My 30 Favorite Fantasy Movies

It is surprisingly hard to make a list of favorite fantasy movies. You have to sort of come up with your own definition of what you think fantasy is and stick to it. Also, I think my first pass at this list came up with about 84 titles. I decided to narrow it down to 30. This list is incredibly esoteric and probably meaningless.

30. The Chronicles of Narnia. I'll be the first to admit that these movies aren't perfect. But then, I was never a big fan of the books, either. But there's something about the movies that I really appreciate on the level of seeing a lot of fantasy creatures and fights between good and evil and a very intoxicating appearance by Tilda Swinton that makes me incredibly horny. I'm not sure what it is. They're not great movies, but they're really neat.

29. Willow. I used to have this poster hanging in my room. I was a big fan of this movie, Ron Howard's high fantasy version of Star Wars. The novelization is actually better than the movie, but eff it, the movie's fun.

28. Clash of the Titans. This was one of my very early moviegoing experiences, and it really captured my imagination. All of my interest in Greek myths begins here, as does my interest in Ray Harryhausen and special effects (I really wanted to be a special effects artist as a kid). But what I mostly wanted when I was five was to ride a flying horse and have a robot owl buddy.

27. Fire and Ice. I find it fascinating how many people online today talk about how much they don't like Ralph Bakshi. It seems an odd thing to have a really strong opinion about. I actually love his movies; as a little kid, what I saw of his always struck me for being so different in quality and movement (I later found out it was rotoscoping, but Bakshi's 'scopes are better than most). I mean, what else was there in the eighties besides Bakshi, Bluth, and a limping Disney? I saw this movie in an art class and was blown away; I was already a huge Frazetta fan, and seeing his paintings come to life was something else. I also tend to love movies that look like Heavy Metal or Savage Sword of Conan or other staples of seventies fantasy.

26. Howl's Moving Castle. I get caught up in almost every one of Miyazaki's movies, which is yet another reminder to me that quiet is so much more effective in films than noise. Quiet demands attention; noise mostly overloads or shocks the system. Anyone can do noise. Miyazaki's films invite you to contemplate. This is one of my favorites.

25. The Thief of Baghdad (1924). Arabian stories always capture my imagination. They're so different from the European tradition I grew up with, which somehow makes them more exciting to me.

24. Labyrinth. What a great combination of people to work on a movie: Jim Henson, Terry Jones, George Lucas, David Bowie, Brian Froud, Maurice Sendak... wow. I really like the sort of ramshackle combination of influences in fantasy, and this just does them perfectly.

23. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. I would love to see a good Sinbad movie made today, but it would never have the handmade quality of Ray Harryhausen. That handmade quality is what gives the special effects the illusion of life, the touch of existence. I wish we could get back to something a little more physical.

22. The Harry Potter Saga. They're really one story, so I'm combining them. Yes, they're not as good as the books, but them's the breaks, really. I love these movies, mostly because the cast is so charming and the filmmakers take the magic seriously. I'd love for the next movie to slow down to breathe a little more than the last one, but I really dig the hell out of these.

21. Highlander. I want nothing to do with the Highlander franchise outside of this one awesome movie.

20. The Hobbit. Oh, did this one stay with me forever. The songs, the dwarves, the dragon, the ring, the scary goblins, and Gollum... oh, man, Brother Theodore's voice used to give me the shivers. I saw this when I was incredibly young, and it made a huge impression on both me and my dad.

19. The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. A lot of people cited Raiders of the Lost Ark as the obvious influence for these movies, but they reminded me a lot of Harryhausen's Sinbad movies. Wildly over-the-top, old-fashioned and tongue-in-cheek, pulpy and larger than life... I don't know, those are all compliments to me. These two movies do all of those things in just the right way.

18. The NeverEnding Story. Another movie that captured my imagination as a kid. In fact, I just bought this on DVD the other day (I couldn't believe I didn't already have it). What really strikes me is this dire sense of nihilism and death all around it. I guess that sounds weird. I read the book as a kid after I saw this movie, and this movie is only, like, a third of it or half of it. But it was always my favorite part.

