Then, in the lecture, we watched the first episodes of Game of Thrones, a medieval fantasy based on a series of popular books, and Awake, where a police investigator is living two seperate lives where a member of his family died, and trying to work out which one is real. Through this, we got into discussing the concept of Fantasy and the Fantastic:
- Fantasy, despite the common usage of the term, is not strictly just a genre as many other film types utilise elements of fantasy (things that don't esit in the real world), such as horror and sciene fiction.
- Often includes elements from mythology (such as monsters, gods, heroes and 'other' worlds), as well as playing with idea of different realities and even having its own world and culture (including races, language and history)
- More often than not is heavy on special effects, practical and digital, to create the worlds and creatures within it.
- Like realism, often considered its opposite (even though one can have elements from the other), many other elements make up what can be considered a fantasy (subject material, tone, style form and themes). Also, there are even different categories and approaches, such as a personalized/subjective fantasy (dealing with a character internally, like his/her mind, like Inception) or post modern (which has a self-awareness to it, and even acknowledges elements from other sources).