Fantasy Films

Fantasy Films

 There are many different types of fantasy films, although they all have similar elements. They all include some kind of magical element, supernatural event, fantasy creatures or imaginary worlds. As a cinematic genre, it has not been very highly regarded in the past and has only recently begun to gain popularity, with films such as the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and the ‘Harry Potter’ series. After these successes, Hollywood picked up the trend through films such as ‘Eragon’ and Phillip Pullmans ‘The Golden Compass’. It is quite hard to classify a film as a purely fantasy film, as the genre very often over laps with sci-fi, superhero and fairytale genres and animated films are rarely put into the fantasy category, and are instead catalogued into children’s films. As well as this, when magic is primarily used as a comedy tool, such as ‘Freaky Friday’ or ‘It’s a Boy Girl Thing’ are not generally identified as fantasy films.

 Like with many other genres, there are many subgenres to the over branching fantasy genre. The two most common of these subgenres are high fantasy – sometimes known as epic fantasy – and sword and sorcery fantasy. There is also low fantasy – this does not refer to the quality of the film, but rather where the film is set. In the ‘real world’ or a world in which has the same rationality as the real world. This genre often overlaps with contemporary fantasy in which events happen in the real world. Contemporary fantasy is a type of low fantasy. Two genres which are not as common are historical fantasies – which put a supernatural twist on myths or legends and take place prior to the 20^th century - and romantic fantasies – which place a place a particular emphasis on relationships, whether social, political or romantic. There is also a ‘Lost World’ subgenre of both fantasy and sci-fi films which revolves around a world either out of place, out of time or both.