There are many things I love in life. I love my parents. I love my friends. I love playing online Tetris for free. I love a tall, ice-cold pint of beer. I love that the space bar will pause Youtube, Hulu, and Netflix Instant viewing.

I love all of these things and never have to defend that. But one thing I occasionally do find myself defending is my love of fantasy.

In a way, I get it. Fantasy is, on its surface, a genre packed to the gills with elves, dragons, and wizards — not exactly grown-up fair. How can a story with magic spells and dashing princes compare to the very realistic plays of Tennessee Williams, the written works of Jack Kerouac, or the films of Gus Van Sant? What makes fantasy so great?

In a word: metaphor.

For those not too proud to explore a work of fantasy and not too dense to look beneath its surface, the fantasy genre is a rich addition to the literary, film, and television canon because it explores very real human problems and desires by creating allegories through which to explore them.

Name any fantasy work that has withstood the test of time, and you will find in it a fable full of lessons of all too real applicability.

Michael Ende’s landmark novel, The Neverending Story, which was turned into a decent movie in the ’80s, is about a young boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux, who is neglected by his father and bullied by his schoolmates. He finds a book that transports him into another world called Fantasia, a world that is the embodiment of all the dreams and fantasies of the real world, which is being destroyed by an enemy called the Nothing.

The story is moving and absorbing not due to its host of magical creatures, but because it taps in all of us that longing to be a child again, to be able to lose yourself in worlds of your own creation, before the dark, unimaginative specter of adulthood falls upon us.

This theme of the wonder of a child’s imagination is explored many times over in fantasy, from The Wizard of Oz to The Chronicles of Narnia to Labyrinth.

While passionate, romantic love is a theme explored in virtually every genre imaginable, has there ever been a better representation of the honest, pure love between friends as there was in The Lord of the Rings? The entire sprawling epic that is Tolkien’s masterpiece essentially hangs on a single conceit: that we as an audience accept that Sam will do anything for Frodo.

This is a hard sell for some, because the notion of the power and beauty of platonic love is not a prevalent idea in our culture. Their relationship isn’t romantic so there’s no promise of sex. Frodo is hardly royalty so there’s no allure of vast treasures. Sam is committed to Frodo, with no reward expected, because that’s just the kind of person he is, and who wouldn’t want a friend like Sam? Who wouldn’t want to be a friend like Sam?

Toss in the fact that it’s two lowly hobbits, humble and small in stature, who succeed in saving the world, and you have a classic for the ages. It takes a story about hobbits to make us see the wonder in our fellow man.

This past year, the high fantasy television show Legend of the Seeker came into its own when episodes began appearing that were not necessarily part of the larger plot, but instead focused on characters by throwing them into fantastical situations that mirrored real life problems.

Kahlan, a young woman who was torn between her sense of duty and her love for her companion, Richard, was in one episode magically split into two people, and through this spell we came to learn much about her and how difficult her burden really was.

Another episode featured Cara, a woman who was abducted and brainwashed and turned into a killer. As she attempted to regain her humanity, she was turned into a Baneling (basically a sentient zombie), thus making her metaphorical fight to be a regular person quite literal.

The point is that we could have simply watched biopics of Margaret Thatcher or Patty Hearst, and I’m sure some would be content to do just that, but those projects are limited to the real and mundane. By steeping a story in allegory, you have a much larger canvas on which to paint.

I suppose the fantasy genre will always be overlooked by those who wish to appear highbrow. After all, magic and flights of fancy are a hard sell to the academic.

But for those of us in the know, fantasy has a way of engaging our suspension of disbelief by accessing the emotional truths in stories about hobbits and goblins, and reflecting the realities of our world through a supernatural lens. Like opera and musical theater, which engage our emotions through music rather than realism, fantasy will forever be a step removed from reality, but never so far that we can’t recognize it. And it’s because of that very distance from reality that the genre is able to remark on it so keenly.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

Q: Oh Great Oracle! What in your opinion are the best movie aliens of all time? But I don’t mean movies where the aliens are the villains, like in Alien (the movie that would obviously win any such contest). I guess I mean “background” aliens, like the Cantina scene in Star Wars. — Megan, Riverside, CA

A: First, The Oracle agrees with you that the Alien alien would win any movie-alien contest (by far) — it was just so perfectly realized. I also agree that the Cantina scene in Star Wars really reset the bar for movie aliens — it’s hard to overstate what an incredible impact that scene had (even if it looks a little pedestrian now, even with George Lucas‘ later GCI additions).

