Willow - It's A Total Disaster

truly the good lord giveth and he seeketh away no sooner is Andor come out and raise the tantalizing possibility that lucasfilmer actually still capable of making decent stuff when the right creatives are involved then they go ahead and release Willow and it's pretty much business as usual again honestly it's tough to think of a show that manages to condense so many of the tired predictable tropes of modern writing into one project from the gratingly awful cringe inducing dialogue to the smug insufferable characters the laundry list of diversity and inclusion tick boxes taking the place of actual personalities the Finley field contempt for the source material and the brain-destroying attempts at snarky comedy Willow was basically the congealed filth encrusted manifestation of every single thing wrong with modern entertainments and it's not like people were even crying out for a TV sequel to A Goofy 1980s fantasy movie about dwarves and talking goats that was at best a marginal box office success despite being critically pans I mean I guess this is what happens when you've annihilated basically every other Legacy property you're inherited from the far more talented Minds that built your studio in the first place eventually you're gonna have to scrape the bottom of the barrel and so here we find ourselves staring into the diarrhea splattered toilet bowl of modern entertainment for the last time in 2022 once again questioning the terrible Life Choices that led us here anyway let's get this [ __ ] over with so I can go and suffer through Avatar 2 insteads foreign if you can even call it that picks up about 20 years after the events of the movie following the defeat of bav morta yeah that's the name all right her daughter Sasha has become Queen and married mad Martin who's suspiciously absent from the show because I guess having a strong heroic male character is to Lucas film what given real honest opinions of Disney movies is to Kevin Smith keep on crying Kev maybe one day you'll get that directing gig that you traded in your balls for anyway they had two kids before mad mardigan vanished one is a skinny effeminate woman either but he vanishes in the first episode so we won't worry about him for now the more important character here is obviously his sister kids what would you like to hear what the hell was that no not that cute although considering how little sense this show makes I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a talking car from the 1980s suddenly burst onto the set and started fighting people kit is whatever passes for a main character in Willow I know right imagine lucasfilm sequel to a legacy IP that crowbars another generically strong female character into the main role and so from this point onward we're gonna color exactly what she is strong female character so strong female character fancies herself as an adventurer and a warrior and she spends most of her days sparring and swapping long admiring glances a ginger plank of woods and don't worry we're gonna talk more about her later believe that anyway in case you missed the not so subtle hints that the show hammers you over the head within literally the first five minutes strong female character and ginger plank of wood are super gay for each other because this show has to reflect the world we live in today anyway whatever the point is that strong female character is angry because Ginger plank of wood is planning to leave and start training to become a knight yes sure yeah okay and so this drives a rift between the two characters complicating things even further is the fact that strong female character is due to be married to the son of an important nobleman to help cement the future of their Kingdom place your bets Now ladies and gentlemen do you think this guy will turn out to be strong capable assertive and masculine or a weak cowardly timid looking beta male that uses safety scissors to open his bags of crisps you know it's weird but I feel like I can almost smell the writer's room for the show so strong female characters busy humiliating him and generally acting like a total [ __ ] on their wedding night but oh no then the castle comes under attack by some monster things called the gaels and her Idiot brother gets kidnapped in the fighting oh no what a terrible loss I really liked him but clearly something must be done do you think the queen will send the full might of her military to crush the threat and get her son back or will she send her only remaining child along with a bunch of random [ __ ] that are completely ill-equipped for a mission like this I'll give you one fungus so strong female character Ginger plank of wood and a group of talentless diversity hires head out to defeat the bad guys rescue the helpless Prince and save the day yeah see what you did there lucasfilm how very Progressive of you oh yeah and they're also accompanied by a young serving girl who seems suspiciously outspoken and confident for someone of such low standing I wonder if she might turn out to be far more important than she seems you are a Laura Dannon lost God of chimeria huge Empress High Priestess Central sources of the nine Realms and it was last best hope against the evil coming to destroy us all thank you Warwick Davis so the serving girl is actually a Laura Zen the baby from the first movie that's quite literally the girl who's the key to everything I mean I'm pretty sure she had red here in that film but whatever I guess having two redheads in one production might create some kind of Ginger Singularity that could destroy the entire universe so yeah once again she becomes their only hope of destroying the bad guys and saving the worlds how why I don't know she's magic or something and that's as much as we're supposed to think about it oh yeah and Willow finally shows up after about an hour of screen time in a show which is literally called Willow aha I mean where the hell do I even begin with this utter disaster of a show when basically every single aspect of it makes me want to gouge my eyes out like I just had a two-week self-catering holiday on the Event Horizon I mean I guess the thing that immediately left out at me about Willow was the dialogue in that it makes Rings the power seem like [ __ ] Dostoyevsky pretty much every single character talks and acts like they just walked off the street in downtown L.A the script is filled with dialogue jokes and expressions that came straight out of 2022 and it's more jarring than taking a Ferrari up to 100 miles an hour and throwing it into reverse attempts to work in the kind of snarky humor