a review of 风云际会

The first time I saw Willow was in the late 1980s, when I was still a boy. It made an impression on me at the time. Having revisited the film in 2019 as a beautifully aged wise man, I found out it still gave me a bit of youthful excitement. Val Kilmer is a young god, and I had forgotten that the story was written by George Lucas. It all makes sense now. You clearly recognize his Star Wars narration style, with a mix of heroical and comical characters, and influences from different Fantasy sources, such as Lord of the Rings, but also fairy-tales like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Gulliver's Travels. As Lucas is an admirer of Akira Kurosawa, Willow features multiple references to his films, such as the running horses action scene that was a clear wink to the great similar scene in Seven Samurai. Speaking of which, Val Kilmer's character is an obvious tribute to Toshirô Mifune's rebellious antihero in Seven Samurai.