COMMENTARY: The new Arthurian series succeeds by drawing on ancient stories, taking Christianity seriously and remembering that great fantasy needs something real at its core.
There is seemingly no end to the production of cheesy, tiresome television and film fantasy. The genre is an ancient and honorable one, if one looks back to cinematic precursors like the 1914 Italian silent epic Cabiria (the first film ever shown at the White House) or Fritz Lang’s marvelous 1924 Die Nibelungen.
Through the years, we’ve had both good and bad, but mostly bad. The film fantasies created by Ray Harryhausen still hold a lasting charm. John Boorman’s Excalibur is a fine work as is Peter Jackson’s initial Lord of the Rings trilogy.
John Milius made a good Conan movie that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. But Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy is long and expensive schlock seemingly motivated by “the search for more money,” as Mel Brooks once said. This year, television has featured the third season of House of the Dragon and will feature later this year the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, both of them terrible in my opinion.
It is with some trepidation that
