This fall, wizards and hobbits rule the silver screen
America is off to see the wizard.
And the hobbit.
And the cyclops.
After years of being labeled kiddie fare or languishing at the bottom of the rental bin, fantasy is now the movie genre du jour, and its timing couldn't be better. What started this summer with the successful ogre tale "Shrek" is continuing into the fall with a crop of highly anticipated movies that are proving a welcome distraction for many Americans.
Helping them to escape are features like "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," opening on Friday, "The Fellowship of the Ring," arriving next month, and the current hit "Monsters, Inc." Unlike the real world, where uncertainty currently prevails, these stories offer everyman heroes taking on well-defined enemies, which is just what many people want right now.
"On the one hand, you can enjoy the feeling of combat without the consequences, and on the other, you can be confident that good is going to triumph over evil," says Lester Friedman, a senior scholar in film at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
Good and evil are often at the heart of fantasy books and movies - where both the audience and authors can use an imagined place to grapple with life's big issues. The science fiction/fantasy section in bookstores is one of the two largest, along with mysteries, but fantasy movies have been hit-or-miss over the years, thanks in part to less-than-magical special effects.
Both "Harry Potter," and "Fellowship of the Ring" were in production long before Sept. 11, but both will likely attract people who originally hadn't planned to attend. In one early indicator of audience appetite, "Monsters, Inc." and its candy-colored world defied mixed reviews by raking in $122 million in two weeks. People are also snapping up "Harry Potter" books, by British author J.K. Rowling, as a way to keep current events at bay - and perhaps to be part of a community of fans, which observers say many may find comforting after the recent attacks.
Dan Page was shopping with his daughter, when he spotted the second book in the series and decided to buy it for some light reading. "I thought, 'This might be a nice way to escape the news of the day.' And it was," says the assistant director of communications for the Health Sciences department at UCLA. He plans to see the movie with his wife, who also has started reading the books in recent weeks.
Popular among both children and adults, the series of books about a bespectacled orphan who discovers he has magical powers has sold more than 116 million copies worldwide. Of US readers surveyed recently, 79 percent of kids ages 6 to 17 and 71 percent of adults say they plan to see the movie, according to marketing company NPD Group.
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