Has fantasy become disenchanted and detached in the last 20 years?

Maybe it's an age & maturity thing.

I'm in a similar boat. I find myself needing to resist the VERY STRONG URGE to scream at people: "Fantasy is a child's pastime!! Put away childish things!! All this make-believe is stupid!!" It's not that I actually think this. Not quite. But a lot of the charm has gone, in the way that 90% of the songs playing on the radio—makes no difference the genre or era—seem targeted at the young people and now bore me. Even the hits I loved before are often tedious. I had to turn off Christmas music this year, heh. I suspect I'm an old fogey.

BUT. This doesn't actually describe all I do. I still love watching a good fantasy movie or television show, or playing a fantasy-based video game. But these are different types of enjoyment.

 

Personally, I find that good fantasy never gets old... and person never gets old for good fantasy. Thing is, fantasy is, ultimately, an exercise in escapism. It is a different world to which you go in order to escape a real world. You can see this most obviously in older, pre-Tolkien fantasy, such as Alice in Wonderland or Chronicles of Narnia - characters are literally thrown into another world from our own. But even Tolkienian fantasy, which features fictional characters in a fictional world, is still escapist.

That is why a deeply realistic fantasy holds less (I would not say no, however) appeal. It is simply too close to real world to offer that sense of escape to an extent that less realistic fantasy can.

 

Without knowing all books you've read it's hard to go in to specifics. But I do get some general thoughts

Everything was better in the past
People have a habit of romanticizing the past and their own childhood. Music was better, books were better... Part of it is that only the good stuff is remembered. All the crappy books released in the 80s have long since disappeared.

My father has a whole collection of 60's and 70's pulp fantasy and scifi books. And I can tell you, 90% (if not more) of the are awful. They're fun to read if you're looking for a crap, weird and completely unbelievable plot. Almost anything published today is better than those stories.

Sense of wonder
Children have a huge sense of wonder. Everything is new for a child. So everything you read as a child can evoke a sense of wonder. My kids (2 and 4) got a book for Christmas that has the two main characters named after them. The story itself is not very different from any other kids story. But they think it's amazing. The wonder that you can have a book with the main character be you is awesome.

The same can go for many books you read as you grow older. All fantasy worlds are new and exiting. There's magic! and dragons! and far-away places. There's great adventures and quests. A problem arises when stuff is no longer new. At some point you've seen many of the tropes of the genre. You can only read about so many dragons before you know what they are and they can do. There's few fresh magic systems out there. The sense of wonder disappears bit by bit.

trends
Success breads success and people and companies like latching on to trends. It's why there was lots of Tolkienesk fantasy in the 80's and 90's. It's why there's a lot of Game of Thrones look-a-likes around and why there were too many vampire novels a couple of years ago. A trend could be that fantasy at the moment is dark and gritty. And when you move 5 years there's a different trend. and there's always authors that go against the trend. And some even start a new trend by doing so.

In the end, it depends on what you consider dark and gritty and what period you use for recent. I consider Terry Pratchett recent. And I find his books fairly light and joyful. I found Trudi Canavan's books also pretty light. Which is not to say there aren't any dark and gritty books out there. Just that not all of them are.

I personally think that Fantasy as a genre is in a better place then it was in pretty much any time in the past. There's more good writers writing it in more varied worlds and styles then there was in the past. There's better films and series. It's not for everyone, but then nothing ever is.

 

I take a slightly different view. Maybe as we grow older, either more settled into our lives or more focused on irl needs, the need or desire for escape diminishes. Or else, the type of escape we want changes. Dunno. This is certainly true of me, but I can't speak for everyone.

For instance, nowadays I tend to desire cerebral newness—new ideas, concepts, philosophical explorations—and simply having a new magic du jour or fantasy race du jour or fantasy realm du jour doesn't cut it for me. All that stuff used to trap me easily, heh, and I searched for it, wanting to be trapped. But my needs have changed.

 

For me, fantasy is still alive, and I love fantasy written in the 60s and still find things I love today. Perhaps you need a refresh with other genres (or something different from reading altogether).

 

As I grow older I seem to get less settled, so it could be one of the reasons I still love fantasy. The rich imagination of good fantasy is another reason.

 

One current trend that might play in to this is that magic systems over the years have become a bit "harder". I've seen more rule based magic around. It's rare to come across a Gandalf-like character which can do awesome stuff because he's a wizard, but other than that, we have no clue how or why or what he can do.