Fantasy

I have seen a couple of strange films recently: "Unmissable" and "Source Code". Both are fantasies. In "Unmissable" a down-and-out writer who can't get on with the novel he's been commissioned to do, is given a tablet by a man he once knew who is working for a chemical company on a secret formula. Which should have told the hero not to take the pill; but he was desperate so he does. Almost instantly he becomes a sort of high-powered, over-intelligent monster: we are told that the average person uses only about 20% of his brain (didn't know that before) but that the pill he has taken will make available to him 100% of his b rain. So he writes his novel which is great - so his agent believes - and it gets published. Then he finds he can wiz-kid things like helping firms to make money. But people are after him, they want the pill of course. It's all rather unbelieveable. But it's fun. "Source Code" is fantasy made so assuredly and seriously that you almost believe it could take place. A man wakes up on a train and, gradually, in eight minutes, finds he not the man he thinks he is. He is dead but certain brain parts of his have been saved and it is these that inhabit the other man. Get it? No, I didn't either. But again, it was fun though even more violent than "Unmissable". While waiting for the film to start I had to put up with reviews of films to come. They were all fantasies. A man becomes a "green man" who can perform great feats of strength and possesses extraordinary powers etc. Another couple of films were also fantasies. They were all spectacularly full of "special effects" which I find rather boring in that, well, you know they are "special effects" don't you?. I prefer a film to be grounded in reality like "Sideways" which had no special effects. Neither did "The King's Speech" which was an excellent film with three, at least, superb performances. Is this fantasy-film-making anything to do with the general public's dispensing with "old forms" of fantasy like religion? Are people now non-believers but still have a secret desire to want to believe something? As G.K.Chesterton put it: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything."