The sad state of on-screen fantasy, 20 years after ‘The Lord of the Rings’
The first film in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary trilogy was a massive success, both commercially and critically, and the next two films – ‘The Two Towers’ (2002) and ‘The Return of the King’ (2003) – were just as well-received, with RotK receiving Academy Award nominations in 11 categories and winning all of them, including Best Picture. Taken together, the three films are perhaps the best consecutive nine hours, 18 minutes (11:26, if you’re watching the extended editions) of cinematic narrative ever put on screen.
For the fantasy genre, it’s been all downhill from there.
Before 2000, neither fantasy films nor superhero movies were famous for quality. While some efforts had gained footholds in pop culture consciousness – Christopher Reeve’s ‘Superman’, Michael Keaton’s ‘Batman’, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘Conan’ – both genres were fairly regarded as chock-full of schlock. At the turn of the millennium, that changed in a big way. Yes, 2000’s bafflingly bad ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ stumbled, but LotR soon showed the world the enormous potential of elves, dwarves, and dragons, when they’re put to film with modern technology, care for source material, and creative excellence across the board. Was a golden age of fantasy films about to begin?
Superheroes are fine
At the same time, ‘X-Men’ (2000), ‘Spider-Man’ (2002), and ‘Batman Begins’ (2005) were crashing through the door that ‘Blade’ (1998) had managed to crack open. These movies demonstrated what a skilled and earnest director with a budget behind him could accomplish with these iconic comic-book characters, and although the third film in each respective series is largely seen as a bit of a bust, those initial outings remain much loved, and the second films (‘X-Men 2’, ‘Spider-Man 2’, ‘The Dark Knight’) are still regarded as some of the best in the genre. Plenty of super-powered stinkers were released as well, of course, but the success of those films paved the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with ‘Iron Man’, whose 23-film ‘Infinity Saga’ is a truly historic long-form film narrative that will likely never be rivaled, either in storytelling scope or in studio profit.
(Of course, the MCU remains a going concern even after ‘Thanos’, but as the current creative direction seems to be a three-pronged approach of “introduce new non-white-male character,” “make male character female,” and “make white character non-white,” signs are replete that returns are diminishing, but that’s another article entirely).
But as superheroes took flight, what happened to fantasy? Like comics, an enormous library of fantasy fiction already existed to be mined, so studios began digging. D&D’s failure relegated that property to made-for-TV sequels (although it’s being resurrected with some star power), but so many other fictional worlds, filled with swords, sorcery, mighty beasts and every other Tolkienesque trope, waited in pages for their chances to be lovingly adapted to screen.
An age of fantasy mediocrity
As it turns out, there’s a significant creative difference between “lovingly adapted” and “sloppily exploited.”
Ursula Le Guin’s beloved ‘Earthsea’ stories were the first victims. In 2004, the Sci-fi Channel adapted the first two books into a two-part miniseries. Le Guin herself hated the project so much that she disowned it entirely.
In 2005, the first installment of the next huge prospective post-LotR cinematic fantasy universe was released. ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’, the first (published) book in C.S. Lewis’ seven-book ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ series, looked to be a surefire winner. Lewis and Tolkien were famously great friends, and much of the same creative talent from Jackson’s Tolkien trilogy was working on Narnia. Fans were excited, and the adaptation was fine, but that’s all it was. The movie met with enough success that Prince Caspian followed in 2008, then ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ in 2010, but box office receipts and reviews declined with each, and the series ended with a decidedly un-Aslan whimper.