Why has fantasy become so suddenly popular?

First we had Harry Potter, then the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
It seems to me that we’re getting quite a lot of fantasy on the big screen lately, and that even WRT books in general, fantasy is faring better than other types of genres.

Obviously I’m a little late in posting this, since it’s pretty obvious this phenomena has been going on for a while now.

But I’d like to know anyway. How come stuff like this (D&D or basically witches/warlocks/wizards/elves/dragons/swords/lairs/fantastic settings etc.) has suddenly sprung forth so rapidly?

Is it because Hollywood hasn’t done this stuff for a while and is fnally catching up? Or is it that our imaginations are more thirsty, and thus we require more exquisite romantic fare?

Don’t get me wrong I’m loving it… I really enjoy this kind of thing. I’m a romantic at heart, and so it seems to me like it’s a really great thing to do. I kind of like being in my own world. No that’s not it. I really enjoy the idea of making my world like this, and showing everyone else it. I wonder if everyone else is having the same feeling at the moment.

What do ya reckon?

Why is it selling so well?

One reason it is now popular on the big screen is the fact that only now is it really technologically possible to put what fantasy writings have evoked in the reader’s imagination onto the big screen.

I think one of the reasons is that the special effects are advanced enough to carry off some of the more fantastical aspects. Suddenly, the movies are impressive instead of (just) cheesy.

Harry Potter has brought a lot of books to light in his wake. The resurgence of fantasy really might be a result of that. People read HP because it’s what everyone is talking about, and they discover that it’s pretty neat and pick up other books to satisfy that craving.

I’m delighted. Except when a hack like Eoin Colfer picks up recognition from people who want to deride HP. Blah.

I would vote mostly for special effects.

But I could wish that it was because it is due to all the people my age who grew up with The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, The Secret of NYMH, Legend, etc. having now gotten all growed up with their own incomes.

But it’s probably because of CGI.

Another reason: 20 year nostalgia.

The popularity of fantasy on screen can be attributed to Walt Disney pictures animating fairy tales and fantasy figures of wizards and witches in the 30s and forties, starting roughly with Snow White and continuing on through Pinocchio, Fantasia, The Reluctant Dragon and ending roughly with Cinderella in either the late 40s or early 50s.

One of the bigger trends in the early to mid-1960s was high fantasy on the silver screen but with an new emphasis on live action as well as animation. We had Disney fantasies like Babes in Toyland, Mary Poppins, The Sword In The Stone continuing the trend and Ray Harryhausen movies breaking new ground in stop animation in pics like the Three Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts, and One Million Years B.C.

Again in the early to mid-1980s was a glut of nostalgic and high fantasy sci-fi: as Sage Rat rightly points out, was very seminal: *TRON, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, The Secret of NIMH, Legend * and the more mature pictures and sometimes darker themes in pics like Mazes and Monsters (please don’t laugh), *Ladyhawke, Dragonslayer, Beetlejuice * and Splash. In the 1980s it was particularly noticeable because fantasy themes appeared everywhere: in role playing gaming (Dungeons and Dragons), video games (Castlevania, Dragon’s Lair), television (Dungeons and Dragons, Smurfs), fantasy series (Dragonriders of Pern books by Anne MacCaffrey), comics (*Elfquest, Groo *)

So year we are, right on schedule, 20 years later, cashing in on much of that nostalgia, moving toward more epics in the same vein, sometimes blurring genre divisions beyond the conventional sci-fi and fantasy categories including horror and martial arts: Lord of the Rings Trilogy, *Matrix * Trilogy, Blade Trilogy and of course the more kid-friendly fare of Harry Potter movies and Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

I think it is BECAUSE of Potter and LotR. I don’t think they benfitted from anything else. I think they started a movement.

They were both quality products and the rest jumped on the band wagon!

I think this has alot to do with it. Look at how iffy movies like The Never ending Story were when CGI wasn’t at the level it is now. These genre were always pretty popular, and D&D has gone through many peaks and valley’s of popularity. Magic: The Gathering was insanely popular for a stretch. It’s just now, with movies being as easily assessable to the average public, things got taken to another level.

Shitty realities generally make for a desire for more escapist fare, and reality sure has sucked lately.

I think it is a combination of the mentioned tech/FX breakthroughs and a young generation that has grown up with playing video games that are mostly fantasy themed.

Because:

NERDS RULE !!

Yeah that too!!!
:smiley: ROFLMAO :smiley:

I think that the answer is mainly Askia’s “20 year nostalgia” explanation - as a kid of the eighties, the earliest toys, books, and movies I latched onto were fantasy-themed - Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, Kegend/Labyrinth/Ladyhawke/The Dark Crystal, and so on. Throughout the late eighties and especially the nineties, Fantasy as a genre all but vanished from the big screen and other forms of media. As a bit of a Fantasy nut, I lamented this - I remember being especially nostalgic and wistful in the late-nineties for my youthful days of popular fantasy. I also remember being shocked when Dragonheart hit the big screen in 1996, because it seemed like it had been forever since a fantasy movie had been on the big screen.

So, fantasy came back in just as things do when they cycle in and out of fashion; Harry Potter could just has easily have been any number of other series of books - it was just one of those right place/right time things.

But two major factors, also mentioned, contributed to the current “Fantasy Boom,” making it more of a craze than just a typical cycling back in - 9/11 and the “shitty reality” that followed have created an environment that people want to escape from via ecapist fantasy media, and the technological ability to actually excecute things like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia on the big screen in an impresive way.

If you’re talking about books, then fantasy has certainly not recently become popular. Fantasy has been increasing in popularity since The Lord of the Rings first came out in paperback in 1964. Indeed, before then fantasy wasn’t even really thought of as a separate publishing genre. Fantasy was published back then, but it was considered just part of fiction.