PRE:View Disney’s Willow
Welcome to a new feature here at the Arkhaven Blog: PRE:View.
Modern Woke Hollywood and Woke Disney in particular, is the pinnacle of storytelling failure. Just by looking at the characters’ race and gender, plus the tropes the show is leaning into, you can tell how the entire story is going to go. They are completely predictable now.
I’m starting this series off by giving myself a challenge, Disney’s Willow.
Willow is a BOLD REIMAGINING of LucasFilm’s 1988 garbage-tier Tolkien feature of the same name. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t made for me. It was a kids’ show for younger Gen-Xers and baby Millennials.
This meant I had to watch a movie that I didn’t really like when it first came out.
For those that never watched or whose brain just chooses not to remember like mine, here’s the plot for the original.
Midget Luke Skywalker and Val Solo have to take a Magic Girl Baby who is the key to everything back to her family who is all dead. A magic midget told them to do that. Little Person Luke wants to be magic too, but he’s absolute shit at it. The Evil Empress of Evil wants the baby greased out so she can continue to be the EEoE, the Magic Girl Baby is destined to cramp her swag in unspecified ways. EEoE sends her daughter, Evil Leia to get the baby.
Val Solo gets hit with a love potion and falls for Evil Leia. Since this was in an 80s movie, any kind of declaration of True Love immediately makes a girl fall in love with you, unless you were in The Last American Virgin (it seriously sucked to be you then).
The EEoE has to hold an elaborate ritual to banish the MGB instead of just cutting her throat. Seems inefficient to me but she probably heard about how well it went for other EEoEs when they farmed out the dirty work to a henchman and maybe she doesn’t like the sight of blood(?). She turns everybody except Not-A-Hobbit Luke and the baby into pigs. She is going to do the banishment ritual when Willow makes the baby disappear with a much more reliable than magic, sleight of hand trick. The EEoE stumbles like a perfect witchtard into her own ritual and nukes herself. Val Solo and Redeemed-By-Love Leia volunteer to raise the baby. Willow goes back to the shire to make a bird poop on someone. The End.
I can’t believe it, but I actually liked it this time around. There was a charm to it and a lot of practical effects. James Horner did a nice job with the music.
Anyway, The reason that Willow is a challenge to PRE:View, is that while Willow Ufgood is a straight white male and therefore ripe for subversion. He is also impaired or at least his actor Warwick Davis is. Willow himself is a perfectly normal Not-A-Hobbit, but it’s not like Wokeites can look past that.
Mash play.
There’s a recap, which I just did already. Ah, Willow has a dream that the magic baby is going to be destroyed by a superpowered evil…something. Yeah. So, Magic Baby has to be hidden away. Also, it’s clear that Val Solo ran off after knocking up Redeemed-By-Love Leia a couple of times. Joanne Whalley is in this which explains why her ex-husband, Val Kilmer isn’t.
The opening scene is a sword practice duel. They appear to be two strong, young, independent, women (one of whom is ethnically diverse) so I can already hear Mellissa Ethridge caterwauling in my headcanon. I don’t know what is sillier, the need for lesbian lovers in a high fantasy story as leads or a Woke screenwriter’s absolute inability to scribble down any kind of decent romance. The Diverse Lesbian is played by Erin Kellyman. She’s that redheaded (pretty much) black girl Disney keeps putting in everything.
Cataline Predicts: This couple will be spending the entire show validating each other instead of having any kind of conflict.
The Lesbian Princess talks about wanting to go on an adventure.
Cataline Predicts: They will have to go on an adventure to get some kind of MacGuffin.
Oh no.
No.
Please stop talking. Or get killed. Lesbian Princess is speaking with a mush-mouthed California accent. The validation has begun. So has the exposition. I’ve never seen this much of an info dump in the first five minutes.
This thing is actually trying to be worse than the Rings of Power. It won’t get there because it doesn’t have enough time but it’s really trying. This is like the kind of info dump you get in a bad self-published fantasy novel where the writer just has to give you an entire Silmarillion-level history of his world in the first chapter.
We now see The Prince. He’s kissing a girl which is honestly surprising because he dresses like he should be working a corner on Castro Steet. He’s got super fluffy hair and see thru-shirt that is unbuttoned to his navel.
Cataline Predicts: The girl is grown-up magic girl baby who is the rightful ruler. That is a very safe prediction because the Prince keeps going on about how special she is. And she’s on the freaking damn poster.
We are a little past the ten-minute mark.
Okay, I may have to throw in the towel early. This thing is so bad it’s defying my ability to predict how awful it will be. This is actually worse than CW’s Reign. Congrats on that LucasFilm, every time you hit rock bottom, you get a shovel and start digging.
