First I should explain that I'm new to this franchise as a whole, I watched both the original 88 movie and the first three episodes of the new Disney+ show today.
The original Willow is a satisfying charming 80s Fantasy film. What's neat about it is while a lot of the influence Tolkien has had on the Fantasy Genre has been through LOTR and later the Silmarilion, Willow feels like George Lucas's take on The Hobbit with a little Narnia inspiration as well.
The new show however has proven to endear me personally even more. After the late summer and early fall of 2022 being largely HOTD and ROP discourse, this show came along and frankly blew both out of the water. It also easily beats all the SW shows Disney gave us this year.
HOTD is fine, it's what I'd expect from a GOT prequel, but GOT type shows are of limited appeal to me. ROP I enjoyed plenty of, but I also hate how much it basically felt like a post GOT fantasy show wearing LOTR cosplay.
I made two posts in the last two years about why Fantasy Anime has generally been more appealing to me then any Western Fantasy shows of the last decade, one on how they look and one on the kinds of stories they tell. Willow is finally a Fantasy Show taking the right approach to both those issues.
And comparison to Fantasy Anime isn't the only reason to recommend the show to Anime fans, Kit has a very Bifauxnen appeal, and her being canonically Gay seems to be where they're going, so it's something Yuri fans may like as well.
I'll be following the show every Wednesday till it's done.
No comments:
Post a Comment