The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The dragon is a creature from folklore. It is usually seen as large and reptilian in nature, able to fly and breathe fire. Dragons are frequently hostile to humans but can be tamed and ridden by a select few. Some depictions of dragons have them as intelligent and able to speak. In other versions, they desire to hoard treasure, while possessions of their teeth, blood or scales can offer magical boon.
Dragons have appeared in various works of fantasy and fairytale where they are fought by heroic adventurers and dragonslayers. The depiction of the dragon on screen goes back to at least the silent Siegfried (1924). There have been a number of animated examples but the live-action equivalent took flight with the CGI revolution of the 1990s. Following the boom in Epic Fantasy films in the 2000s onwards, there have been a number of fantasy works about and/or featuring dragons.
There is also the tradition of Chinese dragons, which are not reptilian or fire-breathing in nature but are more wisely creatures that often aid people in adventures.
A children’s fantasy adventure that never strays beyond the environs of an American high school and comes with the lowbrow slapstick, excruciating comic caricatures and incredibly bad effects
This has a concept so ridiculous it might actually work – a fantasy version of Moby Dick. The sea captain’s obsessive hunt for a whale is transplanted to a fantasy kingdom and the whale made into a dragon
A mockbuster from The Asylum that sets out to copy Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit such that Jackson and co sued, forcing The Asylum to change the title in several territories
Tim Burton takes on Lewis Carroll but Carroll gets lost beneath Burton doing his usual quirky eccentric thing and a plot that seems to want to turn Alice’s adventures into a modern epic fantasy
Sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. This has even less in common with Lewis Carroll’s book sequel than its predecessor did – a total of two scenes. The sets and effects are just pretty eye candy
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of the classic tales has been granted a decent budget that allows the stories to emerge with lavish spectacle and the fantasy to fly with exceptional regard
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Animator Don Bluth conducts a spinoff from his previous film Anastasia, focusing on the adventures of the talking bat sidekick
After the success of the motion captured animated The Polar Express, Robert Zemeckis turned his attentions to the classic legend. Armed with a Neil Gaiman script and a host of name actors in the mocap suits, the result is a soaring fantasy
A cheaply made Arabian Nights fantasy adventure that came out seeking to copy ride the coattails of the success of Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
Another lacklustre entry in the banal Lord of the Rings Lite franchise from C.S. Lewis’s books, a plodding run of the mill fantasy adventure for the most part. The mediocre reception killed off interest in the series
The second live-action tv adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (in fact combining two books). This is uneven and oddly padded but beautifully produced
A dragon fantasy where Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown plays the damsel who sets out to save herself. A fantasy film made for people who don’t like fantasy films
This is a British-made fantasy film in the vein of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones but conducted on a B-budget where it does seem to be making an effort
From the people who made the Mythica films, this is a modest and well made fantasy film about a young farmboy thrust into the role of dragonslayer that does good things on a limited budget
This has an appealing premise – the children of all the Disney villains have grown up and go to school together. This is promptly killed by the awfulness of the film itself, which is essentially High School Musical set in the Disney universe
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
The third of Tsui Hark’s films based on the historical figure of De Renjie/Detective Dee. While the other films were rooted in a relative realism, Tsui lets all restraints loose here and goes way over the top
Enchanted in which Amy Adams played an animated fairytale princess entering the real world was a reasonable hit. This is the long-planned sequel that reunites the principals but feels like a joke that belabours in the retelling
Animated film spun off from a popular French online gameworld, which had also previously spawned an animated tv series. The results are amiably engaging with a sense of humour that makes the show
This revival of the classic children’s character who can speak to animals took a critical battering but I kind of liked it. It has a completely madcap slapstick tone and more crucially returns to the stories and banishes any bad memory of Eddie Murphy
Quite a decent low-budget epic fantasy film from promising Scottish director Lawrie Brewster. This manages to create a reasonable suspension of disbelief on modest resources
Low-budget film directed by a former soldier about a troupe of mercenaries sent into the woods to round up vagrants who find they are fighting against a dragon
This places an amusing spin on the standard dragon fantasy, having the dragon and its would-be slayer team up to fool the peasantry out of money. The Sean Connery-voiced dragon looks like a big CGI cartoon
Sequel to a largely forgotten fantasy series. While never transcending formula, this fares somewhat better than the previous sequel largely because CGI effects have advanced since the original
A shabby video-released sequel to DragonHeart (the first of several). Although this is quite clearly not being made with the services of Industrial Light and Magic this time
The fourth film in the Dragonheart franchise. Is there truly anybody out there who was begging for this? Cheaply made in Romania where it seems to be straining to drag the original premise out for another film
Quite why the largely forgotten DragonHeart has produced four sequels is beyond me. Where does such a loyal fanbase come from that they keep churning out more of these films?
