Sorsha is your typical modern gal. She’s in charge of men and among the usual means women use to wield authority over men: emasculating condescension, passive aggressiveness, or overt and overcompensating aggressiveness, Sorsha has opted for the last. Clad in armor wielding swords, she works for her mother Bavmorda (that is, another woman in charge) and together their goal is to accrue even more power by, wait for it, capturing and murdering an innocent baby (also female).
But she didn’t count on Madmartigan, “the greatest swordsman that ever lived”. Through a mishap with some love fairy dust, Madmartigan woos Sorsha, who is indeed wooed but proceeds to threaten him with blades, kick him in the face, and otherwise insult and degrade him. But in this scene, she sees Madmartigan at his best, and at one point (5:17) his manly gallantry is overwhelming and she is converted to the good side.
And as if to twist the knife a little, in the ending, we see Sorsha has dropped the weapons and armor in favor of a white gown and has become the mother to the baby she was trying to kill. That’s right, she’s now barefoot and pregnant! Or at least pretty close.
P.S. Props to the brownies, who are mostly ineffective, but unflappable and unwaveringly loyal and recall St. Teresa: “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.”
Never thought of that scene in that way, but I think you’re dead on.
And, yeah, Willow is full of flaws and every character has a direct correlation to someone in Star Wars, but you know, I still kind of love it.
Gosh, I dunno. I still get an uncontrollable facial tic whenever I think of Willow. I know when I watched it twenty years ago I thought it was one of the silliest movies I had ever seen in my life, including the way they kept playing the same twenty seconds of the baby crying in the tower over and over and over and over and over and over again.