we watched Willow.  We loved Willow, Madmartigan, Sorsha, and all of them.  James Horner's score is as good as anything by John Williams.  The world created there filled my imagination and I always remembered the movie fondly.

I even had the great thrill of briefly meeting Warwick Davis and thanking him for his performance.

What I am trying to say, in short, is that I have always loved Willow.

But then Disney+ gave us the TV show sequel, also called Willow.

And it was one of the worst TV shows I've ever seen.

That is not hyperbole.  I am dumbfounded at how intentionally awful things in this show are.  It is incredibly clear from the content that the writers of the show did not care about the characters, lore, or the world of Willow.  

SPOILERS AHEAD

The story takes place many years after the events of the movie.  Sorsha (Joanne Whalley) is queen, but Madmardigan is gone.  He left behind twin children: his son Airk (Dempsey Bryk), who is only interested in seducing maidens like his latest catch Dove (Ellie Bamber), and his daughter Kit (Ruby Cruz), a head-strong wannabe warrior.  To secure an alliance of kingdoms, Kit is promised in marriage to Graydon (Tony Revolori), a prince she just met.  However, an evil force kidnaps Airk.  So Kit and Graydon go to rescue him.  Joining them are Kit's closest companion, the warrior Jade (Erin Kellyman), a thief released by Sorsha named Thraxus Boorman (Amar Chadha-Patel), and old guard Kase (Simon Armstrong).  Soon after leaving they find that the love-struck Dove has followed them.  Before they can get her to turn back, they are attacked by Bone Reavers and Kase is killed.  The rest of the group make it to Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis).  Willow agrees to help them find Airk, but he also reveals that the kitchen made Dove is secretly Elora Dannon.

Now, nothing about the above description spells doom.  It isn't the concept that kills it.  It's the execution.

The dialogue is nothing short of horrendous.  It feels like it was written by 7th graders.  There is no nuance, depth, or subtlety.  At one point, the group is capture by trolls.  The trolls then speak like modern bohemians.  Characters say things that make no sense.  The go on deep emotional conversations in the middle of life-threatening situations.  Do you think you could process your trauma of not being your father's favorite at a time when giant rocks AREN'T crashing from above to kill us?

The plotting is also horrible.  Like the Obi-Wan show, this feels like was originally a 2-hour movie stretched over 10.  Almost everything feels like pointless filler.  

To give you an example of how bad the plot is, let's talk about Kase.  He is an old soldier who loves Airk like a son, which is why he volunteers to go and rescue the young man.  When he is murdered by the Bone Reavers, it is actually done as a punchline.  Fair enough if that's how the show wants to play it.  However, later in the series they get caught by Bone Reavers and almost immediately become friends with them because Jade is secretly the leader's sister.  And all the while, no one brings up that these people MURDERED a good old man who was their companion.  Instead, they party and joke as if it doesn't matter.

One of the things that made Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings a masterpiece is that it took its world seriously.  They filmed Middle-Earth as if it was history.  None of that is found in Willow.  The sights and sounds are all tonal 21st century American.  They find a riddling stone face that plays game-show music.  At one point with the Bone Reavers, the people are dancing to "Crimson and Clover."  On this last example, I told my friend about it and he shouted "You lie!"  He could not believe the stupidity of it.  Everything here feels like some kind of ironic 21st century commentary, like a Saturday Night Live skit.

A lot has been made about putting modern politics and morality into this.  And yes, it is annoying, but even that was not done competently.  Kit and Jade are the main homosexual romance of the show.  Somewhere in the second half of the season, we have a seen where Kit tries to build up her courage to kiss Jade.  The problem with scene is that it has no power because the writers were so eager to show their representation that they had Kit kiss Jade in the very first episode.  This removes almost all the romantic tension, all the nuance, subtlety, and build-up.  It feels incredibly un-organic, but placed into the world of Willow simply because it could be placed there.  Kit is also one of the worst written characters in fantasy.  She is violent, vain, selfish, oblivious, and we are meant to love her for all of these qualities.  She is a being of almost pure envy, which makes her unrelatable to most people.

What is a shame is that the actors do their best with the material and could have actually created something really enjoyable with even a half-way decent script.  When the script doesn't get in the way, Elora is loveable, Boorman is funny, and Graydon is endearing.  And when the show requires Davis to be more than Luke Skywalker from The Last Jedi, he really steps up to the plate.  The penultimate episode has the crew try to cross the Shattered Sea.  That entire sequence is well-shot, well-paced, and rich with character development.  You can see all of the potential of the show in this one episode.  

Willow could have been great! 

But they chose to make something awful.

This new Willow is built on talentless snark and cynicism.  That is why it could never be anything close to the original.  Because of that this 1-Season show was cancelled a season too late.

That is because the original Willow had something the TV show lacks:

Heart.