After a year that has not been too special on the fantasy front, I really don’t know where to start off discussing the short term future of fantasy; there are simply too many great new things happening in the fantasy genre during 2011!
Novels that will surely be amazing, endings of series that have taken decades to create and have held millions in their grip. Blockbuster movies and a television series that can only blow our minds.
Here are my personal hightlights: the best and most anticipated fantasy titles of the year to come!
Books and Series
The novel I am looking most forward to is The Crippled God by Steven Erikson. It is the last installment of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and should be several hundreds of pages filled with the resolution of all mysteries that Erikson has created during the series. Allthough, knowing Erikson a bit, much will probably remain unsolved.
Close second on my list, mostly because we will have to wait till the end of September before it will be released, is A Dance with Dragons, the fifth novel in George R.R. Martin‘s already legendary A Song of Ice & Fire series. Together with the first season of Game of Thrones (see below), this novel will put a huge spotlight on the fantasy genre.
Soon available (in March) is the latest book of Patrick Rothfuss called The Wise Man’s Fear. After the succes of The Name of the Wind, the anticipation for this new novel is very high.
Last book I want to mention is A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, the last installment in The Wheel of Time series. I somewhat lost interest in the series over the years but for many fans this novel will be the most anticipated of the year and it is bound to be high in the New York Times bestsellers list for a long time. It is expected for November 2011.
Movies
Several interesting fantasy movies will be released in theatres in 2011 so there is a lot to look forward to but none of them are guaranteed to be very good. The most promising one is the last movie in the Potter series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II, set to premiere in July. I am not that much of a fan of the Potter movies but the first Deathly Hallows movie was quite good so I am expecting a lot from part II.
The comedy fantasy movie Your Highness can go either way. Or it will be a hilarious ridicule of fantasy movies or it will be a annoying succession of desperately-trying-to-be-funny fantasy scenes. Your Highness will be in theatres on April 8.
Another movie I am not so sure about is Thor, with a story based on the Marvel comics. There is a good chance of this being a movie solely revolving around action scenes with the story having no depth and the characters being flat. Thor will premiere late April/ early May.
Last in this category of doubtfull movies is the remake of Conan the Barbarian. They will have to make an extremely good movie to come near the “level” of the original movie and to shake of the criticism and cynicism that fans will surely have. We will have to wait a while for Conan as it will not be in theatres until August.
One movie I am personally definitely not looking forward to is the first of the two Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn movies that will be released in November 2011.
Game of Thrones
I simply cannot say it enough: Game of Thrones is starting in 2011! On April 17, the first episode will air on HBO in the US and on Sky in the UK and like almost everybody with a heart for fantasy, I love Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series and am highly anticipating this television series.
As mentioned before, 2010 was not the greatest of years for the fantasy genre but 2011 will surely make us forget all about it. In addition, we will have the anticipation of the movie The Hobbit that is scheduled for 2012…
The New Zealand government has made a deal with the producers of the fantasy movie The Hobbit to have the movie shot in their country. But not everyone agrees with the way this has been achieved.
New Zealand, mainly known for its incredible number of sheep, was also the setting for the Lord of the Rings movies. Besides the publicity and the resulting influence on tourism, the country also expects an impulse in the economy resulting from everything involved in filming and producing the movie. A total amount of 670 million Dollar is reportedly at stake.
However, Warner Bros wanted tax benefits and modifications of the labor law before agreeing to filming in New Zealand. The government agreed to this, resulting in a tax benefit of 7.5 million Dollar and several law changes.
Understandably, not all New Zealanders are happy about this, which resulted in a lot of criticism in the press and some serious discussions in the New Zealand parliament.
Nonetheless, Prime Minister John Key agreed to the changes and benefits, so The Hobbit will be made in the settings we have come to identify with Middle-earth!
When will The Hobbit be made?
There have been many doubts in the past but it is starting to look like the filming of The Hobbit will really start in the near future and the movie will be in theatres late 2012. I will provide more details on this somewhere in the coming weeks.