What other movies has excelled at such “background” aliens? Well, the Star Trek movie extras in rubber masks aliens have always been a major disappointment in this regard — although they’re dramatically improved in the latest franchise reboot.

Post-A New Hope, Star Wars continued to introduce many weird and wonderful aliens, from Admiral Ackbar on down (although I think it speaks to the complete creative paucity of the prequel series that, despite having CGI technology, the aliens in those three Stars Wars movies are all almost completely forgettable).

Other movies with terrific “background aliens” include 1997’s The Fifth Element (a terrible film) and the 1984 fantasy movie The NeverEnding Story (I think the “giant-head” creatures in the Childlike Empress’ court are classic!).

Other suggestions? Readers?

Aliens from The Fifth Element (top row) and The NeverEnding Story (bottom row)

Q: We are wondering where the storyline came from for Avatar? Does it have anything to do with a Hindu goddess? — Jim

A: The storyline is entirely writer-director James Cameron’s, although he has openly acknowledged many “sources,” including “every single science fiction book I read as a kid,” as well as the movies The Emerald Forest, Dances With Wolves, At Play at the Fields of the Lords, and Princess Mononoke, which all share similar themes.

And yes, Cameron was also aware that in the Hindu religion an “avatar” is a deity who has come down from heaven and taken form on Earth. He explained what an “avatar” is to Time magazine way back in 2007:

It’s an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human’s intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body. It’s not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in cyberspace. It’s actually a physical body. The lead character, Jake, who is played by Sam Worthington, has his human existence and his avatar existence.

In other words, a computer or gaming “avatar” also comes from the Hindu word, but since both meanings are appropriate for the movie, it’s the perfect title for the film.

Q: Oracle, I beseech thee: I remember Wil Wheaton taking a lot of heat — though I was never sure why. Do you think he’s finally redeemed himself with Evil Wil Wheaton on The Big Bang Theory? — Mark, Las Vegas, NV

A: The Oracle never quite understood the animosity directed at Wheaton personally, which apparently arose because a lot of people didn’t like the character of Wesley Crusher, the character he played for four seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Even if the character was annoying (and I’ve always personally found Star Trek characters such as Voyager’s Neelix to be faaaaar more annoying), why take that out on the actor? But that’s what a lot of people did, making this an early example of “internet demonization.”

But I would say that Wheaton has absolutely had the last laugh — he is, of course, not mocking himself with the character of Evil Wil Wheaton, but the internet geeks who tried so hard to demonize him. And the fact that this character has become such a fan favorite on a hit show proves that plenty of people are now sharing a laugh with Wil — at his former-detractor’s expense.

Q: I know the 2005 movie The Descent has nothing to do with Jeff Long’s novel The Descent, despite both being about subterranean creatures. But will there ever be a movie based on the novel? It’s good! — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

A: Much has been made of the similarities between between the 1999 novel The Descent (which is terrific, as is the sequel, Deeper) and the 2005 movie of the same name.

Then again, it’s not like it’s the most original story of all time: if you’re going to write a thriller about going underground, you’re probably to create “devil”-like creatures. And even author Jeff Long has acknowledged that he based his novel on earlier works — namely Dante’s Inferno.

But I do think Long got a really raw deal. There was, in fact, a movie version of his novel in the works prior to the release of the 2005 movie, to be directed by David S. Goyer, the writer of Batman Begins and a director in the Blade series, for Dreamworks.

But I can find no evidence of any such movie still in the works, and with the break-out success of The Descent, I suspect the movie version of Long’s novel will probably never happen now.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

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