Question of the Week: favorite fantasy film?

Welcome to Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire enjoyable discussion of interesting topics.

This week’s question: what is your favorite movie in the fantasy genre? No wrong answers, obviously, but I think it’s an interesting question because I suspect fantasy is a LOT harder as a genre to bring to film than police procedurals or romantic comedies.

For myself, I think the overwhelming answer would have to be Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. Like, in my opinion (and your opinion may vary), THE LORD OF THE RINGS movies set the bar very high, so the trilogy is in kind of its own category. You watch them twenty years later and they hold up well in a way a lot of stuff from twenty years ago does not.

With that said, I think my second-favorite fantasy film would the Arnold Schwarzenegger CONAN THE BARBARIAN, since it does a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of the original stories, and the soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is superb – the ANVIL OF CROM track is excellent. Also, James Earl Jones plays an evil sorcerer/cult leader named Thulsa Doom, which is excellent. 🙂

-JM