‘Willow’ Cancelled On Disney Plus Because It Abandoned What Made The Original Film Great

Willow has been cancelled, which I find at once totally unsurprising and deeply depressing. Don’t get me wrong, the Disney Plus sequel series to the classic 1988 Ron Howard fantasy film was absolutely terrible. It stunk like troll dung. It remains one of the worst shows I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching.

But I wanted so badly for it to be good. More than The Rings Of Power or any of the Star Wars shows, I wanted a sequel to Willow that the Warwick Davis / Val Kilmer film deserved. When I first heard about the Disney Plus live-action series I was thrilled. I had no idea what crushing disappointment lay in wait, but I wish I’d prepared myself better. Steeled myself for what was to come.

I guess I wanted to believe. Warick Davis was onboard and optimistic. Ron Howard was involved, though not as showrunner or director. Even Willow’s original screenplay scribe, Bob Dolman, was onboard.

Then, when I learned that Jonathan Kasdan was heading up the project, I thought for sure we’d get something true to the original. After all, Kasdan is the son of Lawrence Kasdan, one of the main writers of the original Star Wars trilogy. The father/son duo wrote Solo: A Star Wars Story together, which was better than it had any right to be.

And Kasdan is about my age, meaning that—like me—he grew up with Willow and would surely understand what made it so great. What could go wrong?

Everything, it turns out. Or very nearly everything.

Willow got off to a terrible start right out the gates. The show’s tone felt directed at a teenage demographic that doesn’t exist—but fits squarely outside the demographic most interested in this kind of fantasy: Kids and their parents. There’s a way to craft a story that appeals to younger kids and their parents and the blueprint is the Willow film. If you want to ignore both those crucial demographics and target teens with a CW-style romance, you have Willow the TV show. The problem? I’m not sure even most teenagers like shows that so badly misunderstand how teenagers think these days. It’s just too cheesy.

Here’s a list of everything Willow got wrong:

• The tone. A bizarre mix of very modern sounding dialogue with a cast that was primarily late teen / early 20s’ and—for all its diversity—extremely uniform. Did we need five characters in this age demographic when the original film was about a young father and a roguish swordfighter trying to protect a baby with the help of a pair of brownies?
• The music. James Horner’s terrific, unique fantasy score for the Willow movie remains one of the best film soundtracks of all time, but Kasdan and Lucasfilm replaced this with a soundtrack almost devoid of character—and then added in a bunch of modern rock songs—just to drive home the point that they had no idea who the target audience was for this show. Truly a mind-bogglingly awful creative decision.
• The production. While there were some cool magic effects later on in the show, and the special effects in general were fine, the costumes were so bad. In one scene, Elora Danan encounters two woods-women chopping wood in a magical forest. Despite taking place in a decidedly fantasy realm, they were wearing clothes better suited to the Australian outback. The show should have leaned into the blend of European fantasy and subtle Asian flavoring that made the movie distinct.

Between a boring cast of characters that took the focus away from Willow himself and didn’t focus on Elora nearly enough, Willow was doomed to fail.

There were some highlights, of course. Had the show leaned into its strengths it might have been decent. I liked the casting for Elora a lot. Ellie Bamber is the perfect aged-up Elora, and did a great job with what she had to work with. She’s also one of those rare beauties that even in star-studded Hollywood stands out. Amar Chadha-Patel was fantastic as Boorman, as well, but the show decided to make his character a running gag rather than give him the depth he deserved.

Even though I mostly despised this show, I find myself in mourning, wondering if maybe the creators of the show could have taken criticism to heart and crafted a better second season. By which I mean, could have not taken my criticisms personally and instead gleaned from them some honest advice on how to improve a lackluster story—and steer it away from the CW teen romance crap that defined the first season. They had a three season arc that we now will never get, largely because they tossed out what made Willow great in favor of . . . what they thought modern audiences would want to see.

Mostly, I’m sad that we never got the Willow that we deserved. That really bums me out. It was possible, especially with Davis on board.

If Disney would like to take a second crack at it, I’m available. I have a pretty good sense of what made Willow special and how to catch that lightning in a bottle one more time. Adventure! Heroism! Friendship! The little guy overcoming overwhelming odds. A sense of humor that’s not afraid to sound a bit more ‘modern’ than The Lord Of The Rings but one that doesn’t pepper dialogue with like, the word, like ya know, like all the time.

Oh well. Maybe it’s best we leave these old stories alone and write new ones instead. Just a thought.