Willow - Official Teaser Trailer

[Paul Farquhar]

This is a very meta show. Aside from the mention of "sidequest" - associated with a companion character, Bioware style, we also had a would-be knight the secret offspring of a character notorious for being a rip-off of Darth Vader.

 

[MarkB]

I would tend to agree on the use of modern music in Willow. It's like someone took the "A Knight's Tale" masterclass, but failed. Still, I'm enjoying the show overall.

Yeah, that's a great example of a movie doing the modern-soundtrack-insert right.

 

[Mad_Jack]

From the (IMO) inappropriate use of modern songs,

It's damned hard to match up good modern music to a scene when doing a period/genre piece, particularly an action scene - and, of course, most of the songs that work best for that kind of thing have already been done before. I think I've only seen it done really well a handful of times...

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I would tend to agree on the use of modern music in Willow. It's like someone took the "A Knight's Tale" masterclass, but failed. Still, I'm enjoying the show overall.

I don't like A Knight's Tale specifically because the modern music did not fit and ruined it. Willow has been better about using it.

 

[Zaukrie]

I don't like A Knight's Tale specifically because the modern music did not fit and ruined it. Willow has been better about using it.

Same. Showing how much entertainment is personal.

 

[MNblockhead]

My main take away: one you know kissing is on the table, stop talking, and start kissing.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm still enjoying the show, but I'm a little confused about what show I'm watching.

The show started out with what seemed like maybe it would be a fantasy adventure with touches of darker fantasy and fairie tales.

Now, it seems more in the ballpark of some of the whacky Hercules/Xena episodes from the 90s mixed with a bunch of different things (depending on the episode).

The most recent episode left me with a lot of questions about the surrounding world that Willow takes place in. I had always thought it was fantasy, but it now seems like maybe it's a post-apocalyptic setting.

I like a lot of things about the individual episodes. I'm just not quite sure how any of it connects together.

The flame thrower was cool, but seemed out of place.

For some reason the bone reaver dance party gave me Fraggle Rock vibes.

 

[MNblockhead]

The most recent episode left me with a lot of questions about the surrounding world that Willow takes place in. I had always thought it was fantasy, but it now seems like maybe it's a post-apocalyptic setting.

Huh? How so?

 

[Argyle King]

Huh? How so?

A big part of the show revolves around the prince being taken to a fallen city (which is implied to have been something fantastic at some point in the past). Presumably, something happened there to cause the city's current state of disarray.

Various things (including Willow's flamethrower, and the armor pieces described by Boorman) indicate varying levels of technology being available. Disparate scraps of tech gives the impression that different areas of the world may have access to relics from a more-advanced past.

I'm not sure if the "Shattered Sea" actually means water. At first I thought that was the case, but some of how things have been described could be understood to mean some sort of wasteland (possibly radiated or ruined in some way).

As more details emerge about Elora Danan and what exactly Bavmorda was trying to do -notably banishing her soul- the more it vaguely resembles the background fluff for Warhammer's God-Emperor and how evil forces were trying to purge his soul.

Overall, it comes across as starting to feel more like there are touches of sci-fi or a post-apocalyptic setting. Though, in terms of being post-apocalyptic, the world isn't ruined. Enough time has passed that there is still a functioning world and society, but things from a previous age linger on.

The denim and graphic-print band tees also stand out as not quite fitting into fantasy.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The most recent episode left me with a lot of questions about the surrounding world that Willow takes place in. I had always thought it was fantasy, but it now seems like maybe it's a post-apocalyptic setting.

Most fantasy is post-apocalyptic in the sense that it typically involves a background of older, greater, more advanced societies that have collapsed. This has to do both with making magical macguffins rare and irreplaceable and a transposition of tropes related to medieval European views of the fall of the Roman Empire as well as more general myths and legends in premodern societies of lost golden ages. Scattered, post-collapse societies are also cheaper to film, can have simpler worldbuilding, and lend themselves to being populatated by a limited, manageable cast of characters. In a sense, there is nothing in this show radically more post-apocolyptic than the movie's visit to a ruined, troll-infested Tir Asleen. Obviously if we take this view to the extreme almost everything becomes "post-apocalyptic" and the term becomes useless, but I do think it is worth keeping in mind that fantasy typically has elements of a post-apocalyptic setting and ideas of collapsed, greater past societies are pretty thoroughly baked into the genre such that authors will incorporate them without necessarily always giving the matter much thought.

That said the show does seem to be introducing an element of lost advanced high tech or magitech to the setting with both the flamethrower and the way it portrayed the cuirass powerpack Boorman recovered being used in flashback, which certainly feels like a new element in the setting and a genre shift more towards the sci-fi. Perhaps their fantasy planet will turn out to be in the Star Wars galaxy for some sort of grand Lucas conjunction.