Willow Episode 1 and 2 Review
Today the first TWO episodes of the Willow tv show have dropped on Dinsey+. I’ve been able to watch the show, so how are these episodes? Are they good? Are they underwhelming? Let’s get started!
NOTE: I haven’t seen the Willow movie from 1988, so my take on these episodes might be different from others that have seen the movie. So that’s where my thoughts and feelings on these episodes are coming from.
The Good:
As somebody who enjoys fantasy movies and tv shows, I found these episodes to be enjoyable fantasy adventures. You get a fun fantasy tone to the whole thing, fun fantasy action, and a fun fantasy world. Wow…I’ve used fun a lot so far in this review, but beyond the point. The point that I am trying to make is that I had fun with these episodes. I was never bored with either one of these episodes, both of them move at a nice pace. You get action and humor sprinkled through-out both of the episodes. And like I said, I enjoy this genre a whole lot and this is a solid adventure in that genre.
Another thing here is that the score for these episodes is great. It’s just a classic epic fantasy score that works. And I’ve heard that was one of the big positives for the original movie, that score was by James Horner. And this score by James Newton Howard is pretty great, and James Newton Howard has done a lot of great scores. He did The Dark Knight, Fantastic Beasts, The Hunger Games, Batman Begins, and several other movies. And he’s very much channeling that same energy and greatness to this show. Now I was looking and on IMDB it says that episodes 4-8 have a different composer named Xander Rodzinski who doesn’t have any other scores under his belt. So I am a bit nervous about how the quality of the score will change after episode 3.
And with this show it is a slick Disney production so the show looks really good. I haven’t been able to find what the budget for the show was but I’m guessing it was about $150 million and divided that over 8 episodes that’s about $19 million per episode. Which is pretty good for a 45-50 minute long episode. And it’s just kind of crazy that now tv shows can look just as good as movies do. And in some cases, some tv shows look better than movies.
Finally, Warwick Davis is very solid in the role of Willow. He’s great as the mentor figure, channeling some of the Yoda energy in this show. Not copying Yoda by any means but certainly has that flavor of Yoda in this show. And he does get some nice touches of humor sprinkled through-out these episodes.
The Bad:
And the big thing here is the new ensemble of characters aren’t the best. Some of them are played by familiar faces that I was excited to see. Tony Revolori who played Flash Thompson in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy is in the show and then Erin Kellyman who was in Solo and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is in the show. And even they don’t bring much to their characters. All of these characters feel very dull and bland, and nothing interesting about them. And I think part of the problem is that these characters feel like 2022 teenagers dropped in this time period. They don’t really act like teenagers from that time period, they act like modern day teenagers. And I think that’s a large reason as to why these characters didn’t fully work for me.
Beyond that, the soundtrack for these episodes is really really weird. Like the score is fantastic, I mentioned that earlier in my review. But I found the songs that play in the show to be rather weird and out of place. Like they feel like these weird punk rock songs from the late 2000s to early 2010s that play over the credits. And they just didn’t match the tone and vibe of the show at all. Like I think you should have James Newton Howard compose some music over the credits, make it pop and stand-out a bit more.
Finally, I think this will be one of the issues for the show as a whole. But they kind of got a different writer for each episode. Like the first episode is written by Jonathan Kasdan who is the showrunner for the show and they have staff writer John Bickerstaff also writing that episode. Then for episode 2 they got the guy that wrote the original movie, Bob Dolman to write that episode. And episode 2 had more of the tone that I wanted this entire show to be. And I looked at IMDB and it looks like he's only writing episodes 2 and 7 of the show. And then even looking ahead it looks like every episode has a different writer. So I’m really nervous that this show is going to feel uneven with its tone and the episode consistency will fluctuate a lot. So like I said, I liked the tone for episode 2 and I hope that’s the tone for episodes 3-8.
Final Thoughts: In general, Willow (2022) started off with 2 good enough episodes of the show. It’s a genre that I enjoy, the score is great, the production is great, and Warwick Davis turns in a solid performance. But where these episodes lost me is with the new characters, soundtrack, and the inconsistency with the writing and tone for the episodes. I’m invested enough to keep watching, but I’m not sure this is going to go down as one of the great tv shows of the year.
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