Magic slippers instead of math notebooks, poison apples to dry up physical education. Netflix raffles this Wednesday The school of good and evil, an American feature film that immerses the viewer in a haunted academy. A fiction by Paul Feig, focused on a wonderful universe, at a time when this type of production is multiplying on platforms.
This mysterious school, hidden from common mortals, does not prepare its students for active life but to become heroes -or villains- of fairy tales. Sophie and Agatha (Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie), two ordinary teenagers who dream of escaping their boring existence, find themselves thrust into this fantastical world. Under the guidance of Professors Dovey and Lady Lesso (Hollywood stars Kerry Washington and Charlize Theron) they learn to become a witch for one, a princess for the other.
Of many ways, The school of good and evil complies with the codes of fancyas specialist Anne Besson describes it:
“It’s a genre that stages secondary worlds, where wonderful magic is active,” this professor at the University of Artois, author of ‘Dictionary of Fantasy’, explains to BFMTV.com. “Most of the time, the setting will be neo-medieval or, more broadly, inspired by a pre-technological past. There, technology is replaced by magic.”
Among contemporary examples, the sagas of Lord of the Rings or of Harry Potter they are a reference, both in their literary versions and in their film adaptations. But the number of works that fit into this field is incalculable and, in recent years, the genre has become ubiquitous on our small screens.
The “Game of Thrones” effect
All channels are reversed: since 2019, viewers have the right to the series The Wizard, shadow and bone, Winx Y The Sandman on Netflix, Prime Video recently introduced the wheel of time Y the rings of powerthe American channel HBO fascinates critics with house of the dragon Where His dark materials… Even Disney+, which has so far relied primarily on its Marvel franchises and Star Warssuccumbed to the trend: the recently launched platform The Everrealm Tournamentgame show that immerses “eight teenagers in an immersive world of fantasy”, and discovers the 1988 cult film, Willow, to draw a series.
“Clearly there is a momentum,” says Anne Besson. “Five years ago, the genre barely existed in the form of a TV series. Apart from some easily kitschy works, like ‘Xena the Warrior,’ it was still very limited. And since ‘Game of Thrones,’ it’s a blast.” .”
The success of the soap opera fancy, where knights rubbed shoulders with dragons on imaginary continents, had something to emulate. In eight seasons broadcast from 2011 to 2019 on HBO -an intellectual channel, recognized for the quality of its series- game of Thrones has established itself as a global cultural phenomenon: each launch of a new season took on the dimension of a planetary event, the last one on its own $285 millionand the series today holds the record for statuettes won at the Emmy Awards.
This triumph highlighted a genre long reserved for an internal audience, which undoubtedly suffered from a somewhat denigrated image. For Séverine Barthes, a professor at the University of Paris III and a specialist in series, the “HBO seal of quality” has made fancy a “culturally acceptable product”:
“There had already been a stage with the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy (directed by Peter Jackson between 2001 and 2003 based on JRR Tolkien’s books, Ed), but detractors could still classify it as a blockbuster, culturally delegitimize it “. Game of Thrones and HBO uninhibited part of the public, who suddenly allowed themselves to watch these types of programs.”
Pay more to earn more
The arrival of game of Thrones and other programs of this type may not be the result of a happy coincidence. Anne Besson, on the other hand, sees in him the boiling point of a trend that has been heating up for 40 years: “Everyone who makes the decisions in Hollywood grew up in the 70s and 80s. It was the time of the first phase of great development of the fancy niche with Dungeons and Dragonsthe first video games… Today, at the helm, the main players in entertainment recognize themselves in this culture and are eager to develop it”.
These decision makers also know that they have found a low-risk vein. Because each of these programs is an adaptation of a successful literary saga, cartoon, comic or video game. Thus, all the fantasy series that are multiplying today have fans even before they come out and ensure a good media impact. “It’s a strategy as old as the cultural industries,” explains Marianne Lumeau, a professor at the University of Rennes I and a specialist in platform economics, to BFMTV.com.
“Nobody knows in advance what will be successful. By producing a book adaptation or a movie sequel that will have done well, we limit the risks. These series are very expensive to produce, but the probability that they will be successful is very high. higher than something good that comes out of nowhere.
The retransmission of the two cycles-events of this beginning of the 2022 academic year testify to this. For power ringstaken from Lord of the RingsPrime Video did not hesitate to release a budget of 715 million dollars. house of the dragonan ultra expected series because it is derived from game of Thrones, earned almost 20 million per episode. And both sign audience records with their respective stations since their launch.
“Prequels, Sequels, Spin-offs”
These two programs also illustrate another great attraction of fancy, serial version: develops universes rich in intrigues, characters and mythology… and declinable at will. How does Disney + with its franchises Star Wars or Marvel, which is constantly generating new soap operas:
“The series format lends itself to the exploration of these worlds for long hours, episode by episode, but also to their deployment in derived series,” analyzes Louis Wiart, a professor at the Free University of Brussels and a specialist in digital platforms.
“Prequels, sequels, spin-offs… We will be able to start a large volume of hours, which meets the expectations of the platforms. In the context of an attention economy, they look for content capable of retaining subscribers over time. .”
The strategy has already proven its worth on the big screen: the eleventh feature film in the universe of Harry Potterentitled Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore’s Secrets, was released in theaters last April. 25 years after the publication of the first novel of the literary saga.
HBO would thus prepare no less than four new telenovelas derived from game of Thrones. A tactic that increases the chances of retaining fans. And above all to feed the youngest, nerves of the television war: “The public ages, and it must be renewed”, analyzes Séverine Barthes. “However, the current generation of young viewers has grown up with a children’s literature that develops the fancy longer than television. As adults, they are interested in platforms.
a way of escape
The specialist also evokes the technological revolution and the fall in the cost of special effects, which allow universes to be brought to the screen that were impossible to represent thirty years ago. But he does not rule out the possibility of an escape attempt in the face of an increasingly unsettling global climate. Because it’s clear that this wonderful television unfolds at the same rate as the very real uncertainties; As the small screen heroes fight with swords and coexist with magical creatures, their followers face pandemics, ecological threats, growing social inequalities and the emergence of new conflicts:
“The hypothesis has been proven correct in other times: the marvelous Arthurian also developed in a culturally and socially difficult period. After the Second World War, science fiction fully assumed the fear of nuclear apocalypse. This type of fiction has brought often catharsis to real fears linked to the cultural, historical, social context”.
“The fancy it is undeniably a form of escape, of resistance”, adds Anne Besson. She wants to imagine other things.
From there to predict a bright future for the fiction of the genre, made up of dozens of new characters who will travel the hills of Mordor or the valleys of Westeros, the academic prefers to remain cautious: “The goal is to produce franchises, but these series can very well suffer a series of failures. Nothing is stabilized at the moment. To what extent will it work, and to what extent will it create a fatigue phenomenon? Remains to be seen.
Source: BFM TV
