Fantasy films and the degree in difficulty

There are so many fantasy films that are being made, thanks to the success of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. However ,since those films and to a lesser degree the Harry Potter franchise, everything else in the fantasy genre has failed.
“The Chronicles of Narnia” were ok, but it did feel a little too sugary, and perhaps should have been made even darker (imagine if Guillermo del Toro had done it!).
Eragon and Path Finder flopped big time, which makes me realise that of all the genres of film, fantasy is the hardest to pull off. The most recent acclaimed film was del Torros “Pan’s Labyrinth” which was deserving of all the kudos it received, but was also not purely a fantasy film.

I think failure is mainly because in order to hold cynical audiences attention, and to make it believable, it needs to be ground in an organic reality while stirring your imagination. LOTR was so successful because it not only appealed to children, but it appealed to adults even more. The magic used was not too fantastical, only done sparingly and the creatures were all based on natural history (unlike George Lucas and his creatures pieced together by bits of insects, dinosaurs and mammals – like The Wuzzles ).

What we have coming up is a slew of films that could go either way. “Stardust” got a rave review from Harry Knowles , but he is not often taken seriously.
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass looks to thrill, but could be a disaster if the lead child actress is awful in it, and also if it feels too much like a children’s film. If Nicole Kidman can pull off evil, then watch out. A lot of the success will ride on her performance.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is in pre production, so lets us hope it adult-fies the source material since the people who originally read the books are now adults, and I doubt they want to be pandered too.
Then we have “Beowulf” about The Scandinavian warrior Beowulf who must fight and defeat the monster Grendel who is terrorizing towns, and later, Grendel's mother, who begins killing out of revenge, directed by Robert Zemeckis. Advance stills look impressive, and lets hope the dark source material does not get covered in glitter and effects to hide a lazy screenplay.


Looking to the future there are some exciting movies coming up. So if you are looking to 2008, here you go:
”An Affair of Scorcerers”, “Dante’s Inferno”, “He Man”, “The Spiderwick Chronicles”, and finally Where the Wild Things Are.