The Elusive Key, Unlocking the Alchemy of the Fantasy Blockbuster

    I've seen bunch of people who're just now discovering stuff like 'Krull' and, in a modern context, are a little confused."Was it supposed to be like that?", "Was it trying to rip off 'Star Wars'?" and "Was that Liam Neeson?" 

(Yup, and Robbie Coltrane, too).  

    If you grew up in a world where Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and HBO's 'Game of Thrones' (before they cocked it up) are just accepted facts of life, it can be hard to look back on earlier, less successful attempts to bring the Fantasy Genre to the big screen.

    The thing that people who weren't there don't dig is that, with Star Wars bringing pulp science fiction to life, there was this idea that, if someone could find the key to unlock the alchemical formula to do the same with Fantasy, they'd be on the gravy train for life.

    So many people tried and failed to find that key (with a lot of them foiled by budgetary constraints). Some came it via the sword-and-sandal angle ('Conan', 'Beastmaster', 'The Sword and the Sorcerer' etc...) most of much ended up being second-rate Conan knock-offs, Ralph Bakshi took two swings at it with animation (Lord of the Rings, Fire and Ice), Jim Henson gave it a go in two collaborations with artist Brian Froud ('Labyrinth' and 'Dark Crystal'). You had 'The Princess Bride', 'Excalibur', 'Krull', 'Legend' and 'Hawk the Slayer' all giving their best shot and not quite making it. Don't get me wrong - a lot of these became absolute cult classics - but almost all of them tanked at release and none of them broke the Blockbuster formula.

    Finally, the two biggest players stepped up. 

    In 1985, Disney took a second swing at it (after 1981's 'Dragonslayer') with 'The Black Cauldron' and it nearly wiped them out. And then, in 1988, George Lucas himself took a swing at it with 'Willow', but even then, it couldn't decided whether it was Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' or Disney's 'Cinderella' with the talking mouse people and bippety-boppity boo magic.

    Nobody seemed to be able to figure out the formula (or if they did, they didn't have the resources to carry it off), and wouldn't until Peter Jackson and 'Lord of the Rings' in the early 2000's. 

    It may seem like I'm down on those films, but as a teenager all hopped up on J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard and Dungeons & Dragons, I was 100% behind them! Every valiant but flawed attempt was bringing us closer and closer to finally getting the film we always dreamed to, and almost all of them had some inspired elements that managed to push that envelope just a bit. My friends and I loved these films, because the creators of the film might as well have been us! We were trying to crack the exact same code!

    There was always at least ONE thing (and often, a lot more than that) that each one of these did which inspired us... even if it was every character in our D&D games having a Soul Sword for a month, or being able to smugly declare that "actually, a glaive is a type of pole arm" (like a Bohemian Ear-Spoon!).