This is one of the 10 Heroic Fantasy Movies You Must See in Your Lifetime: Released 36 years ago, it’s a genre benchmark!

Cinema, as the 7th art, like all arts, it has its classics. There are important films that must be seen in a lifetime, simply because they are recognized in the history of the medium.

A few years ago, the AlloCiné editorial team had an extensive debate trying to determine the 10 best films in the heroic fantasy genre. In this list, we found the timeless classics that stayed in everyone’s memory, but also Don Coscarelli’s Dar the Invincible, Richard Donner’s Ladyhawke and even Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Produced by George Lucas

Willow is one of the most iconic superheroes on the big screen. Based on a world completely invented by George Lucas, and which you can believe is taken from a Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Willow takes place in a kingdom inhabited by a small population called Nelwyns. One fine day, Princess Elora is born, destined to overthrow the tyrannical Queen Bavmorda. During the hunt, Willow, a young witch-obsessed Nelwin, takes him away.

A passionate director, Ron Howard applies his usual know-how to Willow: solid direction and careful editing, which creates the feeling – as so often with a filmmaker – that he loved making his film.

But Willow is the clue

Before Lord of the Rings there was Willow! Because in addition to offering a rich, coherent and well-crafted world, Willow was filmed in New Zealand, just like Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations years later. as The HobbitWillow has a little hero – here played by Warwick Davis (Val Kilmer, Joan Whaley and Gene Marsh) – who does not imagine crazy adventures, but finds himself in search of salvation in his own kingdom.

At a time when fantasy on the screen was often looked down upon and shot with visual effects that weren’t always top-notch, Willow felt like a breath of fresh air to fans of the genre at the time. The film never had a sequel on the big screen, but a trilogy of novels called The New Saga of Willow (Shadow Moon, Shadow Twilight and Shadow Star), published from 1995 to 2000, written by Chris Claremont (X-Men) based on a story by George Lucas.

The series also saw the light of day in 2022, but it was so poorly watched during its launch that it was pulled from the Disney+ platform.