I think you’re right. I was going to qualify that with pointing out that in this case I was talking about fan films – but, part of what surprised me in this case was the direct involvement of a lot of “production types”. From one job I had for a cable TV station, I got the impression that the higher up someone was in the hierarchy, the more confident they were in their creativity, and the less creative they actually were.
A curious thing about the labels “science fiction” and “fantasy” is that the former seems to be used as a broader category that encompasses the latter, which is kind of backwards. Most often, “fantasy” seems to be used only to refer to fiction using a set of tropes derived from Tolkien and others that passed through the crucible of D&D. An upshot of this is that a lot of interesting fiction that isn’t really related to scientific speculation, is labelled “science fiction”.
There’s abundant evidence of that. There’s the immense popularity of anime, to start with.
I used to go to a theater in Berkeley that showed movies from Hong Kong every Thursday night, most of which I’d characterize as “fantasy”, but based primarily on Chinese mythology, history, and literature, and the theater was always crowded, with an audience of all ethnicities.
There are heated debates, but there are a lot of fans of the Elder Scrolls series of games who believe that the best of the series was Morrowind. While the pseudo-European elements from the other games in the series were present, the main setting was heavily influenced by southeast Asian cultures and religions, as well as by esoteric ideas about magic and ontology. Much of the writing was done by Michael Kirkbride, who was brought on the team for Daggerfall, and who contributed significantly to Red Guard – which also took place outside the faux-European part of the setting, and in which, notably, the protagonist and most of the major characters are black. Kirkbride was less involved in Oblivion and Skyrim, unfortunately.
I once came across a graphic Kirkbride drew for a book for an RPG setting, Tékumel – which was one of the first RPG settings developed, after D&D was invented, and was originally developed by M.A.R. Barker, a scholar in Urdu and in South Asian studies. I’m not thoroughly familiar with the setting, but it’s intentionally designed to emphasize South Asian influences. (I’ve kept meaning to ask Kirkbride about his involvement with Tékumel and whether that came before or after his work on Morrowind.)
Coincidentally, I was excited to get an email yesterday from a bookstore that they’d got a used copy of “Flamesong” by M.A.R. Barker. His novels have been out of print for years.