The princess is horrified because she has to wear a dress.
To a ball.
Her “friend” will only suffer the abject humiliation of wearing a dress because the princess is. I’m sure one of the boys would be willing to wear it for you. Seriously, look at them. All of the boys in this show are completely soy drenched. I don’t think any actor under twenty in the United States has ever had an ounce of animal protein contaminate their tummies. All of them look like 90 lb scarecrows.
The Princess (who is Queen Redeemed by Love Leia’s daughter) has to marry the foreign prince that just arrived to secure a military alliance.
Cataline Predicts: She never will. She will go off and have adventures with her “friend.” Never mind that this alliance was to protect the kingdom.
That said, I honestly can’t blame her because her girlfriend is more of a man than her husband-to-be. He’s brown by the way so he will prove to be a very nice guy. I’m not one to throw around British expressions but this guy is “gormless.” Completely and utterly without gorm of any kind.
Also, Magic Girl Baby, “Elora Danan” is mentioned by the Queen as being the rightful ruler (in case you forgot), so everything the royal families are doing is kind of pointless but so is LucasFilm.
Wow, that was fast. Princess has decided to run away and let her mother’s desperately needed military alliance crash and burn because it’s not what she wants.
Second wow, it’s not even twenty minutes into the show and the Princess is frenching her “friend” at the 19:50 mark.
Before she can run away, there is an attack by the not-orcs. I’ll give credit where it’s due, the armor, action, and costuming are indeed much better than in the Rings of Power and I’m not even joking. Admittedly, this is a paleolithic baseline, so it’s not that impressive.
Battle is over the Queen is severely injured because she didn’t have the brains to let the royal guard do their job and protect a 61-year-old woman. Also, the Prince has been kidnapped, everybody is really bummed about this.
WHY?
You LucasFilm retards clearly held the white male character in instinctive contempt, turned him into a brainless horndog drip in a see-thru shirt. And I’m supposed to feel bad that he’s been kidnapped? No, I don’t feel bad about that because I can’t. You gave me no reason whatsoever to like this spoiled kid. Any kind of cheap writer’s trick would have done the job. Save a peasant child from a runaway dung cart. Rescue a low-born girl from some high-born jerk determined to have his way with her. Save a kid’s cat out of a fucking tree or give a random dog a biscuit. SOMETHING! This writing 101.
Instead, this jerk in a rent-boy shirt inspires nothing but indifference in me and it’s obvious that getting him back is going to be this season’s MacGuffin.
Fellowship is now created to get him back. It’s the teenage lesbians, Princess Lesbian’s drippy husband-to-be, the serving girl who is secretly Elora Danan. There is also Old Guy who is a knight and cannon fodder. Boorman, who is some kind of criminal or something, I honestly stopped paying attention. The Lesbian Princess is advised by the queen that they have tainted blood because her grandma was the EEoE. So, you know, that’s bad and stuff.
Cataline Predicts: That is why the Prince was kidnapped. Or at least it should be. It gives the not-orcs a reason for bagging him. This is better than no reason at all but there is a distinct possibility that the reason is no reason at all. Possibly it was a stupidly elaborate plan to kidnap Elora.
Okay, where the hell is Willow? I mean I’m not a huge fan or anything and I know his only real purpose is to be replaced by the adventurous Princess Lesbian with the California accent. But he should at least make an appearance before he gets the Jake Skywalker treatment.
The fellowship is riding together now. Bickering a lot. Yeah, the old guy just bit it. Now they are being chased and jumped with their horses off a five-hundred-foot cliff. Sure, why not? This only rates a C+ for stupid crap in a Disney LucasFilm show.
Bonding moment now between the Lesbian Princess and her Gormless Husband-to-be. He admits he didn’t want to marry her either because people should be allowed to marry for love. I’m getting too tired to object to stuff. Although that one is dumb. Unless you are in a fairy tale, royalty has to marry as part of alliances, it’s the price tag for the not-rags to wear, nice castle to live in, and food on a regular basis.
Finally, Willow shows up. He takes another huge exposition dump all over the show and reveals that the lowly blonde serving girl is Elora Danan and is the girl who is the key to everything, which has to be a shock to the Lesbian Princess because she had to have thought it was herself.
Warwick Davis is either not feeling well, or he’s decided he’s too good to act in this show because either way, he’s not.
Episode is over and I’m bailing out on this whole thing.
Of my predictions, three out of five were proved correct in the first freaking episode.
Okay, I’m done here.
