Jedi Master Carr
Jun 28th, 2001, 04:33:12 PM
Since this came up on a completely different topic I figured it was best that it gets it own topic. First off I want to challenge the point that Fantasy films aren't popular and are also mostly terrible movies. The first think I want to do is clear up this notion that many people have that fantasy books and movies have to have knights, wizards or dragons in it. To me that's a misconception because there are many films which are fantasy but do not contain any of those elements. A fantasy is anything that is unexplainable, it can be of supernatural origins, it can be mythological, or it can deal with magic. Now that I have defined a fantasy I want to tackle point that fantasy films are mostly bad films. This belief comes from all the bad B movies that have been made in the fantasy genre. You know the films I speak of the conan, Beastmaster rip offs that have dominated many video shelves for the past decade. You can't really use these as examples because every genre has bad B movies so we instead lets look at what Hollywood has produced in the Fantasy genre.
I am only going to deal with some of the more famous movies here and maybe just list some others. Probably the most famous and successful Fantasy film is the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz made a lot of money and is still widely popular and I remember as a kid watching the film every year on TV. Of course its fantasy because it deals mostly with magic and because none of it can happen. The next film I going to look at is Star Wars, mostly because it has a lot of fantasy elements, and I argue that is more of a fantasy then it is a science fiction film. Of course Star Wars is a not a fantasy in the LOTR mold but it contains a lot of elements: mythological, magic (the force), etc. Just to keep this short I am going to list some other films which have been popular and are fantasies: The Princess Bride, Merlin, The Neverending Story, Excalibur, Willow, Krull, Legend, Dragonheart, Shrek, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas all come to mind. These are all fantasies for one reason or another and all have been popular to some extent either at the box office or have become cult classics like Excalibur. Still, until recently the Star Wars movies were the only ones to be really successful I mean 200 plus, but now the Grinch and Shrek has both passed that mark and I think the genre will only more popular in the next few years.
I say its going to get more popular because you have at least a dozen movies being made in the five years. Obviously we have the next two Star Wars movies and the LOTR coming out but there is also the very popular Harry Potter films coming out, The mists of Avalon is a miniseries coming on TNT, certain studios are also trying to buy up the rights to other books including C.S Lewis very well know Chronicles of Narnia, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. The reason for this surgeance is mostly because the technology has finally made it possible to make these films. Before they could barley made and when they were they had to keep it simple like with The Princess Bride. And when they did anything huge it had to be done with stop motion effects and they could never really do what they want like with the Neverending story which is no where near as incredible as the book because of the lack of CGI. I guess this leads to the bigger question will this films be successful.
I think most of these films will be successful. Especially Harry Potter and LOTR I think both will make a lot of money. Harry Potter 100-200, the first LOTR movie 200-300, the others could do as well depending on good these movie are. Still, its impossible to say if it will catch on I know there are probably people who will not see these movies because of its fantasy elements, so its going to depend on word of mouth. Second this is especially true of LOTR is the world wide market. LOTR is very popular through the world and will do very well overseas so regardless if it only say made 175 here it could do 500 million at least world wide and since all three films cost only 120 million to make I'm sure New Line would be very happy to get 1 billion and half back from the films.
I am only going to deal with some of the more famous movies here and maybe just list some others. Probably the most famous and successful Fantasy film is the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz made a lot of money and is still widely popular and I remember as a kid watching the film every year on TV. Of course its fantasy because it deals mostly with magic and because none of it can happen. The next film I going to look at is Star Wars, mostly because it has a lot of fantasy elements, and I argue that is more of a fantasy then it is a science fiction film. Of course Star Wars is a not a fantasy in the LOTR mold but it contains a lot of elements: mythological, magic (the force), etc. Just to keep this short I am going to list some other films which have been popular and are fantasies: The Princess Bride, Merlin, The Neverending Story, Excalibur, Willow, Krull, Legend, Dragonheart, Shrek, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas all come to mind. These are all fantasies for one reason or another and all have been popular to some extent either at the box office or have become cult classics like Excalibur. Still, until recently the Star Wars movies were the only ones to be really successful I mean 200 plus, but now the Grinch and Shrek has both passed that mark and I think the genre will only more popular in the next few years.
I say its going to get more popular because you have at least a dozen movies being made in the five years. Obviously we have the next two Star Wars movies and the LOTR coming out but there is also the very popular Harry Potter films coming out, The mists of Avalon is a miniseries coming on TNT, certain studios are also trying to buy up the rights to other books including C.S Lewis very well know Chronicles of Narnia, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. The reason for this surgeance is mostly because the technology has finally made it possible to make these films. Before they could barley made and when they were they had to keep it simple like with The Princess Bride. And when they did anything huge it had to be done with stop motion effects and they could never really do what they want like with the Neverending story which is no where near as incredible as the book because of the lack of CGI. I guess this leads to the bigger question will this films be successful.
I think most of these films will be successful. Especially Harry Potter and LOTR I think both will make a lot of money. Harry Potter 100-200, the first LOTR movie 200-300, the others could do as well depending on good these movie are. Still, its impossible to say if it will catch on I know there are probably people who will not see these movies because of its fantasy elements, so its going to depend on word of mouth. Second this is especially true of LOTR is the world wide market. LOTR is very popular through the world and will do very well overseas so regardless if it only say made 175 here it could do 500 million at least world wide and since all three films cost only 120 million to make I'm sure New Line would be very happy to get 1 billion and half back from the films.