Living in a fantasy (take two)

I think the technological advancement is the single most important factor in the recent success of fantasy films. Fantasy as a genre has always been popular (see my other article about this) but the technical aspects of the special effects have been limited to more primitive ways of creating the illusion of another reality. So even if Willow or Conan were well received films there simply wasn’t a way to recreate a book like Lord of the rings or Narnia. There was an attempt to make Lord of the rings back in 1978 but it failed even to gather the smallest of audiences before fading into history.

It seems to me that most people think that the pressure of living in today’s society is the single most important factor in the success of films such as Lord of the rings. If this is true most movies where we are transported to another world would be popular today because of the need for escapism. I find that the recent success of the documentary contradict this argument. If we wanted to escape reality we wouldn’t go to the cinema to watch a documentary about war or other wrong doings would we?

So why didn’t more directors make fantasy movies in the eighties when they knew that those movies made a healthy amount of money? Could it be the difficulty of converting the penned reality into a visceral experience? How would one create fabled monsters or mass battles with thousand participants? One simple answer could be that the stories people wanted to adopt were too complicated visually.

Today the special effects are so complex that it is hard to distinguish between our reality and the recreated one. This is a powerful tool for directors to use when they want to immerse their viewers. It was simply not possible to realise the books of our favourite authors ten years ago so we had to wait until now to be able to recreate the image in peoples mind on the silver screen.