Back in 2011, actor Warwick Davis combined his sizable talents with comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant to create the BBC / HBO mockumentary series Life’s Too Short, in which the diminutive performer played a heightened version of himself, not unlike Seinfeld co-creator Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
And now, with Warwick Davis back in the spotlight thanks to the Willow revival series on Disney+, the actor has given us a pseudo-sequel to Life’s Too Short in the behind-the-scenes documentary Willow: Behind the Magic, which was released last Wednesday.
But though the trailer for Willow: Behind the Magic led me to believe that the special would be all humor, all the time, it actually ends up being about 25% mockumentary and 75% real-life information about how the Willow series was assembled by a talented cast and crew working for Lucasfilm. The doc opens with Ron Howard (director of the original Willow film and executive producer of the TV show) talking about how there have been discussions of a Willow sequel series for decades, though for a variety of reasons those talks never came to fruition until Disney+ became available as a platform several years ago. At that point Jonathan Kasdan (son of the legendary screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and co-writer with him on Solo: A Star Wars Story) stepped up and pitched his own take on how the Willow story should continue. Then we meet the new cast of Willow, and learn how Warwick Davis became jealous of rising star Ellie Bamber, who stepped into the role of Elora Danan– here’s where the mockumentary part sneaks in. But besides the laughs, of which there are quite a few, my favorite parts of Willow: Behind the Magic were getting to see how Lucasfilm and its in-house visual effects department Industrial Light & Magic created some of the amazing-looking VFX for the show. Like The Mandalorian before it, Willow used a wonderful combination of techniques both old and new to bring the world of the series to life on the small screen, and those efforts shine through here.
From there, we learn about the stunts and fight choreography, the set decoration and production design, and the use of real-world locations in and around Wales, where the 1988 Willow film was shot as well. Getting back to the comedy segments of the special, which are sprinkled throughout and almost exclusively take advantage of Warwick Davis’s willingness to poke fun at himself, the funniest part of Willow: Behind the Magic is an extended run of failed Willow sequel pitches that Davis made to Ron Howard over the years, including Willow: Lost in New York and Willow: Spring Break: Miami Beach. There’s also a bit that details Davis’s feud with fellow actor (and Willow guest-star) Christian Slater ever since the latter supposedly stole the former’s idea for a movie in the 1980s. But these obviously tongue-in-cheek sections serve as mere punctuation to the real draw of this behind-the-scenes documentary: getting to see a cast and crew working together on set and creating a fantasy series that they’re all quite evidently proud of. Whether or not we get more Willow in the future on Disney+, it’s great that the team who made it found a makeshift family among themselves during production, and it’s so much fun to see those relationships play out in footage that– if not for this half-hour special– would otherwise be unavailable elsewhere. And that sounds like a much more rewarding project than Willow: Willow’s Colon.
Willow: Behind the Magic and the full first season of Willow are available to stream exclusively via Disney+.