The first RenFest-styled fantasy film franchise will make a BILLION JILLION DOLLARS.

Cafe Society
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This tremendous insight was revealed to me today while attending the local Ren Faire. Now, sunburned, dehydrated and stinky, I share this revelation so that you too can bask in the awesome truth of it.

Some might object that a massively successful RenFest movie franchise already exists, in the form of **The Lord of the Rings ** trilogy. However, I would argue that the high fantasy source material prevents the films from fully embodying the pure Renfest “what the hell” attitude. Tolkien’s characters are not adventurers by choice, but by necessity. Also, compared to the typical Renfest, the movies have remarkably few bodices on display.

The **Pirates of the Caribbean ** movies are in fact closer to the Renfest in their appreciation of swashbuckling deviltry and style for style’s sake. Like the Ren Faire, these movies are not obstructively scrupulous about consistency or historical accuracy getting in the way of a good time. Sure, they’ve got Port Royal, and long nines, and tacking into the wind, and gold plundered from the New World… AND KILLER UNDEAD SKELETONS. This spiritual kinship has not escaped notice, as the number of pirates at Renfests has increased astronomically in recent years.

However, the pirate genre itself is intrinsically self-limiting in certain respects. For example, it is difficult to justify the use of horses in a pirate movie. While perhaps not absolutely essential, horses have a basic fantasy-adventure appeal which by and large the pirate movie is unable to exploit fully. And again, there is the question of bodices, which were really quite popular in the 18th century, but you get to see almost none of them because you’re following the adventures of a bunch of stinky guys out at sea.

What is needed is a way to graft the exuberant low-fantasy pirate attitude to the majestic vistas of epic high fantasy. We need a movie with swordfights, and magic, and chivalry, and daring escapes, and horses, and taverns, and wizards, and bodices, and bogus Celtic myth, and killer skeletons, and wenches, and bodices, and wenches.

It needs to be done. It must be done, but done properly, with a suitable budget; you can’t bottle the Renfest magic merely by using actual Renfest performers to save money. The Dungeons and Dragons movie didn’t do it. **Hawk the Slayer ** didn’t do it. But it will happen. Perhaps not tomorrow, but soon. And it won’t have anything to do with Robert Jordan.

Hear the truth of my words. I am not saying this simply because I have been huffing scented beads all afternoon.

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I would so pay to go to a movie like this. I go to the movies (mostly) for entertainment. Real life I can get for free.

Although some of the best movies I’ve seen have been serious. Go figure. All I know if that a Renfest inspired film sounds wonderful.

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I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Boobies.

4

Maybe the planned adapation of George R. R. Martin’s Ice and Fire series for HBO will fill the kind of criteria you’re looking for.

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Please God No. Song of Ice and fire is way too gritty.

A filmed Belgariad might be better. Or the other one by Eddings, Sparhawk something.

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You can have all the bodices and wenches you want, as long as there are a few burly guys in kilts and rolled up shirtsleeves.

I’m thinking something post-apocalyptic, where only ren-faire participants survive, along with a metric ton of upholstery brocade and some steel boning.

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I think the OP wants the Warcraft movie.

Cheerful what-the-hell anachronism? Warcraft’s got it in spades

Frequent occurence on scantily-clad attractive women regardless of plausibility? Got it

Comedic relief? Got it.

Mix of large-scale epic battles and swashbuckling adventure? Uh-huh.

Actual strong, compelling dramatic story? Yup

It’s not exactly ren-fair, but all the things the OP seems to be looking for are the hallmarks of Warcraft. Well, those and the near-infinite number of clever in-jokes and pop-culture references they always sneak into things.

The movie’s going to be live action*, and Chris Metzen (long-time writer/artist for the game series and current Blizzard VP of Creative Development) will be writing it (and I believe also one of the producers, IIRC) so it should be pretty true to the source.

*Although I think they should’ve gone 100% CG and really stayed true to Blizzard’s characteristic art style.

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MST3K Episode 913, a touchstone of the genre:

:cues:

**I sing of the glorious Delta Knights,
They live in Europe somewhere.
With Archimedes they eat their Wheaties,
And look pretty good in fake hair.
* *
– Sir Thomas Neville Servo Consort of the Middle Ages Just-After-the-Plague Singers

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I think your movie is tenable, except for … the wenches and the bodices, and most signifcantly, the boobies. American filmmakers don’t appear to have much ability to balance the boobies. A film is either practically all boobage, or practically no boobage, and darned little in between. I don’t understand this. But I’ve encountered the same problem in sword and sandal movies, which also have huge potential for high adventure plus wenchage and boobage, and no film has ever really hit the spot.

The closest I could think of would be “Flesh & Blood,” but it was overall a downer and didn’t have much sense of fun to it, though you could sense that someone making the movie was dimly trying to understand the whole “fun” thing and bring it to the screen, buit didn’t quite make it. Well, didn’t make it by a long shot, really.

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The closest thing I’ve encountered to the movie you’re describing is an adult anime called “Dragon Pink.” And there’s another adult anime called “Fencer of Minerva.” Also an adult anime called “Dragon Rider.” And finally another adult anime called “Wordsworth Saga” although it doesn’t have quite the same sense of fun as the others.

In short, check out some adult anime and see how well or badly they approximate your ideal movie of this sort.

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My goode lady, I give thee

Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling

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The novels There Will Be Dragons and Emerald Sea are very close to this. (There’s more books in the series, but I haven’t read them yet.)

The premise: The world has gone massively high-tech, with nearly limitless power and easy conversion of energy to matter. So everybody is fully reliant on the power system.

Then the power distribution system goes down. And for the most part, the people most capable of surviving are those who run or take part in Ren Faire re-enactments.

They have a lot of modern concepts, but a Renaissance level technology. Best example from Emerald Sea: The dragon carrier. It’s a flattop ship with compressed-steam catapaults, designed to hold dragons (some genetically engineered animals, one a Human who turned into a dragon bfore the system went down.)

Naturally, Ren Faire folk being who they are, clothing soon develops into a stylized Renaissance pattern. However, the clothing is downplayed in the book in favor of stuff like plot and character development. Should the series be filmed, they’d have to pay attention to the clothing. So the film version would definitely have liripipes, kilts, tights, and bodices. And heaving bosoms in corsets, too.

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lokij, that looks really good. I’m a fan of post-apocalyptic, medieval-style literature, so that’s right up my alley. Thanks!

EDIT: You too, Scuba Ben! My wishlist on Amazon just got much larger.

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Order up the whole trilogy, then gets his “Island In The Sea of Time” trilogy for the other side of the story. Then get ready for his latest trilogy, which takes place 22 years after the events in Dies The Fire.

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Miss Purl, the two books I mentioned are available as e-books on Baen.com, probably for cheaper than you can find them on Amazon.

Meanwhile, I’ll also go check out Dies the Fire. Anybody want to start a post-apocalyptic / Ren Faire book club?

(Random note: I had originally typed out the last line of my other post as “Heaving corsets in bosoms.” I think my priorities are wackbords.)

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You could start sending George Romero some cash to make Knightriders 2, as it’s unlikely any studio will finance a second one.

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Did you go to BARF today? Maybe I saw or smelled you there?

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Ah! I see here an updated version of *A Knight’s Tale * (2001) only that the anachronisms are justified this time…

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Another MST3k classic, Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell comes close, too. Illustrating the difference between a “cheesy” movie and a “lousy” movie. Deathstalker could never hope to be a great movie, but it had a good time with itself.

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I just wanted to chime in and recommend the Stirling trilogies.