The sad news showed up late Tuesday that Val Kilmer has passed away. He was just 65 and it was apparently pneumonia that got him in the end, although he did have quite a horrific battle with throat cancer 8-10 years back.
He had a fairly prolific career although I have heard many stories about him being notoriously hard to work with. I can’t say that he was anywhere close to a favorite – I’ve really only seen a handful of his films, almost all of them from early in his career.
Two of his early works I’ve seen repeatedly are Real Genius and Willow. In Real Genius he plays a top of the charts college genius – kind of hard to tell the plot without some serious spoilers. The movie is not even remotely realistic but it’s fun and the good guys win without guns, fistfights or even any blood.
Willow is an amazing fantasy with witchcraft, brownies, trolls, fairies and an epic battle. Spoiler alert – the good guys win. In addition to Val Kilmer playing a charming rogue, the movie is graced with an incredible performance by Warwick Davis. Here is my favorite scene (although I love lots of scenes in this film). This is as Willow (Davis) is leaving his village on his quest.
Kaya gives Willow a Braided Bush
Given my track record, the next couple of weeks will probably see me tracking down some more of his movies that I haven’t seen. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed.
Any Val Kilmer movies that you particularly like? Particularly dislike?
Trail Baboon 
Although I respect his entire career, Willow is definitely our favorite Kilmer movie.
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Welcome to the Trail. While looking up a couple of things for this post I discovered that he met Joanne Whaley, who played Sorcha, while on set and they eventually married!
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i enjoyed his role as jim morrison in the doors
he was good
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I’m pretty sure we watched Willow when our girls were young. I don’t remember anything from it-that would have been about 40 years ago. Otherwise, Val Kilmer is just a Hollywood name to me.
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Top Gun
Tombstone
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He’s not an actor I really thought much about. I know we saw the first Top Gun… beyond that, not sure what I’ve seen of his.
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When we had new carpet installed in the basement last year, our one and only TV and DVD player had to be unplugged and moved for the carpet installers. I had no idea how to set it up again, so we have been without a TV for months. We rarely watch it, so it was not a problem. This week the company that provides our internet and cable channels and phone service hooked us up to the state of the art cable that was installed in the neighborhood last summer. The technicians were kind enough to set up the TV and everything for me, so now we can watch movies if we wish.
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It was fiber optic cable, whatever that means.
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It means it’s good. 🙂
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Top Gun. Like.
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The Saint is my favorite Val Kilmer movie, but it has not been mentioned in any of the articles I’ve read since his death, so I may be the only one who liked it. I haven.t seen Willow or Real Genius, but I’ll check them out now. I also liked him in Tombstone.
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The Saint was fair in my book… but I was hoping for something more like the old The Saint tv series, which I adored.
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The radio version starred Vincent Price as Simon Templar.
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OK, my decision to watch Val Kilmer movies maybe derailed by how many of them are so incredibly violent. I’m about halfway through Tombstone and I’m about done and I only made it about 15 minutes into Heat.
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I’m afraid I have nothing new to add – we stopped going to most movies about the time Val Kilmer was getting going…
I do want to see Willow, tho’, having seen that clip, VS.
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I’ve nothing to add, either. I missed a lot of movies over the last 40 years.
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I’m another who hasn’t seen any of these movies. I’m really not familiar with him at all. He’s certainly handsome though.
OT: My goodness, what a good day it was yesterday here in Northfield. The Northfield News says that approximately 1,000 people were in Bridge Square for the protests. There was a great vibe there. I heard a police bullhorn once, but I think they were just asking people stay out of the street. There were some drivers in large trucks who decided to rev engines and many cars honked, but there were no negative interactions that I saw at all.
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