We all know the story told in the movies based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. The three Lord of the Rings movies are generally considered to be among the best movies ever made and to me they are also by far the best fantasy movies ever. I will provide a short analysis of each movie and then answer the question: when comparing the three movies, which one is the best?
The Fellowship of the Ring
As the introduction to the world and characters of LOTR, The Fellowship of the Ring pulls viewers into the story, amazing them with the rich and detailed world and likeable characters. The movie sets up the complete story line and prepares viewers for what is to come. It is therefore very memorable but at the same time it is somewhat slow-paced with lots of dailogues and less action/ battles.
IMDb rating: 8.8 – Rotten Tomatoes rating: 92%
The Two Towers
The second movie of the trilogy is well balanced: Frodo and Sam go off to destroy the ring while at the same time the rest of the fellowship go on their own quests. This results in several story lines focusing on the struggles of Frodo but at the same time gives attention to the other people and races that inhabit Middle-earth and their fight against the forces of evil. There is much attention for politics, deceipt and mistrust while the dialogues between Legolas and Gimli even provide some humor. The battle of the Ents at Saruman’s tower and the legendary battle at Helm’s Deep between the Rohirrim and the Uruk-Hai are a great conclusion to this movie.
IMDb rating: 8.7 – Rotten Tomatoes rating: 96%
The Return of the King
The third and last Lord of the Rings movie focuses on two major topics: the ever more difficult quest of Frodo to reach mount Doom and destroy the ring on the one hand and the build up to the enourmous battle on the Pelennor Fields at the city of Minas Tirith on the other hand. Together they bring the trilogy to a very tense, tragic and impressively made ending. A minor downside is that it takes a really long time to get there: at some point I felt like ‘just get it over with’!
IMDb rating: 8.8 – Rotten Tomatoes rating: 94%
Comparison and Conclusion
You may already have understood it when reading the short analysis of each of the movies: The Two Towers is my favorite LOTR movie. It has the best balance between character development, the journey to destroy the ring and action in the form of smaller fights and the large battle at Helm’s Deep. The other two movies were great but focused a bit too much on specific themes which to me made them just a little less good.
Still, together I believe the movies to be by far the best fantasy movies made and I do not expect any other fantasy movie to ever outclass them. However, I do hope that one day The Hobbit will also be made into a movie and that it will be of the same quality.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born op January 3, 1892. As author of The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and especially The Lord of The Rings, Tolkien is seen by many as the best and most influential fantasy author. Personally I have put him on a second place as there is one author who’s style I prefer but I too cannot deny that no other author has done more for the genre genre than J.R.R. Tolkien.
Most important works
Everyone with even the slightest interest in fantasy is of course familiar with the pinnacle of Tolkien’s works: The Lord of the Rings. Translated into dozens of languages and read by millions, LOTR has become one of the major literature works of the 20th century. In turn, the movies were the cinematic highlights of the first decade of the new millennium.
Next to The Lord of The Rings, Tolkien also wrote The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. The Hobbit has more of a fairytale feeling to it, describing the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins who, together with a group of dwarves, tries to steal back a treasure from the dragon Smaug.
The Silmarillion is a collection of stories and descriptions of Middle-Earth before the age in which The Lord of The Rings is set. When Tolkien died he had not finished the collection but his son Christopher Tolkien, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay (author of Tigana) completed the book in 1977.
Style of writing
Tolkien’s writing style may not the most accessible ever. He liked to write elaboratively about the settings of his stories and to go in much detail about the world, the races and the characters he created. He even went as far as creating complete mythologies and languages, like Elvish. Personnaly I do not dislike his way of writing but I can definitely imagine people growing quite tired of it.
To conclude: the world and stories Tolkien has created are simply fantastic and by writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings he produced the main landmarks of the fantasy genre. He deserves all the recognition and credit he has gotten and I wish he could have seen the full impact of his works.
