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Willow – 1988 Howard
- It’s achievement is neither Star Wars that proceeded it a little more than a decade before or Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings that followed a little more than a decade after, far from it- but Willow is just good enough to be worthy of the archives
- James Horner’s score is certainly one of the main reasons to praise Willow– Horner too often gets ignored as one of the all-time greats and this is one of his finest
- George Lucas may be the real author here (he gets producer and story credit), not Ron Howard, the Lucas LTD logo lets you know and the blending of mythology, Tolkien (Nelwyn’s certainly seem like Hobbits and the Shire and Warrick Davis’s titular character as Frodo), religion (the baby in the basket and prophecy)
- Wipe edits like Star Wars
- Val Kilmer is certainly Han Solo with his “I’m the greatest swordsman who ever lived”
- Beautiful exteriors shot on location in New Zealand- mountains (where Jackson would shoot his Tolkien adaptation of course)
- The Brownies are just awful- the film works better when you take them out completely
- The first half, the world building and the time spent at the village
- Some just awful choices, not just the brownies as characters, but turning Kilmer into a snowball when he falls running down a mountain in the snow – like a gag from a Naked Gun movie. Baffling
- Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1988
Drake2020-04-25T20:35:12+00:00
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I agree with you ranking of willow. Not a great movie.
When did you start watching and evaluating movies? How many years have you done this for? How many movies are in your archives?
@Azman– I started getting really interested in movies beyond “movies are entertaining” in like 1999 or 2000. I started keeping track of them (first paper, then Excel) in 2002 or 2002 I think.
The last time I counted the movies in the archives it was January 2014 and I had 2841 films in the archives. My guess is there are 3500 or or so now. maybe more.
I didn’t know where to put this but David Lowery selects five movies (including Willow) that helped influence The Green Knight (which looks spectacular) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwzPc7el6VA&t=27s