It's strange living in a decade where fantasy is the hip thing. Just look at the movie's that's going to be showing in the next few years: the last two Harry Potter movies, His Dark Materials, The Hobbit, Temeraire, etc. My personal shout-for-joy is George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire which is being adapted to an HBO mini-series. It's not just fantasy that's riding this current trend. Comics and science-fiction (especially with Marvel's comic-movies as Marvel's superheroes tend to be science-based) is getting a similar resurgence (although honestly, the latter not so much).
The blame can be laid on the feet of Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings. It showed that hey, epic fantasy can be profitable! The other I think is J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series. Without the Internet and globalization, I don't think it would have been possible that it'd grow this big (C.S. Lewis is similarly a prevalent author during his time but you know, no globalization and no Internet).
I mean let's look back to two decades before (I'm in my twenties so that's why two decades is my sweet number). While there have been many fantasy movies, few have really been great (and most were quite pulpy). I mean I remember movies like Conan and Clash of the Titans, but they're not exactly dying to watch them over and over again. If anything, the 80's was probably the boom of science-fiction, with Bladerunner and Battlestar Galactica and Tron (Edit: Apparently I even forgot the biggest geek movies out there, Star Wars and Star Trek). There have been a few good movies however. There's The Princess Bride (everyone should watch it, fantasy fan or not!) and The Never-Ending Story (which I'm only stating for nostalgia purposes rather than "it's really really good"). After that, there's just the animated feature The Last Unicorn, unless you could the anime titles from Japan (somebody will probably mention Flight of Dragons which I haven't watched). After that, I'll skip to the nineties and all I have left is Braveheart. Unless you could the horror movies that came in between that could have been classified as "fantasy" (i.e. Hellraiser). Hercules and its spin-off, Xena: Warrior Princess are probably more guilty pleasures than anything (and I'm honestly just watching it because it's the only fantasy show out there at the time).
So looking back at those, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter seem like a winner. So much so that the trend in local TV for the past few years has been fantasy soap operas instead of you know, simply rags-to-riches soap operas. My advice? Right the wave while you can. Not that the bubble will burst, but I expect there'll be fantasy titles cropping up that's more hype and special effects than substance. Or worse, do a Bridge to Terabithia.
Sadly, I think the wave of speculative TV shows has already burst here in the US. When Lost hit it huge that first season, the next season, I don't think a lot of people noticed just HOW MANY tv new series were created that were fantasy/SF. But the majority of them were crappy and most of them were cancelled. The only one I can think of that's still airing is Supernatural. (Yes, that was a post-Lost TV show.) In the seasons to follow, sure, there have been a couple speculative shows to premiere but nothing to that extent.
ReplyDeleteAnd ironically, when the LotR and HP movies hit it big, the fantasy genre (novels, I mean) had the chance to become an enormous wave. And what did it choose to do? Splinter into factions. I'm New Weird! I'm Urban Grotesque! I'm Clockpunk! This is the problem with the US fantasy genre -- we can't unite; everyone wants to be yooneek and different.