17. My Neighbor Totoro. Terrific and beautiful. Miyazaki's movies have gravity.

16. The Princess Bride. The beauty of this movie is how well it succeeds as both a fantasy and a parody of expectations. I've never really felt that it just flat-out parodies the genre--it's too respectful of the genre to do something so lazy--as much as it just injects a certain modernism into it. I love it for that. The fantasy conventions are never seen as stupid, they're just approached differently. That's why this movie has it so far above something like Shrek. Plus, whenever adults want to make a movie about the whimsy of childhood and the importance of imagination, 99% of the time it's Hook or The Cat in the Hat or The Polar Express--hollow experiences that seem made for no one. Rob Reiner, by the way, could never make this today.

15. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Tops The 7th Voyage of Sinbad for me as an adventure, despite the lack of a sword-wielding skeleton. But the film's most special effect, as far as I'm concerned, is Caroline Munro.

14. The Thief of Baghdad (1940). Colorful, adventurous, and wonderful. And it has Sabu, whom I always like. I'd never seen a movie before where a genie is so dangerous and, frankly, kind of a dick.

13. Return to Oz. This film happened at a time when I was just starting to read L. Frank Baum's original Oz novels; when this came out, I was incredibly excited to see it. A combining of The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz (along with, I guess, some unavoidable touches of the Judy Garland movie), this was an Oz I found much more recognizable than any I'd ever seen. And the puppets! Screw CGI, we need more puppets! I love Brian Henson's Jack Pumpkinhead so much. Sure, it's dark, but the books had their darker aspects, too. I wonder why, with this decade's boom in fantasy films, no one has come along and made a really spectacular version of Oz.

12. Beauty and the Beast (1946). The most beautiful, magical version of this story I've ever seen. It's so great when filmmakers really embrace the fairy tale aspects of fairy tale films instead of trying so hard to make them "relevant." They're always relevant! Why else have they survived?

11. Princess Mononoke. As serious a contemplation of ethics and morality as I've ever seen in films. It's a complex work that has serious things to say about the world, and the wisdom to shy away from easy movie conclusions to real problems.

10. Jason and the Argonauts. My favorite story in mythology, told with a great deal of adventurous spirit here.

9. The Adventures of Prince Achmed. The silhouette animation takes a fanciful, unreal story and makes it into a living storybook. Beautiful.

8. The Last Unicorn. You can see the seams, yes, and maybe the movie didn't need narrative songs (though I've always liked them), but it just gets so much right: the scariness of the Red Bull, the dynamics of loneliness, the way broken dreams can be so easily lived with, and Christopher Lee in one of his best performances as the broken King Haggard.

7. The Star Wars Saga. As in all six films. The experience of watching all six films in a row is one I'm glad I've had; you can see just how well the story works and what the whole thing is really about. There are criticisms, sure--for all six movies--but it's such a singular experience that it rises above a lot of those criticisms. I love the whole thing.

6. The Dark Crystal. The most alien movie I've ever seen; no human presence at all, and so enveloping in its commitment to creating a place without it. It approaches the uncanny valley of realism for me, but it's so damned good.

5. The Lord of the Rings. Perfect.

4. Spirited Away. Still Miyazaki's best achievement, in which the greatest power is the ability to know oneself.

3. Conan the Barbarian. I know it came out in 1982, but this is just the perfect film expression of 1970s fantasy. (It took the film world a few years to catch up to comics, magazines, fiction, and fantasy art.)

2. The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut. Richard Williams's sublime achievement had always existed in our minds, sort of in spite of what Philistines like Fred Calvert did to it and the myriad ways Disney has ripped it off. I've been meaning to write something, dammit, about this movie for a long time, but it's overwhelming all of the things you can say about this movie, its making, its ruination, and one fan's tireless efforts (read about it here) to come up with an edit closer to Williams than we've ever had. Many of us had always imagined that the completed film was the greatest achievement in the history of animation. Now we can prove it.

1. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. If there's one film I can point to and say "This is me," it's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It somehow reflects so many of my sensibilities about the fantastic, about getting older, and about the imagination. And I still think this is Terry Gilliam's best film. So far.