The Shannara Chronicles

[Magical Realist]

"MTV's shiny new epic-fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles is adamantly not a comedy. It has the kind of grim-faced ultra-seriousness that so often makes genre films feel a little ridiculous, with characters declaiming instead of just talking. But there's still something a little chuckle-worthy about its setting, a world of elves, gnomes, and trolls who fervently believe magic doesn't exist. Some of the more opinionated ones get downright religious about it: after all, they say, while standing in front of the gigantic demon-banishing tree in their lofty elven sanctuary, what possible evidence is there of magic?

Unfortunately for them, magic is real, and it's about to kill them all if they don't get their pointy-eared act together.

The 10-episode series (premiering January 5th at 10PM ET) is based on Terry Brooks' 1982 The Elfstones Of Shannara, the second novel in an ongoing series now spanning more than 25 volumes. MTV is skipping the first book in the series, 1977's much-derided Lord Of The Rings pastiche Sword Of Shannara, to jump straight to a story aimed at the fandoms raised on the younger and more passionate protagonists of Twilight and the Harry Potter books. Chronicles deals with a fairly familiar-looking coming-of-age fantasy quest: a great evil threatens a magical land (sorry, magic deniers), and a few untested heroes have to find their courage and tap into their hidden abilities to stop it..."===http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/5/1071230...-tv-review

[Yazata]

But there's still something a little chuckle-worthy about its setting, a world of elves, gnomes, and trolls who fervently believe magic doesn't exist. Some of the more opinionated ones get downright religious about it: after all, they say, while standing in front of the gigantic demon-banishing tree in their lofty elven sanctuary, what possible evidence is there of magic?

If what we call magic is just how their world naturally functions, wouldn't it just be natural to them? Of course spells and incantations work. Their wizards in their robes and pointy hats could probably explain what they believe are the details of why it does and how to make it all work properly too. Just like our wizards-in-white-coats with their incomprehensible sacred language of mathematical hieroglyphs think they have it all figured out in our world.

Of course all the up-to-date, highly-educated non-superstitious elves, gnomes and trolls think they know that nature doesn't deviate capriciously ('magically') from the rules that work so well in their spells and incantations. There's no evidence of that!

[Magical Realist]

Well, in Shannara there was a time of magic long ago when there were the Druids, which were a composite of all the 4 kindgoms (elves, dwarves, humans, and trolls), who studied magic and found out how it works. Then, after a great war with Evil, particularly with one powerful druid who went to the dark side, that age was over with, and generations later, magic was forgotten and nobody believed it anymore. Now the Great Tree is dying, and with every leaf that falls, a demon gets created out of the earth. So one super sexy Druid gets awakened from his hiberation to warn the world of the coming Evil, and he's got a young elf, a young rover, and a young elf-human hybrid with some mysterious elfstones to help him fight it. When he does magic everyone is surprised however. So while I like your subtle analysis, it doesn't seem to fit the author's thesis.

[Image: shannara-chronicles-15.jpg?w=620]

Another twist to this tale is that it takes place in the distant future, after human civilzation goes to pot. So these elves and dwarves and demons are running around amongst vine-covered ruins of sky scrapers and a crumbling Space Needle.