What, you may ask, is the difference between a science fiction movie and a fantasy movie?
Honestly, the most correct answer to that question is: who cares?
Both genres ask us to accept as reality things that are: not real, don’t exist, don’t yet exist, or may never exist. We just enter the realms of these stories and accept their worldviews (even their physics) and go along for the ride. Nothing wrong with that.
If I were to come up with some things that separate a fantasy film from a sci-fi film, I’d go with this understanding: fantasy films are often set in some version of the past—usually a completely imaginative past that never existed. Unlike with sci-fi, advanced technology is neither a feature nor essential to their storytelling. In fact, most technology in fantasy films or more along the lines of magical powers than advanced devices.
Of course, these guidelines aren’t hard and fast. Most of us would consider Star Wars to be science fiction. But those movies all take place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” And in the marvelous sci-fi movie Tremors (1990), the big problem our heroes have is they lack the technology to defeat a ravenous underground monster.
Fantasy films have been among the biggest blockbusters of the past twenty years in Hollywood. The Lord of the Rings movies and the ensuing Hobbit trilogy raked in $6.1 billion in global box office receipts.
What I’d like you to consider today are five lesser-known fantasy films that you may have overlooked or watched so long ago that you’ve forgotten how marvelous they are. Here are my picks for five fantasy films you should add to your queue.
You’ve all seen both Disney versions of this story (the 1991 animated musical classic and the 2017 live action/CGI version of the 1991 version.) But you might want to consider the 1946 French version by the French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. The title credits are written in chalk on a chalkboard and conclude with this inscription in French from Cocteau to the viewers of the film: “For those who haven’t forgotten how to dream, for adults who haven’t lost touch with their childhood, for those who believe nothing is impossible…”
The story told here is different from the Disney version, but more in line with the original French fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. The betrayals are deeper (Belle has a brother who is a total jerk), and the romance more affecting. This is a beautiful black-and-white film (with subtitles) and is considered a masterpiece of French cinema. It stars Jean Marais, who is considered one of the great stars of French film. Belle is portrayed by the beautiful French actress Josette Day. The story here is remarkably different from the Disney versions we know and love. It’s worth seeing.
This film is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema. But it’s not what you might think of as a traditional fantasy film. It is about the inner life of a little Spanish girl who becomes obsessed with the 1931 American film Frankenstein.
Spirit of the Beehive is set in 1940 Spain, in an isolated village on the Castilian Plain not long after the end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of the oppressive regime of Ferdinand Franco. Six-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent) and her sister Isabel (Isabel Telleria) see the movie in the town movie theater and the story affects her. She becomes convinced that the monster lives in the woods near her village and is a spirit animal with whom she becomes friendly.
The performances here by the two child actors (Torrent and Telleria) are remarkable—among the greatest child performances ever in film. The film is beautiful to look at and is languorous and gentle in its pacing. It is one of those rare movies that offers a child’s magical view of the world and is frequently cited as an inspiration for Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). By the way, Torrent is still a working actress. She most recently appeared in the Spanish horror film Veronica (2017). Or check her out as Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon in the historical drama The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) with Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johanssen, and Eric Bana. She’s still a marvel to behold on the screen.
“It’s dragon huntin’ time!” This is one of the all-time dopiest lines ever in a movie. It’s shouted by one of the main characters, Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) before he and his partner, Quinn Abercromby (Christian Bale) go out and do some, well, dragon huntin’ in London.
Construction workers are working on an expanded subway tunnel for the London Tube when they accidentally break into a nest of dormant dragons and awaken them. Then, the dragons go around destroying everything with their fire-breathing ways. I hate when that happens, don’t you? This probably would have made a perfect B-movie, but it has an expensive cast and tremendous special effects.
When you’re watching it, you will be thinking to yourself: ‘Man, I sure hope no one finds any dragons ‘cause these things are dangerous!’ This reminded me of a conversation I had with an old geezer at a Serbian Orthodox church in Los Angeles many years ago. They were having a banquet in honor of St. George. I was looking at an icon of St. George killing a dragon and I said to the old guy: “What is this with the dragon-slaying? There are no dragons.” His response: “Oh, there’s dragons. In Croatia. You step into the water they come up and MAMPH! They eat you up.” I’ll have to remember this should I ever decide to go swimming in Dubrovnik, I said to him. Don’t do it, he said. And he was serious. This movie is just scary enough, but also just (unintentionally) goofy enough that it is really a lot of fun. Definitely a good middle-of-the-work-week-and-I-need-a-mindless-break movie.
In 1977, Katherine Paterson published a YA (Young Adult) fantasy novel called Bridge to Terabithia. In the ensuing years, it has become one of the most beloved novels for teenage readers (particularly girls). They are a devoted bunch: fan clubs, Facebook pages, fan art pages on Pinterest, etc. An adaptation of a book this beloved is always a dicey proposition. It’s a tough job to produce a movie that is faithful to the book but allows the filmmakers the creativity to interpret the story for a different medium. Mission accomplished here.
The story here is that a couple of tweens, Jess (a very young Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie (an equally young AnnaSophia Robb), go walking in the woods and enter a fantastical world of fantastical scenery and fantastical creatures. But it’s much more than just that. It’s heartbreaking and dramatic and inspiring. This is a movie to watch with your children. Many times. You will all be swept up into the world first created by Katherine Paterson and adapted for the screen by her son, David Paterson. The film was directed by Gabor Csupo, the co-founder of Klasky-Csupo, the animation production company that brought you the beloved animated TV series Rugrats, among many other programs.
As The Grateful Dead would say, “what a long strange trip it’s been” for director Terry Gilliam. Born in Minneapolis 80 years ago, he grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from Occidental College, began working in advertising there in the 1960s, and kept getting pulled over by cops because of his long flowing hair in his British sports car. He was hardly a radical terrorist type, but he started to get nervous about the whole mood of the country. So he moved to England, naturally, where he started doing animation work with John Cleese. Next thing you know he was hired to do animation for Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-74).
His highly distinctive and imaginative interstitial animations attracted the attention of Hollywood. Gilliam’s films are always about the imagination, and this one explicitly so. Wow, this movie is something amazing to look at. The premise here is that Dr. Parnassus, who runs a traveling theater company, leads his audiences into fantastic adventures based on their own imaginations. This movie has a tragic tint to it—the magnificent Heath Ledger died during filming and Gilliam had to work around his immense loss. The cast also includes Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, and Christopher Plummer. Although the film received a tepid critical response upon its release, it has really grown on me and I highly recommend it.
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.