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Two weeks ago I shared about a conversation a friend of mine and I had regarding our frustrations with how high fantasy is defined within the literary world. The nuances of our discussion, though limited to literature, still had me thinking and referring back to films.
Films, I think, are more accessible than books. I say this because not everyone is like me and wants to read the majority of their time—my husband included amongst those types. Another friend of mine once said most people don’t read, enjoy reading, or find it difficult to read because originally, we did not have written communication. Our communication was originally entirely oral. Therefore, there’s a good possibility there are still those people who have not “adapted” to this “new” form of communication and still find orating a much more accessible form.
Of course, I immediately thought of this within the world of storytelling, completely baffled I had never realised it before myself.
It is for this reason I think film has a much broader reach, and is thus much more influential than literature. It’s ease of accessibility is not limited to only the TVs we have within our homes, nor the multiple streaming platforms we subscribe to for the latest content. No—I think it is because for people like my husband, film is a type of oral storytelling and a much more natural form of communication. (Probably another reason why so few watch foreign films, too, due to subtitles, another form of reading, but let’s move on…)
All this to say, film being the highly influential cultural phenomenon that it is has influenced our perception of what epic is, even within literature.
If I were to ask you to list the top three most epic films of all time, I’m sure there is a high percentage of you who would mention:
While there are definitely others, I think it is these three franchises which have turned the tide of film production as we know it. To argue why would have to be in another blog post.
Here’s why I would argue that while these are epical, I’m not certain they would be epics as we discussed in my last post. To remind you of the definition we concocted for argument’s sake, it was,
A work of art, such as a novel, resembling a exceptionally long and arduous poem, typically derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the past history of a nation, written in an elevated style about a series of events within an imaginative, fictional world featuring magical elements.”
The Case to Redefine High Fantasy
We could just as easily adapt that to film, and we could even remove the “magical elements” portion as most films are imaginative and require some suspension of disbelief. That said, as I pointed out in my last post, how many films do you think could accurately fit into this description? What of the three I mentioned?
Before dissecting this further, let me first state that a franchise does not an epic make.
I think the majority of our problems with defining epic in this post-modern, post-millennial, world is in popular culture, we have begun to equate epic with a franchise. (Thank you, George Lucas.) Again, though, this is not necessarily accurate.
Here’s why…
In the 1950s, Hollywood thrived economically feeding off the post-World War II boom. It was during this time we saw an increase in the production of epic films. Two of the most significant to come from this time were Cecil B. DeMill’s The Ten Commandments and William Wyler’s Ben-Hur. These gave way to Hollywood diverting a lot of their funds towards more epics in the 1960s, with the production of films like The Lawrence of Arabia (one of the greatest films of all time), Spartacus, and Cleopatra. If you want to learn more about this time in Hollywood, I suggest the Coen Brother’s film Hail Caesar! which hilariously spoofs on the culture of the industry during this “golden” era.
Now you might have noticed that of all the films I mentioned above, most of them are set within the ancient world of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Israelites.
Hmm…
It is even more interesting because film historians and critics to this day still argue over what makes an epic film. Some would say science fiction or fantasy films, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, are excluded due to their speculative settings. This is because they contain nothing of a literary epic, which is what we discussed in my last post.
I tend to agree with the more progressive critics who would include something like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars within the scope of epic films, despite their lack of swords and sandals.
This is because they are stories, and like all stories, they are focalised around the journey of the hero.
Their speculative settings expand beyond the confines of history, which is where our epics originated; though, to readers/listeners of that era, it was contemporary fiction. These new genres of science fiction and fantasy provide whimsy, magic, building upon our centuries old tradition of myth making, folklore, fairy stories, and the like—to explain the inexplicable, the ineffable; to understand our universe, and ultimately, ourselves.
Therefore, to me, they are merely a continuation of that ancient tradition of written storytelling classicists attributed to Homer for recording some of the stories first shared around our hearths. (At least in Western Civilisation. I argue the oral traditions of Judaism, which were recorded in the Torah, later the completed Tanakh as it’s called and then Talmud, precede even Homer, and are some of the first recorded examples of storytelling, but I’m digressing, again.)
Even in the Grecian epics the gods interacted with the heroes, which we could argue is a type of fantasy within classical literature. Again, though, part of our problem is over time we have severely dichotomised our ontologies thanks to Platonism, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, altogether removing spirituality and the supernatural from our everyday lives.
To the Ancient Greeks, interactions with the gods was second nature. To us, it is fantasy.
This is why I genuinely adore the original, cheesy The Clash of the Titans. (The remake is okay, but mostly because of the A-list British actors.) They actually made a literal epic film based on the legend of Perseus. The only other contemporary films I can think of which could be considered traditional epics would be Gladiator or, my personal favourite, The Prince of Egypt.
