![]() ![]() ![]() Star Wars cemented Lucas’s ties to science fiction, but it’s unsurprising how many other projects he was involved with during this period were high fantasy, including Dragonslayer (1981), Labyrinth (1986), and Willow, which he first conceived in 1972. The film shifted the possibilities of narrative storytelling onscreen and proved that adult audiences had an appetite for make-believe. Star Wars changed everything not just because of its groundbreaking special and practical effects (or the $100 million that sales of its action figures brought in the first 18 months after its release). But in writing the script, George Lucas was heavily inspired by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book that explores the through threads in the structure of world myths, including the hero’s journey, a tenet of high fantasy. The science fiction blockbuster is hardly high fantasy. This started to change in the 1960s with films including Jason and the Argonauts (1963), but in the early 1980s, epic fantasy onscreen began to take off.Īnd this is due in large part to Star Wars (1977). But outside of animation, particularly Disney, high fantasy didn’t yet have a place in movies (maybe because MGM’s live-action answer to Disney’s success, The Wizard of Oz, took a decade to earn back its budget). Later art films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) used fantastic elements to explore weighty themes like death and spirituality. Other movies from the silent era were based on epic poems like the Austrian movie Die Nibelungen (1924) and included mythical creatures like dragons and dwarves. However, epic fantasy took a longer time to gain traction onscreen. It’s widely regarded to be the world’s first narrative film, as well as the first movie directed by a woman, Alice Guy-Blaché. The 1900 silent movie La Fée Aux Chou (The Cabbage Fairy) depicts a woman with a wand, magicking babies out of cabbages. Lucasfilm/MGM/Courtesy of Getty ImagesĪs a film genre, fantasy is nearly as old as motion pictures themselves. With the series recently put on pause and Willow the movie’s 35th anniversary coming up this month, one has to wonder: When did onscreen high fantasy stop being fun ? Director Ron Howard, actor Dawn Downing, producer George Lucas, and actor Warwick Davis discuss a scene on the set of the fantasy feature film, ‘Willow,’ 1988. Similar to the original movie, it was kind of a mess - in a tweet, series creator Jon Kasdan lovingly dubbed it a “shabby, idiosyncratic little show.” But also like its predecessor, and unlike many other contemporary live-action epic fantasy shows, it was a blast. ![]() In 2022, an unexpected sequel to the cult film debuted on Disney+ in the form of an eight-episode first season. ![]()
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