It's strange living in a decade where fantasy is the hip thing. Just look at the movie's that's going to be showing in the next few years: the last two
Harry Potter movies,
His Dark Materials,
The Hobbit,
Temeraire, etc. My personal shout-for-joy is George R. R. Martin's Song of
Ice and Fire which is being adapted to an HBO mini-series. It's not just fantasy that's riding this current trend. Comics and science-fiction (especially with Marvel's comic-movies as Marvel's superheroes tend to be science-based) is getting a similar resurgence (although honestly, the latter not so much).
The blame can be laid on the feet of Peter Jackson and
Lord of the Rings. It showed that hey, epic fantasy can be profitable! The other I think is J.K. Rowling and her
Harry Potter series. Without the Internet and globalization, I don't think it would have been possible that it'd grow this big (C.S. Lewis is similarly a prevalent author during his time but you know, no globalization and no Internet).
I mean let's look back to two decades before (I'm in my twenties so that's why two decades is my sweet number). While there have been many fantasy movies, few have really been great (and most were quite pulpy). I mean I remember movies like
Conan and
Clash of the Titans, but they're not exactly dying to watch them over and over again. If anything, the 80's was probably the boom of science-fiction, with
Bladerunner and
Battlestar Galactica and
Tron (
Edit: Apparently I even forgot the biggest geek movies out there,
Star Wars and
Star Trek). There have been a few good movies however. There's
The Princess Bride (everyone should watch it, fantasy fan or not!) and
The Never-Ending Story (which I'm only stating for nostalgia purposes rather than "it's really really good"). After that, there's just the animated feature
The Last Unicorn, unless you could the anime titles from Japan (somebody will probably mention
Flight of Dragons which I haven't watched). After that, I'll skip to the nineties and all I have left is
Braveheart. Unless you could the horror movies that came in between that could have been classified as "fantasy" (i.e.
Hellraiser).
Hercules and its spin-off,
Xena: Warrior Princess are probably more guilty pleasures than anything (and I'm honestly just watching it because it's the only fantasy show out there at the time).
So looking back at those,
Lord of the Rings and
Harry Potter seem like a winner. So much so that the trend in local TV for the past few years has been fantasy soap operas instead of you know, simply rags-to-riches soap operas. My advice? Right the wave while you can. Not that the bubble will burst, but I expect there'll be fantasy titles cropping up that's more hype and special effects than substance. Or worse, do a
Bridge to Terabithia.