On May 19, 1988, the movie Willow came out in theaters. Since this is one of my favorite movies, I wanted to do a post on this. My purpose here is not to talk about how the movie got made, but talk about my experiences with it, and also how it affected the industry as a whole. As well, I would like to talk about things that I would like to see from the 30th Anniversary.
The first time I discovered Willow was when I was 5 or 6
years old, I was living in Brampton Ontario, which is up in Canada. Me and my
older sister were at home with a babysitter and he put that movie on, I did not
watch it all at the time, but I remember coming in at certain parts throughout
the movie and just being mesmerized at the parts I was seeing. Later on when I
would go back and recheck it out, I was just blown away by this world that was
presented, something about this world ignited my imagination to new
territories. I discovered this movie before I discovered Star Wars. This movie
throughout the early part of my childhood was not something I would watch every
single night or anything like that, but it stood out to me on a consistent
basis. Also, the movie featured the best demise for a villain ever.
When I learned about DVD, and that all my entire childhood
that I was getting only half the picture when I was watching the movie on VHS,
I began to wonder how much of the picture I was missing all the years I was
watching it as a kid. Then in late 2001, Willow finally arrived on DVD and I
got to experience Willow in a new way with the entire picture, I was so
excited. I felt that I could experience Willow in the way it was meant to be
seen, in 2.35 aspect ratio. Also with the DVD came a few extra features which
allowed me to see some behind the scenes work. The biggest surprise was to
learn that one of the visual effects was a groundbreaking achievement that
helped pave the way for computer generation work. A simple way to put it, all
the great visual effects that can be done on the computer today are partially
thanks to this movie. The sequence in question is when Willow must transform
Raziel back into a human, she is currently a goat near the last half an hour of
the movie and so he must use the spell he was taught to transform her into a
human, and as he does so, she is transformed into many different animals until
she is finally back into her human form. This sequence used a technology that
was not yet created at the time. The only idea they had was to fuse images
together, it would scan the pictures into the computer and then would program
various aspects of the picture to transform from one animal to another. If you
look up the featurette “From Morf to Morphing”, you can learn how they
developed the technology and how it affected things from that point on. This
technology helped evolve digital effects and amazing effects like in Terminator
2: Judgement Day back in the day, and would continue to push the digital effects industry.
When the 25th Anniversary took place five years
ago, the movie was re-released on Blu-Ray, which of course I bought, no
questions asked. The movie was restored and the picture was great to look at,
as they took time to make the picture look great for high definition, and even added a few new extra features on top of what they already added for the DVD.
Unfortunately, it appears the movie was discontinued on Blu-Ray, so if you were
trying to find it on Blu-Ray, you would not be able to as easily, and it would
be expensive to get a copy. So for the 30th Anniversary, that would
be my first big recommendation, to re-release it on Blu-Ray, or even 4K Ultra
HD. If they restore the picture yet again for 4K, I will buy a new copy, especially if they add any new extra features. I think
they could do a lot of cool for the 30th Anniversary, so I will take
time to put my wish list on what I would like to see. It would make sense that
not all of these would happen, but a few of these could and would be awesome. Anyway, here you go:
-A 30th Anniversary release of the movie on 4K
Ultra HD or Blu-Ray with a 4K restoration of the film. Even include new bonus
features including a documentary on the whole making of process of the movie,
cover from how the movie started in pre-production, and how some more of the
practical effects were made, how certain shots were completed, and how the
scoring session for the movie was done by the late James Horner. Also talk
about the legacy of the movie, especially after all these years and how it’s
still remembered by many fans, and the impact it had.
-a new 2 disc CD of the original soundtrack of Willow, it
will feature of the score done by James Horner. They could even do an isolated
score on the Blu-Ray.
-A Visual History book of Willow. If you are familiar with
the Visual History series of books like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future,
Labyrinth, or Dark Crystal, then you should know what I am talking about. This
would be a great way to get a bunch of sketches or photos or anything from the
production of the movie.
-Re-release the comics that were released at the time the
movie came out and include them in a new graphic novel. If I am not mistaken, Marvel released a few issues in comic book form to promote the movie. They could even do a
new limited comic book series that touches on other aspects of the world of
Willow, like the backstory of Madmartigan, or even on the feud between Bavmorda
and Raziel, or even the story of the brownies. It could be a 4 to 6 issue mini
series that would be cool to get.
-a new board game to get our hands on, or even re-release
the old video games, like Willow on the NES, or the arcade version of the game
that could be ported to an SNES cartridge. The SNES cartridge sounds like a
bizarre idea but I have seen companies reproduce old game cartridges for old
systems, so this could be done. But of course the easiest way is to make it
available to buy and download as a digital version for the Nintendo online
store or something like that.
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