The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Epic Fantasy refers to any type of fantasy adventure that takes place in a Fantasy Otherworld. This is given a variety of different names – High Fantasy, Adventurer Fantasy, Heroic Fantasy. There is also the use of the term Sword and Sorcery, which is used to refer to more red-blooded treatments such as Conan the Barbarian or is often applied in a dismissive way to works that use cliche fantasy elements.
Epic Fantasy has a long history on the written pages, although what we think of today was popularised and its tropes set in place by J.R.R. Tolkien with The Lord of the Rings (1954-6). The popularity of this resulted in numerous copies. Elements were then boiled down to character types in a playable gaming system with Dungeons and Dragons (1974) and later by videogames.
Epic Fantasy takes place in a secondary world. In written fantasy, most book series come with detailed maps that depict the land where the story takes place. The land is usually one that is self-contained but sometimes is tied to this world – in the case of Narnia is reached through a Portal, or in the case of Conan’s Hyboria is to said exist in the ancient past. Also included here are Arabian Nights adventures that take place in a mythical version of the Islamic Golden Age and various Arthurian Legends are set in the mythic England of Camelot.
The land are usually filled with an array of exotic creatures, which can include Elves, Fairies, Dwarves, Dragons, Goblins and Trolls, Orcs and assorted mythical creatures, as well as ones invented for the particular story. The peoples of the land usually live in some type of feudal world where the dominant form of government is always a monarchy, where swordmaking has evolved but it is before the industrial revolution. Magic is widespread to varying degrees and any adventure can at least be counted on to have a Magician join the party where sometimes the nemesis they are fighting is a sorcerer or Witch.
Screen treatments began with various Arabian Nights adventures in the 1920s, reaching a peak with the works of Ray Harryhausen in the 1950s. Following the success of Star Wars (1977), there was a boom in Epic Fantasy filmmaking in the late 1970s/early 1980s. A new boom began in the 2000s following the success of The Lord of the Rings films.
Sequel to The Neverending Story made with a better budget. This delivers some amazing sets and creature designs but is killed with a script that discards the metaphors and complex level of meta-fiction of the original
Supposedly an adventure based on an untold story from The Odyssey, an entry among the fantasy adventure films made for cable filler in the 2000s
One of the numerous ‘vs’ films that came out after Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, this is actually a B-budget fantasy adventure made for cable. This is not particularly bad, just routine and uninspired on all counts where the budget cramps any of its imaginative horizons
The classic comic-strip receives a disastrous film adaption where director Anthony Hickox plays everything for campy silliness
Stunning work of fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki. Made on an epic-sized story canvas and with a breathtaking beauty, this is one of the few original screen works to capture something of the nature and scale of written epic fantasy
A disappointing adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s warrior woman character. This is beautifully designed but suffers from a non-acting Brigitte Nielsen in the title role and an insulting need to water the toughness of the character down
Following the disastrous Brigitte Nielsen film, a new version of Robert E. Howard’s Amazonian warrior woman has been promised since the late 2000s. It finally emerges here from the same people behind the revivals of Hellboy and the Jason Momoa starring Conan
Surprisingly good animated revival of Robert E. Howard’s warrior woman with a script by comic-book writer Gail Simone that gets the character just right
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
Back when Dwayne Johnson was a wrestler billing himself as The Rock, this was a forgettable sword and sorcery effort spun off from his appearance in The Mummy Returns. This led to a surprising number of sequels
The best of an otherwise lightweight, throwaway series. Roel Reiné directs some good action scenes, even if the hackneyed plotting never lets the show rise to anything more than average
Fourth entry in the eminently forgettable sword-and-sorcery series, this heads down into bad movie stakes by writing a series of grating quips over everything, while the action scenes exist in the realm of unbelievability that show that nobody is treating anything with the slightest seriousness
