Transcription
Adults who were children in the 80s in the United States often have a common story about their favorite movies. They had a VCR and only a handful of VHS tapes, and whichever tapes they had, they watched those tapes over and over again.
Blockbuster Video may have begun in the mid-80s, but it did not really take off until the early 90s due to the price of the tapes and how slowly popular films came to VHS. This handful of pre-Blockbuster movies were either the few that low to middle-class families opted to buy, or they were recordings of movies played on network television.
For me, my handful of pre-Blockbuster VHS tapes were a recording of "Big Trouble in Little China" and the first two "Indiana Jones" movies, as well as proper copies of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Krull." Why did we have "Krull"? Who bought "Krull"? I don't remember. It was always just there, and so "Krull" became one of my earliest favorite movies. Out of convenience, our favorite movies and franchises were simply available when our minds were too young to tell good from bad. And because of this, these movies have informed us and continue to inform us about what is good and bad based on how much it complies with and is similar to these movies. They become holy in our minds, and deviation from them thereby becomes sacrilegious. It's why 30-something chuds can tap into that nostalgia and convince others that deviations from the pre-established norm are wrong in and of themselves, rather than judging something on its own merits and how much it might mean to new young people experiencing it.
Unlike the other movies I had, like "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Krull" never became a classic, well-respected in cinephile circles or mainstream audiences. It's a high-fantasy movie with some light sci-fi elements, made during a time when nearly all fantasy movies were critical and/or commercial failures. Hollywood fantasy movies were still crawling, not walking.
It's important to recognize that childhood favorites are not sacred, and that attaching our sense of self to media from our formative years can have some estrous results. In service of this, I decided to watch "Krull" again, now with the perspective of an adult and former literature teacher who can more keenly judge the narrative.
The central theme of "Krull" is that of love versus power. This is set up in the beginning of the film, reinforced in the middle of the film, and then paid off at the end. Colwyn and Lyssa are engaged to be married. The marriage will unite two feuding kingdoms so that they can more easily join forces to defend both kingdoms from the Beast and his army, the Slayers. During the marriage ceremony, Lyssa performs a ritual in which Colwyn must take the fire from her hand, an act of trust between them and the conclusion of their vows. As this happens, the Slayers storm the castle and kidnap Lyssa. The Beast demands that Lyssa marry him instead, offering her riches and dominion over the planet Krull. She rejects the Beast, choosing love over power. The Beast says that love is fleeting and power is eternal. To prove this, the Beast sends one of his minions to seduce Colwyn, but the hero rejects her because he is promised to Lyssa, proving the Beast wrong. Lyssa states that power is fleeting and that love is eternal. At the end of the film, Colwyn strikes the Beast with the glaive, said to be the strongest weapon in the world, but the Beast survives. Colwyn suddenly realizes that his love for Lyssa is the strongest weapon in the world, takes the fire from Lyssa's hand, and uses this manifestation of their love to defeat the Beast.
Throughout the narrative, there are other instances of love, either romantic love or familial love, turning the tide or allowing characters to grow. In order to find the Beast's castle, Ynyr asks his ex-wife, the Widow of the Web, for directions. Her continued love for Ynyr emboldened her to stop the spider, allowing him to escape and rescue Lyssa, while she is destroyed. Ergo, the cowardly magician becomes braver when he begins to take care of a small boy who has lost his only family. In the beginning of the film, he can barely transform into a goose, and by the end, he becomes a dangerous tiger. The boy Rell's familial bonds with his comrades are what makes him choose to save them, even though he knows doing so will make him suffer.
Criticism of "Krull" often comes down to how it more closely resembles other, better movies. "Star Wars," for one. Colwyn's journey to rescue the princess, guided by a wise old man who shows the hero a powerful weapon and eventually dies in service of the quest; troopers in white armor invading the enemy lair and annihilating it; and a fair bit more. However, this ignores that "Star Wars" itself is only following a formula, an ancient formula, and "Krull" is not only following "Star Wars" but also that very formula. This criticism is a little narrow, and the charge of derivative never holds much weight with me, not only with this film but in general. Movies, so long as they have a traditional narrative and are not experimental art films, are never wholly original, and a lifetime of nitpicking and spotting tropes should inform everyone from film students to casual observers. Charges of derivative are no longer the gotcha they once were.
What's more, "Krull" is not given enough credit for its aesthetic. The special effects were put together, at least in part, by Derek Meddings, who famously worked on the 1978 "Superman" film, designing the Krypton aesthetic. For 1983, the transformation scenes and battles and artistry are all impressive. They might not hold a candle to morphing effects made only a few short years later in the fantasy movie "Willow," and Blu-ray exposes some of the animation, but that's a somewhat retroactive criticism. The score may not be as memorable as some of the more famous work by James Horner, Academy Award-winning composer of the scores from "Titanic" and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," but it's rousing and hits the right notes. The performances by David Bentley and Alan Armstrong shine, particularly the latter. "Krull" has 10 R.D.A., and that's great. Also, who doesn't love the glaive, right? So cool.
So, the movie kind of works, except in all the ways that it doesn't. Scenes don't feel as if they have a progression, and the only character who goes through a proper arc and changes is Ergo. Ynyr, the wise old wizard archetype, is joined by the Emerald Seer, another wise old wizard archetype, and the redundancy is hard not to notice. Also, Colwyn and Lyssa have known each other for less than a day before she is kidnapped, which makes this central theme of love versus power a little rickety. Like, how much do either of them love each other? They have almost no dialogue together before the Slayers kidnap Lyssa, and what little they had was stilted and with no real chemistry. This wouldn't really matter if love were not the core of the film and the thing that allows Colwyn to defeat the Beast, but it is. So, these flaws and the themes and narrative make "Krull" feel a little hollow.
"Krull" does not entirely work, but that's okay. If I can impart some wisdom from this experience, it is this: Too many people have fallen into the trap of believing that criticism of something someone enjoys is criticism of the person enjoying it. See every superhero movie argument from the past 10 years. It's an understandable mistake. After some thought, I must confess that I like "Krull" because of how familiar it is to me and because it's so personal, and due to this, criticism of it mistakenly feels personal, but it's not. And it's important to recognize that it's not. To acknowledge flaws in media from your childhood instead of digging in your heels, attaching your ego to said media, and entrenching yourself in indefensible positions in lieu of changing. Instead of changing, digging our claws in and entrenching ourselves in our original position when confronted just ensures nothing new is learned. It sounds so obvious, doesn't it? And yet, if it were, I wouldn't have had to have created a video making that point.
Joining forces to battle an unearthly enemy for the life of their princess and the freedom of their world. A world two light-years beyond your imagination. A world rated PG. Coming soon to a theater near you.