Another reason I lean towards accepting these speculative installments as epic films is I grew up watching the aforementioned “originals” from the 1950s thanks to having a father who was born in the late 1940s. They were the films he grew up watching, so he shared them with us at an early age along with the contemporary Renaissance films of Lucas and Spielberg.
Imagine a four-year-old who grew up on a healthy dose of Cecil B. DeMille, Star Wars, Spielberg, Disney Princesses, and Wishbone—that was me.
Thus, when Peter Jackson’s three-plus-hours-long The Fellowship of the Ring came along, it was love at first sight.
No longer were we in the dusty sands of Ancient Rome or Egypt, but were now transported to a luscious, green land so far away you had to imagine it to get there, not just travel by boat or plane and a few thousand years.
And there were princesses!
Okay, so not necessarily. I know Glorfindel was replaced and conflated with Arwen in an attempt to make LOTR more feminine, but let’s not argue semantics right now. I was a pre-teen. It worked for me.
When Arwen first appeared on the screen—in a gorgeous, long-sleeved Medieval gown with equally long hair, riding on horseback—I felt like I was finally seeing me amongst all the battle worn men in a genre I loved. The other damsels in Spartacus or Ben-Hur didn’t impress me enough. Arwen and Eowyn actually had swords and used them!
They were my new Princess Leia, which is actually how my father convinced four-year-old me to watch Star Wars.
It is one of my fondest memories, of my dad holding out the character pamphlet included with the VHS box set and pointing out Princess Leia, in her white dress from Episode IV, saying, “See, there’s even a princess. You’ll like it. I promise. Just watch the first one, and then you can decide.” Needless to say, his scheme worked. I think we watched both IV and V that evening, much to my mother’s dismay since it was extremely past my bedtime.
Having strayed entirely off-topic, let me get back to what we’re supposed to be discussing: epic films.
I think as man’s exploration of our world expanded beyond the horizon to the stars above—or our imaginations dreamed of far away worlds not yet discovered—so, too, our fiction changed, influenced by the speculative elements of our own psyches, creating what we now call science fiction and fantasy.
Thus, it is no wonder we have these epics within these unexplored worlds, especially in film, a medium which lends itself to creating visual realities more “than are dreamt of in [our philosophies]” (Hamlet, I. v. 167-168). Like the classical epics of old, they span generations of a person, a family, a nation, retelling their deeds. They are long and arduous, elevated in style through breathtaking special effects, glorious musical scores, and overall excellence. They are imaginative and have inspired countless others.
This is why I think something like Star Wars, which is technically a space opera, can be and should be defined as an epic. Since in my last post I argued how The Lord of the Rings, the book, is an epic, by default this would make the films epics as well.
To refer back to my statement, “A franchise does not an epic make,” I would compare Star Wars to its contemporaries like Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and the Terminator and Alien films. Those I would argue are epical as they do not necessarily meet all the aforementioned criteria, if that is what we are using to define epic. Conversely, the Marvel franchise films I think are arguably the new epics of today as superheroes are the new demigods.
Here’s the problem, though, with these new epic films: the literary world is having to compete with these massive, billion dollar franchises. Thus, there is a not so subtle push for franchises within literature. I think this is what made J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter so successful: it was the films. Without the films, would it have been as huge? Both were being written and produced simultaneously. How then did they influence each other? How did the fans’ speculation, both of the films and books, control the demand of the market, the pen in Rowling’s hand? Is this also why we now have a new film series from her in Fantastic Beasts? We cannot say for certain, but I often wonder this since The Lord of the Rings was well established as a literary work of art long before both its film adaptations and Rowling ever introduced us to the boy living under the stairs at 4 Privet Drive.
As the literary world fights to keep up with Hollywood and its commercial success through mass production of franchises (which ironically Spielberg warned would be the ruination of the film industry, and we are witnessing in real time), more and more authors of epical works are seeing their books, which are almost always a series, being adapted into films or TV shows.
This happened for Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent, The Host, and Shadow & Bone, and will happen for The Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and others I’m sure I’ve neglected to mention.
It is this conflagration of the literary and film industries and their vie for the next big franchise—or sustaining those which have proven successful, bleeding it dry of whatever creativity the original source can provide—is what has ultimately distorted our idea, our perception, of what is a true epic.
As I mentioned in my last post, to begin redefining high fantasy, to determine what a true epic is—we must first and foremost identify our shortcomings, our ill use of the term epic, and I think this would extend especially to the film industry. More so, we must grapple with its influence over the literary world, and stop leeching off artists to create franchises (unless they want and choose to).
It is only by slowing down and reexamining ourselves that we might find our way back to the wonder and excitement we are so desperately seeking as we strive to create.
What do you think of my examples? Would you agree or disagree with my description of epic films? What are some films (or books) I left out that you think belong in the epic category? Let me know in the comments below! I’d love to hear your own musings on this!
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