Krull

This 1983 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Epic has become a cult favorite.  The Beast and his band of slayers travel the galaxy in a Black Fortress that looks like a mountain.  They land on the planet Krull and commence to conquer.  The war is going so badly for the locals that two rival factions agree to join forces.  The alliance will be sealed with the marriage of Prince Colwyn to Princess Lyssa.  Just as the wedding ceremony is completed, slayers come bursting into the palace.  Princess Lyssa is kidnapped and Prince Colwyn is left for dead.

 

Colwyn proves to be the sole survivor and, since his father is among the dead, now king.  He awakens to find an old man patching his wound.  It is Ynyr the Old One.  Though it is not explained, Ynyr seems to be a legendary figure who has lived on a mountain for a very long time.  He proves to be very knowledgeable of exactly what Colwyn must do in order to defeat the Beast.  Along the way, they recover the glaive – a weapon Colwyn thought was a myth, recruit Ergo the Magnificent (a wizard who is mostly comic relief), enlist a band of escaped criminals (Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane among them), adopt a young boy who wants a dog, and encounter a cyclops who knows the day of his death.  It is ever so epic!  Our small band overcomes various obstacles and finally assaults the Black Fortress.  It is a fun action-adventure film and great popcorn fun.  However, when one ponders the setting afterwards, some issues arise.

 

One: Ergo is an obviously incompetent wizard but does demonstrate the power of magic on Krull.  He arrives on the scene as a fireball, clearly a form of magical transportation that he has not mastered but would be really useful.  Transformation into an animal seems to be relatively easy as he does it several times.  Where are all the competent wizards?  Why did we get stuck with Ergo the Bumbler?

 

Two: Fire mares can travel a thousand leagues in a day and race through the air.  Why isn’t this the standard cavalry horse?  I can’t imagine heroic knights who wouldn’t immediately track down some fire mares to allow them to crisscross the world almost as quickly as a wizard can teleport.

 

Three: Colwyn takes fire from Lyssa’s hand and then has an apparently endless supply of flame throwing.  If the standard wedding ceremony on Krull involves the groom dousing fire in a pool of water and the bride snatching it back from the water, shouldn’t there be a huge number of married couples who could hurl walls of flame?

 

Four: When Colwyn finally uses the glaive, it sweeps away several slayers at a time with no trouble whatsoever.  Why did he have to wait to use it?  A lot of his men would have survived if he had been using it all along.

 

The movie ends with a restatement of a prophecy that claims a King and a Queen would defeat the Beast and their son would rule the galaxy.  Really?  This world is medieval.  There are no cars, planes, trains, industry, or any inkling that this is a planet on the brink of space travel.  But the son of Colwyn and Lyssa is going to rule the galaxy?  I would have liked to see how that part of the prophecy came to pass.