you normally see in the MCU are almost physically painful to watch God I hate Marvel I hate what it's done to cinema no I know the original movie wasn't exactly Lord of the Rings in terms of its emotional tone but it at least knew when to ease off the humor and work in some actual serious moments to make us feel like something was at stake but here it even gets in the way of actual exposition that would be genuinely useful for World building and it feels more like the show is trying to act like some cool self-aware comedian ironically mocking his own Persona I mean when a show literally takes the piss out of itself it leaves me wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do the script's also filled with absolutely nonsensical decisions and contrived events vitally important characters are allowed to wander alone in unguardian and hostile territory because everyone just kind of forgot about them and when they get kidnapped the rest of the group take off in Pursuit with a heavy overburdened wagon that needs constant repair and gets bogged down in rough terrain because nothing says urgent high-stakes Pursuit like a nice leisurely John on a [ __ ] horse and car the group splits up for no particular reason at one point further dividing their limited resources only to conveniently reunite at exactly the correct moments so that the rest of the plot can happen the acting on the other hand is so bad that it makes Tommy was so look like Paul Newman and only two actors in Willow who have an ounce of talent and actually seem to be taking their job seriously get killed off within the first few episodes and honestly if finchy from the [ __ ] office turns out to be the best thing in your show then you know you've got problems and truly one of the biggest offenders here has got to be Ginger plank of words seriously I've got no idea why Disney has got such a hard-on for this actress but they've cast her in everything from Star Wars to Marvel to Willow and she's been absolutely terrible in all of them she stumbles through every scene with the exact same look of blank wide-eyed confusion no matter what the context or situation and she has all the Charisma and Screen presence of a cardboard cutout of Brie Larson seriously Disney stop trying to make this girl happen she's not going to happen willow also led me to another unfortunate conclusion Warwick Davis can't [ __ ] act anymore I mean he seems like a really cool guy in real life and he's obviously had a great career but one thing he's not now is a good actor he delivers most of his lines like he literally just walked onto set and started reading them off a teleprompter for the first time there's no inflection no emotion no sense that he's trying to convey anything about the character [Applause] I mean you'd think he would have been excited to reprise one of his biggest ever roles but hey maybe he'd actually read the script and realized what kind of [ __ ] he'd signed up for not that it matters all that much since he's basically lost in a sea of other characters with nothing to do except complain about how he's getting old and can't do magic anymore and I get the distinct impression that the show doesn't really want him there anyway he's like that weird creepy uncle that gets invited over once a year at Christmas out of sheer obligation and your parents have to make awkward small talk with him for an hour or two before send them on his way yes don't worry Frank I'm sure the court case will go fantastically of course you were wrongly accused we don't believe a single word of it just like Musto their lucasfilm Productions Legacy characters like Willow only really exist to pave the way for a new generation of smarter better and more awesome or young people that were written especially for modern audiences you know how I often joke about how writers these days have lost the ability to actually write likable relatable and complex female characters confusing strength and resilience with obnoxious arrogance and grandiose self-absorption well strong female character is basically all of those gripes personified into one person I don't know what they were thinking when they wrote this arrogant self-absorbed [ __ ] but I genuinely can't think of anyone I've disliked as quickly or as intensely as Princess Kate she is simply awful whenever she's on screen existing only to put down humiliate and steal attention away from everyone else around her and it's all compounded by a smug conceited performance from an actress that seems to think she's in a completely different show but Drinker you multifaceted maestro much your masculinity I hear you say princess kit is meant to be a flawed character that has to learn and mature throughout the story she's not meant to be perfect right off the bat because Perfect characters are boring that's absolutely true hypothetical straw man but even the most flawed a protagonist needs to have at least some redeeming features to get you invested in them Han Solo Tony Stark and [ __ ] even Matt mardigan from the original Willow were all flawed characters that had a lot of room for personal growth but they each had enough innate charm likability and Charisma that you actually wanted them to become better the only thing I wanted princess kid to do was stick her head in a [ __ ] food blender the relationship between her and ginger a plank of wood is supposed to form the backbone of the show's narrative but honestly I couldn't care less if they ended up together because why should I they're a pair of insufferable idiots played by terrible actresses and their romance has all the depth of that puddle of Steel piss on my kitchen floor all of these horrific elements combined together to form what has to be one of the most painful miserable vomit-inducing viewing experiences I've had all year and believe me that's up against some pretty stiff competition as hard as this might be to believe Willow might actually be worse than rings of power and even She-Hulk laughs are you serious in short Willow is quite simply an insult it's an insult to the source material and insult to the fans an insult to human intelligence and an insult to the very concept of filmmaking I managed to slog through four episodes before deciding [ __ ] it this just isn't worth it anymore and if it's not worth my time then I'm pretty sure it's not worth yours either anyway that's all I've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 2,045,507

Keywords: Lucasfilms, lucasfilm, kathleen kennedy, feminism, feminist, critical drinker, review, best, funny

Id: rLRHR2Nou8A

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022