The Scorpion King films are such a low expectation series that it is hard to drum up enthusiasm for a fifth entry. The rehashes stock sword and sorcery cliches and passes its time forgettably
Prequel to The Scorpion King. Unfortunately director Russell Mulcahy allows his broad hand with comedy free reign and the plot is overrun by glib character banter and constant flip modern one-liners
Adaptation of Susan Cooper’s popular fantasy series handled by people who have no interest in the material and badly rewrite/mangle it in order try to turn it into a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings knockoff
An object lessons in how not to adapt a Young Adult series – take a book series about an apprentice witch hunter set in an alternate England and turn it a generic Lord of the Rings copy
One of the classic films from cult stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, an Arabian Nights fantasy adventure where Harryhausen’s creations prove to be quite wondrous
The first of a two-part silent Fritz Lang film based on the Teutonic legend. Lang directs with an epic visual majesty that rivals today’s Lord of the Rings films
The third of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, this came out the same year as Star Wars and Harryhauden’s stop-motion animated creatures look much more flat in comparison
An early CGI animated film conducted on a cut-price budget that tells further adventures of Sinbad
An incredibly bad Italian-made Sinbad adventure starring Lou Ferrigno that is laughable in its dialogue and acting and incredibly tatty in its budget pinching
The second of 2012’s Snow White films after Mirror Mirror, this turns the fairytale into an epic fantasy. Well produced but ultimately a film that lacks anything unique nor pushes far enough into the dark fantasy it promises to be
Surprisingly good animated sword and sorcery film, made with a darker edge and definitely not for children
Matthew Vaughn adapts a Neil Gaiman book in this undeniably appealing fantasy that comes with a story of epical sweep that vies between fantastic imagination and broad humour
Made on the coat-tails of Conan the Barbarian, this is a low-budget sword and sorcery film that crackles with the essence of Robert E. Howard. The first film from regular genre director Albert Pyun
One of the various low-budget Italian sword and sorcery of the 1980s that borrows much from Conan the Barbarian
Cannon Films make an adaptation of the Mediaeval legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Routine 1980s fantasy cinema with Sean Connery looking embarrassed as the Green Knight
Albert Pyun makes a long promised sequel to his first film The Sword and the Sorcerer but delivers an impoverished mess that is all over the place plotwise
An Arabian Nights adventure that offers up one of the purest blends of fantasy and romance of its era. Filled with stunning directorial set-pieces and magnificent sets and all shot in colour.
Dull remake of the classic Arabian Nights film that casts Steve Reeves and tries to make it into a Hercules peplum adventure
The fourth film version of the Arabian Nights adventure, a tv movie released theatrically in some parts.
An excruciating fan-made parody of The Hobbit films filled with amateur actors delivering performances in ridiculous falsettos. What makes this mind-boggling is its realisation it can’t compete with Peter Jackson on effects, resulting in things like Smaug played by a drag queen
Adapted from the videogame, this is a third hand rehash of the basics of Tolkien. Secondly, it looks like a giant CGI cartoon where almost anything interesting about the world has been sidelined in favour of fantasy action
One of the spate of sword and sorcery films that came out during this period, marginally better than most. The plot is a blatant copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo where a swordsman (David Carradine) sets two rival gang factions in a town against one another
Outside of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, not much else that George Lucas has made has been a success. This Ron Howard-directed epic fantasy proved to be a big flop where Howard’s lightweight touch fails to make a one-dimensional plot fly
Ralph Bakshi left behind counter-culture animation to embark on this original fantasy film that comes with a trippily surreal quality, mixing fantasy tropes with a science-fictional rationalisation
A painfully cheap entry in the 1980s fad for sword and sorcery films.
Sequel to the Clash of the Titans remake. Much the same as before except with bigger monsters and more explosions … flash and spectacle that washes over you with all the substance of the light from a disco ball
The epic fantasy quest film is well due a parody, unfortunately this majorly unfunny effort written by its leading man Danny McBride only makes a beeline for the witless and vulgar