“Willow” draws upon the original while weaving in flourishes that recall the “Lord of the Rings” movies. Val Kilmer, amid his struggle with cancer, remains out of the picture, but Joanne Whalley returns as the now-queen and mother of two headstrong grown children. The quest includes a colorful band with plenty of youthful relationship issues, including Princess Kit (Ruby Cruz) and Boorman (Amar Chadha-Patel), an irreverent brawler in the Madmartigan mode. The story does exhibit plenty of playful irreverence and humor mixed in among the action sequences and elaborate fantasy production design, but at times it feels as if it’s spinning its wheels.. “Willow,” starring Warwick Davis, premieres November 30 on Disney+. The series is produced by Lucasfilm’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story” director Jonathan Kasdan (who also worked on “S Solo”) serves as showrunner, collaborating with four directors who each oversaw back-to-back episodes. The series begins by recounting the events of the movie, which saw Davis’ simple farmer Willow turn sorcerer and join in a fierce battle to protect a baby who carried the kingdom’s destiny on her tiny shoulders, overcoming ancient evil with the help of the swordsmanMadmartigan and (eventually) princess Sorsha. The movie provided an early directing showcase for Ron Howard, and as an off-screen bonus got married after the film. While that combination doesn’t add up into making ” willow” significantly worthier of the “beloved” label than its late-’80s predecessor, consumed on its own unpretentious terms, it’s easy enough to like. It looks like that money ended up on the screen, and to its credit, it looks like it was no small undertaking, with lots of sweeping green countryside and abundant, occasionally quite-violent action. It’s a more contemporary narrative that brings back Warwick Davis while focusing on the next generation of the film’s lead characters, including a young princess and a young knight with a secret love for the knight charged with training her. And while Kilmer’s absence leaves a sizable hole, Kasdan and company do a reasonably good job of filling it, including the late arrival of another knight (Christian Slater) with whom Madmartigans shared some history. As for the aforementioned baby, Elora Danan, she has grown up in anonymity, “Sleeping Beauty”-like, to protect her, although her identity (a not- to-be-revealed spoiler) soon becomes known. The movie was released in 1988, and it was a box-office success. It was a George Lucas-plotted fantasy that provided anEarly directing showcase. It was also a pretty genericGeorge Lucas-PLotted fantasy. It premiered on Disney+ in the U.S. in the summer of ’88 and in the UK in the fall of ’89.
The new ‘Star Wars’ series ‘Willow’ is a more contemporary take on the classic fantasy.
