Questioning the Wizard from "Willow"I recently watched a movie from my childhood, the 1988 fantasy adventure film Willow. The movie is directed by Ron Howard, with a story by Bob Dolman and George Lucas as well as a Production credit by Lucas. And it’s George Lucas’ relationship with this movie that's one of the things I want to talk about a little bit today.
Legend has it that Lucas wanted to do an adaptation of Lord of the Rings, but was told no, so he just came up with his own story. And during my most recent viewing of this movie, I couldn’t help but notice that Lucas had infused quite a few tropes seen in his Star Wars movies. And no hate here, if anyone is allowed to steal from Lucas (who himself freely admitted that he borrowed heavily from Samurai films, 1970s anime and Joseph Campbell’s mythology ideas) it’s Lucas. This movie gives us the farmer who’s lived a sheltered life being thrust into the adventure (though the difference between Willow Ulfgood and Luke Skywalker is Luke didn’t even wait for the smoke to clear from the charred bodies of his aunt and uncle before he said he’d go on an adventure, while Willow was very eager to avoid leaving home), a roguish warrior who befriends the more noble younger hero, a firecracker princess who falls in love with the roguish warrior (only instead of being a goody goody, like Leia, she’s kinda sorta a bad guy, so raaaawr), and a wise magical bearded mentor figure. That’s who we’ll be talking about today. Growing up, I guess I subconsciously picked up on the Star Warsian archetypes that were present in this movie, so I always assumed that the Wizard AKA The High Aldwin, played by Billy Barty, was an actual Wizard. Yoda and Ben Kenobi might have pretended to be useless old men to get close to Luke, but they did have actual abilities and helped our young farmer hero on his quest to becoming a more fully realized hero. But not our kindly Wizard in Willow. In fact, this guy’s kinda a charlatan. Maybe I should take an inventory of everything this guy does in the movie so we can determine if I’m being fair or not. We first see him when he’s deciding if he’ll take an apprentice this year at the big village festival. Long story short, he asks a trick question and all of the applicants get it wrong. So far, the most magical thing this guy’s done is embarrass all of these poor dudes in front of their friends, family and Burglekutt. During the festival, these scary looking wolf creatures attack, looking for a baby that Willow is hiding at home. You’d think this would be a good time for someone to bust out some magic to save the village, right? Nah, let’s let Vohnkar, the local warrior, kill it. (Now to be fair, Vohnkar is pretty awesome, and if the High Aldwin did have real magic, he’d probably have to use it to STOP Vohnkar from taking action if he wanted to use his magic to save the village.) Later, when the village begins to turn against Willow for harboring a Daikini baby, the wizard does indeed put Willow on his journey to becoming a hero, much like how Obi Wan does for Luke. And I guess this means he saved Willow’s life, since the alternative was throwing him in the pit. So good on you, old Wizard dude. But any public official could have done that. Before Willow leaves on his quest, the Wizard does give him 3 magical acorns which are legit. If you throw one at something, it will turn to stone. We get to see 2 of these in use throughout the movie (Warwick Davis says there was a deleted scene where his character accidentally dropped one on a boat, sinking it), and they ultimately prove to be ineffective against the forces of evil. But still, they do work, and you have to wonder just where this old fossil even got these acorns, considering how little magic he performs in this film. I don’t know, maybe he conned it out of a real wizard. Anyway, around the same time he gives Willow the acorns, he creates a bird and tells the traveling party to follow it. But the bird just heads back home, so he just tells them to follow the river. This is a little dicey, since we saw that Willow was able to disappear an entire pig at the festival, but that was plainly stage magic. I am going to assume this is also stage magic. It’s basically the sword and sorcery equivalent to pulling a rabbit out of your hat. And that’s about the extent of his involvement in this movie. I reckon Lucas was thinking along the same lines that he was thinking when he made the first Star Wars movie. Once the wise old wizard figure puts the young hero on the heroic path, there’s not much left for him to do, so you get him out of the story. Only instead of turning him into a translucent blue advisor, this wizard just stays home and smiles when Willow returns. I guess you could say that Lucas was taking a page out of Sir Thomas Mallory’s book, as Merlin is taken out of the equation relatively early in Le Morte d'Arthur, but while Lucas has been pretty open about which sources he was influenced by over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him flat out say that Arthuriana was something that influenced him, so perhaps this was just coincidence. So where does this leave us with the Wizard in this movie not being much of a Wizard? Speaking of Merlin, there have been various versions of that character that didn’t perform much magic either. Joseph Fiennes’ version from the Camelot TV series did have magical abilities, but tried to avoid using them, as any use of magic always comes at a price. And T.H. White’s Merlin was played for comedy, and if I’m being honest, reminds me quite a bit of the wizard in Willow. And since I am being honest, now that I’ve come to the realization that this Wizard is a little bit useless, I kinda like that deviation from how everything else in this movie is quite a bit more like Star Wars. Coming to this conclusion hasn’t ruined the movie for me, which is extremely important, since this is a childhood favorite of mine, and I’d be in a right sore mood if a revelation about a character made me enjoy the movie less. So now that I’ve said my thoughts, what do you guys think? About the Wizard, specifically, but if you haven’t seen this movie or you just don’t care about the Wizard, then have you ever had a revelation that changed the way you looked at a character in a movie you like to watch? Tell me about it in the comments! That’s what the comments are for, after all! In the meantime, keep it Trashy, muties! |
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