Mulawin: A Magical Flop
By Michelle E. Ancheta

Have you ever felt like life never seemed to run out of disappointments? Like the time you found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. Somehow reality never gets tired of reminding us just how hard life can be; but there’s nothing worse than being duped twice over. It’s like being told Santa doesn’t exist and not receiving gifts for Christmas or watching a movie that’s rated A, only to find out A stood for awful. And that’s exactly what the movie Mulawin was – AWFUL.

Amidst the hype and hullabaloo, Mulawin turned out to be nothing more than shoddy workmanship. Based on a poorly written script, bad direction and combined with actors who struggled to deliver good acting, Mulawin disappoints drastically. The movie begins with the scene of a distraught queen, Amihan (Iza Calzado) caught in a battle waged by her mutinous sister Pirena (Sunshine Dizon) who plots to steal the gintong binhi (Pinoy version of The Sorcerer’s stone). Their aim: to resurrect the main antagonist Ravenum (Michael de Mesa) in order to wreak havoc for the sheer fun of it, with no clear motivation whatsoever. From there the scene shifts to Pirena easily getting what she wants from Alena (Karylle Marquez) and Ybarro (Dingdong Dantes), keepers of the gintong binhi who didn’t really seem to be protecting the gintong binhi after all. Then we find the always heavily coiffured lead actor Aguiluz (Richard Gutierrez), unconscious on the beach. The story moves on as Aguiluz tries to recollect his past and fulfill his duty as Avila’s (The Mulawin’s slowly dying world) sugo, while searching for his one true love Alwina (Angel Locsin).

In between adventures, Alwina and Aguiluz encounter and kill numerous enemies while miraculously keeping their swords sparkling clean and always looking like they’ve just come from a photo shoot. Aguiluz’ also gives a tagalized version of Aragorn’s speech to his followers while knighting them afterwards ala Orlando Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven. And to say that special effects would save the movie, since everything else pretty much went wrong, sadly this still isn’t the case. The special effects had the resolution of a 1980’s techni-colored T.V., while the CG (computer-generated) characters seemed just about as real as aliens on the moon. The movie does not have any impact on the audience, moral or emotional whatsoever, but does elicit one prevailing reflection: “Why the hell did I spend on *%#@ like this??”

In the end, Mulawin is nothing more than just another one of life’s MAJOR disappointments.