Awesome Ego: Madmartigan frequently brags about being the greatest swordsman who ever lived. He may be right.
Awesome Music: Couldn't expect any less from James Horner, who delivered a score that's suitably majestic, epic and heroic. An expanded soundtrack was announced from Intrada in June 2022.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: One that didn't make it to the final cut. When Willow is about to take a boat to Fin Raziel's island, a strange hairless boy asks him what he's doing, and warns Willow that the water is cursed, just before jumping in himself. Later, as Willow rows across, the boy resurfaces, but this time his teeth are long and sharp, like a carnivorous fish. He resurfaces again a moment later, and now has a fin on his back. Finally he resurfaces as a monstrous fish and attacks Willow's boat, capsizing it and pursuing Willow through the water. Willow manages to escape by throwing one of his magic acorns at it and turning it to stone (which explains why he was given three acorns, yet only seen using two). The scene was not cut for time, or because it had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot. It was cut because they could never get the fish monster to look right. As it turns out, it lifted easily out of the story because it comes out of nowhere, is never explained, and is never mentioned again. Parts of it are available as a special feature on the DVD.
Critical Dissonance: The film was not well-regarded by critics when it came out, with Gene Siskel regarding it as one of the worst movies of the year, and it only has a 53% Critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. The general audience was far more forgiving, garnering the film an 80% Audience score on RT and a 7.2 rating on IMDB, the latter of which is very high for an 80's fantasy film.
High Aldwin only appears in the first and last acts of the movie. Still, his quirky Eccentric Mentor and Reasonable Authority Figure characterization makes him the highlight of the scenes before the adventure gets underway.
Despite being a Hero Killer with limited characterization, Kael is one of the film's most iconic characters due to his Cool Helmet and status as The Unfettered, with the creators later exploring his family and backstory in the sequel TV series.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The original script and a series of deleted scenes have a lot of information about Sorsha's father (one of the frozen people in Tir Asleen) that makes her Heel–Face Turn feel more layered and interesting.
Fanon Discontinuity: The Chronicles Of The Shadow War sequel novels, depending on your mileage, of course. Or you can pick and choose among the novels too. The first is Darker and Edgier but still has the same general feel of adventure and tension as the movie. The following ones follow an Elora Dannon who at one point melodramatically recites a story that's basically Braveheartwith dragons. The whole trilogy is basically a deconstruction of The Chosen One and fantasy tropes in general; like the movie, several characters are ludicrously powerful with backstories about how super special they are to the setting but they're all really just support for a relatively weak sorcerer. Has ascended to full on Canon Discontinuity with the release of the Disney + series.
Friendly Fandoms: With Solo due to sharing the same director (Ron Howard), Warwick Davis being in both, both being Lucasfilm projects and both being beloved by kids. This was compouded by Howard and Davis being happy to work together again and wishing that Willow could get a continuation (back in 2018), which it eventually did.
He's Just Hiding: Some people who acknowledge the novels as canon like to think that the Cataclysm doesn't kill its victims and only transports them to a different universe.
The NES game, although laden with Guide Dang It!, is often regarded as a forgotten classic. Plotwise and structure-wise, it has relatively little to do with the movie, though; it's been suspected for a long time that it began life as something else and picked up the Willow theming once Capcom secured the license.
The arcade game is also very well-made, has very nice graphics for its time, lets you play as Willow and Madmartigan, and unlike the NES game, faithfully recreates some key scenes from the movie.
The bar fight and subsequent chase scene, due to the good mix of action and comedy.
The heroes Mêlée à Trois against Sorsha's troops, the two-headed dragon, and the trolls, for the same reasons as the bar fight, plus having some Visual Effects of Awesome.
The morphing sequence is iconic as a breakthrough in the history of visual effects.
Special Effect Failure: You can clearly see the blue screen lines on the brownies when Willow is in focus and vise versa when the brownies are in focus. This is especially noticeable in their first scene.
