Stop making fantasy "grounded" "deconstructed" and "social commentary"!

Wanna know how to ruin good fantasy? Do these things! What am I talking about?

Well, it's any time someone comes along and wants to take, say, the story of King Arthur, and "update it for a modern audience".

Any time I hear those words, I'm skeptical. Because I know what that is going to mean. Everything "magical", mythical, or folktale-like about it will be "explained". And this is the bane of fantasy's existence. Explaining, explaining, explaining. Take King Arthur. Here's a character who has been in the collective imagination since about the 9th century or so--at least. And since then, for the subsequent TWELVE HUNDRED YEARS people from Western European backgrounds (and sometimes outside of that) have been telling stories of the round table, the Holy Grail, magical swords, and all that.

There is a good reason for this: particularly as it relates to the Arthurian cycle and the Holy Grail, the story has coalesced into a concentrated symbolic narrative that depicts the human quest for inner perfection and harmony in a world of chaos. It is a beautiful story that has acquired many alchemical elements. Discussing all the nuances of the Grail legend as it pertains to the universal experience of personality and spiritual development would take me far afield, but its safe to say that THIS is the reason the grail legend has survived the test of time. The fact that the stories orbiting the Arthurian legendarium have become resonant over time, and this is despite the fact that King Arthur may never have even been a real person.

Of course, in the grand scheme of oral and traditional early written storytelling, it makes NO difference if the person was real, and that is because such stories--in the telling--come to utilize to more and more degrees the natural symbolic storytelling qualities of the universal human tendencies toward thought and emotion that has been labeled "the collective unconscious", or in more modern Jungian contexts, "the objective psyche".

The Failure of Hollywood to get this right

And yet look at all the attempts to tell the King Arthur story that have emerged from Hollywood. Despite numerous attempts, such as Guy Ritchie's 2017 mega-flop "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" (a movie I have a sneaky affection for despite the fact that it bombed), has a consensus on Meta-Critic that "piles mounds of modern action flash on an age-old tale – and wipes out much of what made it a classic story in the first place"

Before that, 2004's "King Arthur" with Clive Owen is now a movie you probably have never heard of. That is because it bombed. And again, the approach to the story there was to make it "more grounded" by stripping away the magical elements and/or explaining them all away with modern "interpretations" of what the magical elements were about. Countless movies have repeated this formula, where Merlin is just an old weird dude who uses tricks instead of magic, or there are no fairies, no Morgan le Fay, no Vivian, no Grail, etc., etc., and they just heap on tons of generic medieval action-movie stuff.

It doesn't work.

The only exception to this is John Boorman's flawed masterpiece "Excalibur"--the only King Arthur movie anyone still talks about all these years later. Yes, it's ponderous, and I did not like the choice to harden it to an "R" with sexual assault scenes, but it at least gets the magical and mystical elements right. It's dreamlike, tragic, but hopeful. Fantasy perfection would not come until 2001 with Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring", but in that case, it wasn't about King Arthur (though Aragorn is obviously inspired by Arthur).

The Tone is Often Wrong

The problem is that "modern" audiences don't need things to be "updated" for them when it comes to fantasy. Just look at the terrible performance of recent "updated" classics like Snow White. In that case, the fantasy elements, rather than just presented at face value like "who is the fairest in the land?" are "updated" and "explained" to mean "socially just"--even when it makes absolutely no sense given the setup.

Or how about when Hollywood decides to "deconstruct" a classic story? Breaking it down into its elements and (essentially) putting through a reductionistic meatgrinder. Take the big bad wolf and make him sympathetic! Tell Beowulf from the point of view of Grendel and make him a misunderstood protagonist! Question the moral validity of killing orcs and ask about Aragorn's tax law! etc., etc. Besides giving me a headache from eye-rolling so hard, none of these ideas seem to last more than five minutes before they are forgotten.

But WHY (oh why) do modern storytellers feel the NEED to do this? Especially considering how often it fails to land, which of course, typically winds up with studio executives simply blaming the source material instead of the execution? Because, let's be clear, this is a matter of execution. A story like King Arthur which has survived 1200 years of storytelling, enthralling new audiences for countless generations ISN'T the problem. The problem is execution.

Missing the Point

The whole problem here is that modern storytellers are completely missing the point of fantasy. They think it is disposable fluff. Patting themselves on the back for being so modern and enlightened, they see fantasy elements like magic swords, the blood of Christ, fairies and Elves, the holy grail, and so forth as backward, "regressive", "irrational", "unscientific" and so forth. They see such elements as "dependent on an outdated worldview". But what they don't see is that they are caught up in their own worldview. The problem with "deconstruction" and making everything relative to some ironically presented "alternate" worldview is that it is ultimately disconnected from life. It becomes a gimmicky, abstract exercise in shuffling concepts around, and so detaching the imagery and story elements from their human, flesh-and-blood reality.

Stories last for centuries because they reconnect with such realities. It may seem counterintuitive to say that fantasy elements connect MORE with reality, but this is exactly how it works when it is done right. And that is because the fantasy elements are SYMBOLS of our inner, emotional truths. The grail is a symbol of humankind's longing for connection with the divine--or, for non-spiritual folks--for the whole. To be a part of something larger than oneself.

Excalibur is a symbol of sovereignty, of being chosen by powers greater than oneself to rise above one's self-doubts and become what you truly have the potential to be within. It is a symbol of being called to a higher purpose. Elves and other magical creatures represent humankind's connection with Nature, and the mysterious ways in which Nature interacts with us, both from without--in terms of dark forests and the healing or psychological balancing effects that natural environments can have, but also inside: when it comes to the spontaneous contents that our unconscious produces in dreams and visions.

No Substitute

There is no way any amount of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, psychobabble, or paragraphs of "explaining" can substitute for the fantasy elements in these stories. I plan on discussing this in the future, but this element RIGHT HERE is why the original Star Wars made such a huge impact on modern society. It wasn't the special effects, it wasn't even the "hero's journey" plot outline, and it wasn't the science-fiction trappings, as many movies came out since trying to cash-in on the Star Wars phenomenon and failed to stick. It was the magic. The Force. Without the Force, Star Wars would have been forgotten about in a decade.

King Arthur stories aren't going anywhere. Hollywood keeps trying to cash in on this well, but even after huge flops, the story will resurface again in a few years. It might even take a few decades. But it will come back. Stories like this can't really die. It's survived 1200 years already. But picture this: a new movie about the quest for the Holy Grail. Only this time, include ALL the fantasy elements. Excalibur. Giants. Morgan le Fay. Dangerous Fairies like Nimuwe. MERLIN. Spells, curses, monsters, magical castles...all told in the way the old stories were told. One half whimsy, one half deadly seriousness, and all using symbolism that is dreamlike and emotionally affecting in a way nearly impossible to describe. Would you show up for that? Or would you prefer to have a movie tell these stories but with all the fantasy elements "explained", made "gritty" and "grounded", with the "problematic" elements "subverted" and all the characters "morally grey", "updated" for a "modern audience", and made "relevant" by including a bunch of stuff about modern political discourse? Which one would you see?

Yeah. Me too.

EG