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One thing I want to take issue with which was raised above, is the idea that fantasy requires an audience to suspend disbelief more so than fantasy or other genres - honestly I don't buy that one bit.

Starwars is routinely caught up in "is it fantasy or sci fi" arguments; meanwhile a huge amount of "modern day" shows which have basically fantasy levels of suspension of disbelief all the time.
I don't think magic, dragons, centaurs, unicorns, and so forth are the problem.


At least not in getting the audience to accept them. Now issues with CGI being cheap; with visual effects being challenged and so forth those I think are a valid area of concern. Also lets not forget that we've had periods in the past with popular fantasy films; its not as if its never been a thing, its just not a thing today. Much like how Westerns are not a thing today like they were in the past. Only with things like Westerns and WW2 films we can more easily draw correlations between real world social groups and politics to say "ahh here is why its not so popular/pushed today as it was back then"

If anything we might wonder why it is that comicbook superheroes, specifically American ones, are going through a huge revival right now when the actual comicbook scene is apparently not at its height. Especially when, if we look back to say the 90s (when many adults now were kids) there was almost equal measure of fantasy and sci-fi on the TV (at least in the kids cartoons and so forth)

To be clear, I don't think fantasy specifically requires a greater suspension of disbelief. I do think that stories that combine fantasy with the real world do, though.

A pure fantasy setting is easier to suspend disbelief, because it's not the real world... so potentially anything goes, within the rules of the setting. But when you put magic elements into the real world, you're relying on the audience enjoying the story enough to overlook the fact that elements of it go against what they expect the rules of the setting to be.

I also think you could get away with a lot more there back in the '80s than you can now, because the cinema-going public has much higher standards as a result of the internet devoting so much energy to picking everything apart before anyone even gets to see it...

I asked the same question to a friend who used to work in marketing at Warner Brothers.

He explained the modern economics of film production make it very hard to do anything expansive. He was involved in the due diligence around adapting Fred Saberhagen's sword books to the movies. This was before Lord of the Rings made it to theaters.

Making fantasy movies / period pieces is very expensive compared to other kinds of movies - think big sets, licenses for locations, teams of armorers, insurance for all the extras who were going to put their eyes out with props, etc. To generate the kind of return the company sought, they would have needed multiple lines of business around toy sales / clothing and other merchandise. His job was to secure commitments from manufacturers and retailers to actually produce the stuff people would buy.

Long story short, the numbers didn't work because they would parasitize sales of other merchandise from other franchises. Having too many fantasy movies becomes a race to the bottom. That's why we don't see too many of them.

At the same time the BBC can do loads of period dramas because they've built up the infrastructure overtime.

I'd wager if sci-fi wasn't a big hit right now they'd be saying the same thing. "You need so many huge indoor sets, and so much high end CGI and green screening that its not worth it. etc...."

Fundamentally what you probably need isn't a few big blockbusters like Lord of the Rings, but a whole series of solid middle-weight stand alone films. Big enough to turn a high profit and allow a studio to steadily build up a large inventory of sets, costumes, locations and so forth within the niche.
Which honestly is probably what we will see Amazon continue to grow and fantasy might well find its niche in series production under them over film production under Hollywood.

Period Dramas also benefit from historical buildings and areas. And the historical buildings often being open to hiring for filming, as every little helps keep up with the necessary maintenance.

So that reduces costs to just Hire & Set Dressing. Though I will admit ignorance on whether location filming is still much more expensive that set filming.

Fantasy adventure movies? Although not every film can be Hawk The Slayer, there has been plenty of half-decent movies over the years...

Middle Earth.
Narnia.
Harry Potter.
D&D: Honour Among Thieves.
Krull.
Willow.
Pretty much all of Ray Harryhausen's and Charles Schneer movies 1958 onwards.
Jack the Giant Killer.
The Golden Compass.
Dragonslayer.

Curse of the Black Pearl comes to mind as a perfect marriage of fantasy and adventure genres.

Honestly I think the only problem the latter Caribbean films had was that Depp lost his way with the character/story and spent far too much time being "drunk" and fooling around. Almost free wheeling as a character whilst if you watch the first film he's a bit crazy but he's a skilful pirate in his own way.

The second and third movies, while visually fantastic, didn't manage to nail the playful tone of the first one. Coupled with them essentially being one movie split in the middle, it's a long and slightly tedious visual spectacle.

Yup, that's why I only mentioned the first one

Is also why I mentioned there being 1, 2 or 3 good Pirates movies depending on who you ask.

The first, despite Johnny Depp never having dropped character since, is a stone cold classic.

The next two I for one need to be in the right mood for.

The two after that? Well I won’t call them crap. But they’re not as enjoyable.