Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
It's definitely low tech, I will agree.I don't think it's so much the grittiness, so much as the low tech low magic feel, and simply taking it very very seriously.
(But then, so is Xena. )
It's definitely low tech, I will agree.I don't think it's so much the grittiness, so much as the low tech low magic feel, and simply taking it very very seriously.
I don't think it's so much the grittiness, so much as the low tech low magic feel, and simply taking it very very seriously.
You are really looking at historical drama, but not medieval historical drama, since that has too much civilisation (and glass!) to be Caves of Chaosy.
I associate D&D with low tech more than low magic.It's definitely low tech, I will agree.
(But then, so is Xena. )
Yeah the original Conan is a movie that is absolutely 150% committed to the bit. It doesn't break character. It doesn't wink at the audience. There's nothing "knowing" about it. It just goes for the setting and for the ridiculous cod-philosophy things Conan and Thulsa Doom say and absolutely embraces them and goes with them.I don't think it's so much the grittiness, so much as the low tech low magic feel, and simply taking it very very seriously.
You are really looking at historical drama, but not medieval historical drama, since that has too much civilisation (and glass!) to be Caves of Chaosy.
Xena is definitely not serious. It's the opposite serious. As @Ruin Explorer says, it's the seriousness that is the important ingredient. And very very difficult for most people to do, and harder to maintain. It's like doing a whole movie of Xenk. Everyone knows the meme that D&D campaigns start out as Lord of the Rings and end up as Monty Python. You can see the start of that arc in Conan the Destroyer.But then, so is Xena.
You didn't see the deleted tapes of her academy years...Captain Janeway didn't have Xena's checkered past.
what is D&D?
British people can do that level of seriousness - c.f. Excalibur, I mean, some of the Merlin scenes have a bit more lightness but Nicol Williamson (who used to chat with my mum btw lol) isn't taking it to British silliness.And there are cultural factors. Warhammer (British) is dark, gritty - and full of black humour. I can't think of any British people who worked on Conan the Barbarian.
Brutal but fair.A tabletop MMORPG emulator that desperately tried to pretend it can do anything other than that
I will always remember Xena because when it was on one of my friends was just starting a writing degree (or whatever you call that), and we were watching it, and he's watching Xena and Gabrielle splash around in the surf laughing and he's like "Water equals sex in a lot of fiction", and I'm like "Oh my god" and I never saw the show the same way again (it improved it).Xena was one of my lifelines in an era when fantasy was considered an unwanted stepchild by Hollywood. It was unusual to see a female antihero as the main character of a TV show in the 1990s. Dana Scully, Buffy and Captain Janeway didn't have Xena's checkered past. She set the table for the antiheroes who would dominate TV during the following decade.
Xena ended in 2001, the same year the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter feature films debuted. I think of that year as a dividing line between the "fantasy is an unwanted stepchild" period and the beginning of the golden age of fantasy media we currently enjoy.