Willow - 1998

I like it. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and I loved it. With my bad memory I remembered very little, only that Warwick Davis played Willow, and he was like my childhood hero, because Willow was little but he was brave and good and smart and never gave up. He protected the child and saved her at the end. He confronted every danger, even when he knew he couldn’t make it he always tried and kept going. That’s what movies do: from the first time I saw this movie I’ve never forgotten Warwick’s face (although I’m not entirely sure if I pronounce the name correctly..), and every time I saw him I thought: Willow!!
Since some people like to discard every fantasy story saying that it’s just a copy of The Lord Of The Rings, I’ll say it right away: yes, there’s a little one who lives quietly in his village until he faces a great adventure to end the reign of terror of the evil magician. He is helped by a human warrior who at the end becomes a king (maybe) and by a female warrior, and at the end there’s a big battle between the two old magicians, until the courage of our hero saves the day, good prevails and evil is defeated, and now he can return home... so yes, it can be seen like that, and so what? If you look at it so generally, then every action movie has the same plot, every romantic movie has the same plot, every war movie has the same plot....
so shut up and enjoy the movie. It is a good one, and it’s also one of the few decent fantasy movies that were made before the year 2000 (I say one of the few to stay safe, but I can’t think of one more right now).
The story: Queen Bavmorda is evil. Some prophecy say that a child will be born who will bring down her kingdom, so she looks for the baby. When she finds the baby with the mark, she wants to kill it, but a compassionate midwife saves her life at the cost of her own. The mother is killed too, but knowing that her child has escaped. She orders her daughter Sorsha and her army to find the baby and bring it to her - for some reason she doesn’t want to simply kill the baby, she wants to perform a ritual to send the child to some neverland where she could no longer harm her.
Chance be that the child is found by Willow’s children. He knows at once that it’s the child of the Daikini (how they call the big humans), and at first wants to have nothing to do with her, but his wife takes care of her. When his village is attacked by some kind of beast looking for the baby, he tells the whole village about the child. It is decided that it must be brought to her own kind, and given to the first Daikini they find; Willow has come to care for the child, since she smiled at him and stopped crying as soon as he hold her... so he leaves the village taking the child with him. A few others go with him, but not for long. The first daikini they meet is Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), trapped in a cage. He tells them to let him free and he’ll help them, but Willow is not sure if he can trust him, and is reluctant to leave the baby with him. Still, when the next day he meets an army of people marching against Bavmorda and they refuse to take the child, he thinks he has no other choice but to trust Madmartigan. 
He heads back home, when he sees that the Brownies have stolen the baby. He follows them and is trapped, but the Brownies leader tells them to free Willow. She’s a fairy queen, and tells Willow about the child’s importance. Elora is her name, and she’s chosen him as her guandian. She tells Willow that if Bavmorda finds the baby then there will be no more hope; she says “Elora must fulfill her destiny and bring about the downfall of queen Bavmorda” and “unless she is stopped, Bavmorda will control the lives of your village, your children, everyone. All creatures of good heart need your help Willow.” and her last words are :”the choice is yours” ....yeah right, after what she said? Bringing his children into this was a masterclass act, as if he could say no after that...
He accepts and takes the baby. He stops at a tavern because the baby must be fed (they talk about her needing changing or needing to be fed but we never, not once, see any of that :-p).
He meets Madmartigan again, trying to escape a jealous husband by dressing up as a woman (still the guy has no problem in going after “her” in front of his wife.. :-// ). When Sorsha and her men enter the place looking for the baby, she reveals Madmartigan’s true identity. The husband becomes furious and starts a big fight; Madmartigan takes advantage of the confusion to escape with the child, with Willow following. Together they reach a lake, and then part ways. Willow reaches the little island on that lake, to find the great sorceress Raziel, only to find out that she’s been transformed into an animal (what animal was that?). Willow always dreamed of becoming a sorcerer, but has never been good at it yet, although having potential he’s never believed enough in himself.

Sorsha has captured Madmartingan and now captures them too. Willow tries to change Raziel back to human, but turns her into a crow instead. They manage to free themselves with the help of two Brownies that follow them, and Madmartigan is accidentally sprayed with fairy love dust, so when they go get the baby in Sorsha’s tent, he stops to speak to her about love. She’s almost won over when her army comes in and she discovers that the baby is gone and thinks he deceived her to give Willow time to get to Elora. There’s a fight and our three escape. At the next village, they are again attacked by Sorsha’s army, but Madmartigan takes her hostage so they have to let them go. The effect of the fairy dust is gone, and he doesn’t even remember what he said. She reminds him, but he says that it’s all gone now. She frees herself and runs back to her army. They reach Tyr Asleen, where the fairy queen had told them to go, but it turns out that it’s empty, all the people there have been transformed into stones by Bavmorda, or something. Willow transforms Raziel into a goat this time. When Sorsha’s army comes, there’s a big fight, and she’s impressed by his courage and skill and probably realizes that she does like him, and she switch sides, starting to fight on his side. 
There’s too many warriors, and Willow finds himself unable to protect Elora from Sorsha’s general, who takes the baby and goes straight to Bavmorda, also telling her that Sorsha turned against her.
Madmartigan and some warrior friends go to Bavmorda’s castle to get the baby back, but she transforms them all into pigs. All but Willow, who protected himself with magic. He manages to turn Raziel back into her human form this time, and Raziel turns the men back into humans. With a trick they enter the castle and start a big fight. Willow, Sorsha and Raziel go to save the child. Sorsha is knocked out by her mother, and the two sorceress start a big fight of magic. Raziel is knocked out too, but Willow has taken the child away from the altar where she was to perform her ritual. 
Bavmorda confronts Willow, now alone, trying to intimidate him, but he doesn’t back down, doesn’t give the child to her. Ultimately he tricks her, telling her that with his sorcerer’s power he’ll send the child to a place where evil won’t be able to touch her, and when the child disappears a furious Bavmorda cries Impossible! and then accidentally tricks the last part of her ritual, being sent to the neverworld herself. Willow reveals that it was only his “old disappearing pig trick” and the baby is perfectly safe. 
At the end, we see that all the people of Tyr Asleen have been saved, probably by Raziel since she could undo Bavmorda’s curse once already before, when they were all pigs, and Sorsha will take care of Elora with Madmartigan. Raziel gives Willow a magic book and he returns home a hero and reunites with his family :-)
So the prophecy was right indeed: despite doing nothing herself, the existence of this child brought down Bavmorda’s reign, and at the end the child will be safe at “the kingdom of Tyr Asleen where a good king and queen will look after her”, the fairy queen said, so I guess that Sorsha and Madmartigan will become queen and king. Not sure if because she was the queen’s daughter or simply because they saved the day, the kingdom, the world actually :-p
I also like a lot the scene when Sorsha frees herself and runs back to her army: there’s a moment, when she has to run away and he has to keep going, when they both stop looking at each other. They are confused because they like each other although they both thought they hated each other, but those were their roles not them, and would like to stay together, keep talking, not end that moment, find out more about whatever it is that they’re feeling, but they are on opposite sides and must go..
romantic scene :-)