BTS Moebius's Willow and TPM

More links between Moebius and George Lucas' in-house graphic adventure games:

A closeup of Fleece the shepherdess, from Brian Moriarty's Loom (Lucasfilm Games, 1990).



Jean Giraud/Moebius, "The Blind Child," trading card, 1992.



Also, for anyone interested in the idea bruited in my previous post of this thread....you might want to read this.

 

For anyone interested in the putative sequels to Willow discussed in this thread: I recommend watching the 1957 East German fairy-tale film Das Singende, Klingende Bäumchen (The Singing, Ringing Tree), as well as reading The Singing, Springing Lark, the original Brothers Grimm fairy-tale film it was based on.

In this film and fairy-story you can find: a beautiful but cold-hearted princess, whose personality grows more attractive when she loses her good looks (an obvious Cora/Sorsha parallel); a prince who leaves his wife for another woman, who had been trapped in the guise of a snake (cf. the serpent banner of Marazad's father, the Sultan, in Trinity); and a magic tree standing amidst a ring of fire (vs. the mushroom cloud in Worlds End). Said tree, naturally, belongs to a dwarf with magical powers.

And what's weirdest about all this is that, while I wrote the outlines of a reconstructed Willow trilogy about a year ago, I saw Das Singende, Klingende Bäumchen for the first time tonight.




(Also, today is my nine-year anniversary on these forums. How time flies.)

 

And here's something I stumbled across while browsing Wikipedia: an entry on Salix caprea, the tree known as the "goat willow", otherwise called the "pussy willow". Interpret that as you will... but do remember that in the Moebius concept drawings, Sorsha's helmet bears a pair of large goat horns.

Also, considering the issue of the three acorns in the finished film, it's notable that none of the acorns actually is very useful in the theatrical cut. Willow used one of them to kill a sea monster in a scene that was deleted due to VFX issues, but the other two - respectively the one that falls down on the bridge in the ruined Tir Asleen keep, and the one crushed by Bavmorda in her hand at the end of the film - are effectively useless.

In the original story, however, that wasn't so. Two of the acorns had uses. One of them was used to kill a giant sea beast in the aforementioned deleted scene... and the other, when crushed by Bavmorda, provided an audible noise that let the wounded Sorsha/Cora throw her dagger at her mother's hand despite having been blinded. Bavmorda - the Angel of Death whose successor Elora Danan is - yanks out the dagger in a distracted moment, the blood falls into the vortex created by the ritual and that's that.

 

Found this while looking for another file on my hard drive: A drawing of a nameless villain from the unmade Willow animated series proposed in the wake of the film's release in 1988.



The fellow's voluminous cloak, deep-set features, and especially his forked and pointed beard, are traits typical of stylized depictions Middle Eastern rulers in animation and illustrations. (Compare Jafar in Disney's Aladdin from 1992.) So I'd say it's pretty likely that this guy is actually a repurposed, kid-friendly version of the evil Sultan from Trinity, the originally planned sequel to Willow I outlined earlier.

 

Part of the reason why the Willow sequels may have been abandoned: as I've recently learned, the third film in the series was meant to be made in four different versions concurrently. The titles were to be World's End, Worlds' End, Worlds End, and Worldsend. Each of the four films were to have been interrelated, such that only viewing all four would give a viewer the complete experience. I have difficulty envisioning Lucasfilm's marketing department letting that get past them.

 

Recently I've been working on refining my reconstructed plot outline for the third film in the Willow trilogy - Worlds End.

Here's the opening:

The third film would take place two generations after Trinity. In that time, Laif Thaughbaer (which should really be pronounced Tauf-bayer; there's a Monty Python joke in there for those who speak German) has ruled as king of Galladoorn and Mil Espaine (tentative name for the realm of the dead Sultan -- modeled on Moorish Spain) for 50 years in a personal union of the two countries.

Elora Danan is the Queen of Galladoorn, and Marazad is Laif's wif in Mil Espaine - a polygamous marriage that's also incestuous both ways. (The polygamy is modeled on the two wives of the protagonist, astronaut Bill Norton, in Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama.) The blood relationship of the royal family is a closely guarded secret.

By this time Elora's son and heir, conceived from her rape in Trinity, is already dead. The Prince of Galladoorn had already married and sired four daughters, before being killed in a fight with mountain bandits.

King Laif announces to his four grandchildren that he intends to make one of them his heir. Whoever can bring him the greatest of the Three Treasures of Galladoorn, lost long ago, will be crowned as monarch upon his death. These treasures are the Sword of Knowledge, the Spear of Death, and the Shield of Reflection.

The youngest daughter objects that this is not a good way to choose a ruler: who can say with justice which of these treasures is "the greatest"? She tells the King her father that soggy women lying in ponds distributing swords fetch quests for magical artifacts of dubious value is no basis for a sound system of government. For this outburst Laif banishes his youngest daughter from his kingdom.

The three eldest daughters go on separate quests to find the three lost Treasures. And the youngest, fueled by anger and wounded love, sets out for the Wizards' Isle in the far Eastern Sea, where Archmage Willow Ufgood tells her about the mysterious Chalice that could restore her father's seemingly addled wits.

However, it turns out that King Laif is playing a deeper game than appears at first glance. Pretending to be senile, like a fusion of Hamlet and Lear, he has contrived the removal of all four daughters from his court -- because he has begun to fear that one of them is plotting against him. Knowing now that his youngest daughter is likely the most loyal of them all, he dispatches his bravest knight to shadow her footsteps, making sure she does not come to harm in her grief-maddened state.

More to follow.

 

On second thought, I'm going to scrap the intervening generation between Elora Danan and the four daughters. They'll work better narratively as Elora's biological children -- probably sired by suitors approved by King Laif, who was castrated by Dark Elora back in Trinity. All four of them were born some 20 years after the second film, and are now roughly around 17 (though not all the exact same age).

However, Elora still becomes pregnant immediately after the events of Trinity - bearing three children, whom she exposes to the elements (the ancient method of infanticide) upon their birth. Two died in the cold, but one survived to be rescued -- of which more later.

 

small note: currently the drafting for Worlds End is getting such that the film plot doesn't fit conveniently into one 3-act film structure. It will need to be broken up into two films - Worlds' End and The Countless Stars.

Which means that effectively, the original Willow is now the Das Rheingold of the series: a prelude to the events of a larger trilogy.