Willow Blu-ray Review

3rd Apr 2013

From director Ron Howard, and executive producer George Lucas, comes the Hi-Def Blu-ray debut of late 80s fairy tale classic, Willow.
The transfer to Blu has been personally overseen by Lucas himself, so picture and sound quality expectations are high.

Starring the original Ewok, and recent Idiot Abroad; Warwick Davis, as the titular character; Willow tells the story of a young Hobbit, tasked by a great wizard, with an heroic quest to save the world from the ascendance of an evil sorcerer….oh sorry, what am I saying?
Oops wrong story!
My bad.
OK, all joking aside, like Tolkien’s famous tale before it; Willow is a take on a rather archetypal, long in the tooth premise; that of, the fate of the world being entrusted to the most unlikely of heroes. Nothing wrong with that I guess, name me a movie that isn’t based in some way on some perennial old story or other. This particular interpretation adds a dash of humorous self awareness to the mix, and then polishes things up with a somewhat inevitable Star Wars sheen.
Adding a modest degree of star power, and much needed acting chops (Top Gun having elevated him greatly, a couple of years before), is Val Kilmer. He plays the swashbuckling heartthrob scoundrel, Han Solo, erm..I mean Madmardigan. He is joined by a rather unconvincing and miscast Joanne Whalley (soon to be, Kilmer), as bad warrior girl turned (inexplicably) good, Sorscha, as well as a number of (mostly British), comic actors and ageing thesps in the support roles.
The film enjoyed moderate box office success (although certainly under performing on most expectations), and was a bit of a mixed bag critically.
Personally, I think it has a good heart, and never forgets to be fun. The tone, and level of violence is enough to possibly keep the under 7’s behind the sofa, or off out of the room entirely, but it’s mostly bloodless, and certainly never gets Temple of Doom intense.
It must be said; Willow never quite convinced the audience of its epic aspirations either, and definitely suffers from its diminutive (and still very young), leading man, being far too inexperienced out of a teddy bear suit to confidently carry an entire movie.

Catching up with it again, was as mixed a bag as I had expected, although generally a pleasurable experience. As is mentioned several times in the extras, Willow came right at the end of the era of traditional photochemical special effects. The result is that, visually the movie has not aged well in places. Traditional matte paintings, for example just don’t hold up under the unforgiving glare of the hi-def spotlight. As for major elements like the Tippet studio, stop-motion animated two headed dragon…well, this beastie has more in common with the Harryhausen generation of the 50s, than anything that was to follow in the 90s. A twisted caveat to all this, is the film’s famous CG Morphing sequence, which was legitimately groundbreaking, and cutting edge at the time. However, this (now) long defunct and abandoned effects technique in itself, ironically, dates the movie quite terribly. I can well remember the sense of ‘Morph fatigue’ that had set in by the mid 90s, and it’s not exactly a delightful re-acquaintance seeing it again now.
Overall, I have to say, it is a little difficult to recapture all of the love one may have once had for Willow. As already touched upon; for an epic sword and sorcery tale, it feels decidedly un-epic most of the time, and a little less spectacular than you perhaps remember. Its production design is quite confused, and lacks cohesion. Scene setting and back story is practically non-existent. The world of Willow just doesn’t have the solid internal logic and mythological integrity of Tolkien, or even that of Lucas’ own, well conceived Star Wars universe. There is no sense of the story having global implications, or geographical scope. Everything seems very close together and local. Lucas’ habit of avoiding large passages of time; preferring to constrain all story events within as few days as possible, is a big factor. It is particularly problematic, when you don’t have faster than light star ships to get your characters around rapidly. If you’re in a world where the horse is the fastest mode of transport, Lucas’ approach means there cannot possibly be vast distances involved, ergo a lack of scale is built right in, damaging scope, and general ‘epic-ness’.
Well, I feel that I have ended up unintentionally wailing on poor Willow, so I must reiterate that the movie has many charms, doesn’t take itself too seriously, isn’t trying to be The Lord of the Rings at all, and is still a fun ride. Kilmer in particular, must be singled out for his contributions here, his star magnetism and comic heroics are a welcome relief from Davis’ clunky line readings, and Whalley’s strangely ineffective presence. Others will still get a kick out of the comedy Brownie characters too (although, I never much cared for them). Overall, there is a good heart beating here, and those that love the movie, will no doubt love it even more in Hi-Def.

Enough

I think I have adequately made my thoughts known thus far, this is not a retrospective after all. So let’s look at the technical aspects and bonus features of this Blu-ray release.

Visually, the transfer is very nice. Picture quality is clean and low noise, and the colour mix is deep and sumptuous. The movie has gained a depth of lustre, and sparkle that I don’t recall noticing in previous iterations (cinema, VHS or DVD). This is good, and is certainly this edition’s strongest suit, bar none. This is a very nice looking presentation, and certain FX shots aside, looks magnificent on modern large Plasma/LCD TVs (I watched on a 50″ Plasma).
The sound mix and quality is also good, and the disc features full fat 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, as well as 2.0 Dolby Digital, for those without home cinema surround systems.

Bonus features.

This is a single disc presentation, and is not exactly heaving with features. Those that there are; come basically wholesale from the previous DVD edition of the movie, although I do have to qualify that statement.

First up is The Making of Willow – This is a 23 minute documentary, made around the time of the movie’s production. It’s a typical American TV ‘E’ type fluff piece. No depth to speak of, but fun enough, if short.
For the Blu-ray, it now has a very brief, new intro from director Ron Howard, tacked on to the front.

Next is Morph to Morphing – This is a 17 minute featurette, made in 2001, and also from the previous DVD edition. Industrial Light Magic’s Denis Muren, appears In new intro and epilogue segments that book-end the older material.

Next up are 12 minutes of deleted scenes

The final significant extra, is an 11 minute featurette – Willow: An unlikely hero – Personal video diary of Warwick Davis. As described, this is a short montage of video shot by Davis on set.

On the whole, the bonus feature list is unfortunately a little lacking. The additional ‘new’ intros made for the Blu-ray; instead of positively embellishing the existing features, instead have the effect of frustrating the viewer immensely. You simply want to jettison the older bonus material, or consign it to a ‘legacy’ section, and have much much more of Both Ron Howard’s, and Denis Muren’s recollections now on the movie.
The disc is sorely lacking a commentary track or two as well.
Compare this release with the recent, extras festooned Blu-ray editions of the Star Trek feature films, and you’ll understand how short changed Willow fans are really going to be.

In conclusion, we have here a Blu-ray package that falls short of greatness by some margin. This is a shame because, the movie itself looks fabulous in high definition, and deserves more. In and of itself, it still justifies the upgrade, if you have the old DVD version. It’s just a shame that such a good transfer hasn’t been backed up with comprehensive fresh bonus content.
This will bother some more than others of course. I am unashamedly nutty about bonus features, and truly appreciate those movies that come bursting at the seams with them. To me, rightly or wrongly, I equate the quantity and (more specifically), the quality of bonus features, as a reflection of the enduring love and care, the film’s producers have for their creation. It’s important.
In this respect, Willow, as already mentioned; scores very well for the movie itself (in terms of the Blu-ray restoration). But is woefully let down by the extras, which merely tease and tantalise with tiny morsels of fresh content (the aforementioned intros by Muren and Howard), without delivering anything of real substantive volume.
My only hope is that these intros actually form part of a much more extensive raft of fresh bonus material, to be offered in a 2 disc special edition version come Christmas. Optimistic and unlikely to happen perhaps, but despite my criticisms earlier, Willow definitely deserves as much.