An overlooked fantasy film. Although the spirit of Star Wars stands over it, it offers a dark and gritty vision of the Middle Ages and soars with a full flight of fantasy with some stunning dragon effects
One of the better films produced by Charles Band. Despite variable dragon effects, this is a children’s film that captures a genteel sense of innocence
This sets out to parody the Lord of the Rings fantasy. Or at least you think that is what it is trying to do. All suspension of disbelief is killed by a series of grating and anachronistic quips
Film based on the enormously popular roleplaying game, this appears to have been quickly thrown together in advance of The Lord of the Rings films but is a shabby effort filled with some disastrous off-tone casting
A new film based on the role-playing game. The first film several years ago is poorly regarded. This is an attempt to reboot a film series but suffers badly from being handed to two comedy directors and their flip treatment
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Disney film where an animated fairytale princess emerges into the real world to become Amy Adams. This becomes the opportunity to wittily puncture the unreal world of the Disney fairytale
A dragon fantasy adapted from a popular book series that has Lord of the Rings wannabe stamped all over it and only unimaginatively follows in Peter Jackson’s footsteps
Unassumingly well-made venture into the epic fantasy genre from Pitof, director of Catwoman. A slim story played with conviction and some particularly good dragon effects
One of Rankin-Bass’s animated films, this has an ambitious epic fantasy plot with original themes about the line between science and magic, although this is undone by Rankin-Bass’s limited animation
US film based on a real Japanese historical incident that has been oddly spun out into a Keanu Reeves-starring epic samurai fantasy film. One of the biggest financial flops of 2013
Another entry among 2012’s spate of Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. this was a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
A new film based on the epic legend of Siegfried, which gives it a grounded historical realism and tells it in terms of the mud, moral ambiguity and backstabbing in-politicking of tv’s Game of Thrones
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Harry Potter series but the final chapter rounds out the boy wizard saga in rousing style, mounting an epic-sized battle and finding characters depths that hold some of the best writing of the series
Fourth of the Harry Potter films and one that feels much more seamless and sure of itself as a story. The problem is the absurd contrivation of J.K. Rowling’s weak story that wheels out every sports movie cliche in the book
The hugely successful film that started the Italian peplum cycle featuring muscle-builder heroes in togas. This is rather stolid and strips much of the fantasy out of the Greek legends, nevertheless has its own pulp spectacle
After two bloated and over-padded Hobbit films, Peter Jackson finally gets it together and produces what everyone was expecting him to deliver, even if it means dragging one battle scene out to last an entire film
Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien and epic-sized adventure in the first of his Hobbit films. The visual sweep is there but the film feels over-extruded and over-burdened by its own self-importance.
Generally overlooked animated adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book made for tv by Rankin-Bass. This keeps to the text very faithfully – more so than Peter Jackson – and is only let down by some limited animation
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
One of the most beautifully made formula animated films of recent vintage but at the end of the day no more than a film that is by the numbers where the artistry is unsupported by the banal script
Popular animated adaptation of a children’s book. This hits all the right story arcs and in sufficiently likeable measure to work amiably. Two sequels and a live-action remake followed.
This is a film that leaves you in two minds – one that is constantly going wow at the animated artistry and detail before us; the other that is realising that this is yet another formula animated film
With Disney having remade most of their animated catalogue in live-action, other studios are now getting in on the act with this live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon
Uwe Boll strikes again! Sequel to his passable earlier epic fantasy, which is dragged down by a lack of action and the need to provide star Dolph Lundgren with a series of excrutiating witticims
A Uwe Boll film that feels as though he didn’t cared about what he was making. You’d have to go back to the Italian sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s to find a more shoddy work of epic fantasy
Sequel to the Russian-made horror film Viy, this is an historical fantasy with a big budget that mounts spectacular effects sequence and provides name stars, even if the results are utterly bizarre
A blatant attempt to copy Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, night down to employing the same lead actors and director, but this fails through shoddy stop-motion animated effects
Ching Siu-Tung, director of classic Wu Xia films like A Chinese Ghost Story, returns to wow us all again after an eight years absence with another film of breathtakingly dreamy visuals
A Hallmark tv mini-series remake of the Greek myths that fails to stand up to the classic 1963 version. Here Ray Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animated effects are replaced by cut-price CGI
The US remake of the French time travel comedy Les Visiteurs. With a script by John Hughes, this imports the original film’s stars but misses its comedy charms by a mile
Beautiful stop-motion animated feature from Laika. This takes a big bite and tells an epic adventure. The only flaw is that the stop-motion is so flawless that audiences cannot tell the difference between regular animation
An adaptation of Jasper Fforde, one of the cleverest of modern humorous fantasy writers. Alas, the finished result is one that understands nothing about the book and is one of the worst ever screen adaptations
Beautiful and underrated animated fantasy film about an apprentice magician who protects the last unicorn. This has a maturity that most animated fantasy lacks
Christopher Lloyd and Dee Wallace star in one of the tattiest of 1980s fantasy films about a magic horse that is really a dragon. This is killed by some abysmal effects.
Disgraced former Pixar head John Lasseter makes a returns to animation for Skydance in an incredibly lightweight effort about adventures in the land of luck
One of the better films from B-budget dircetor Bert I. Gordon, a fantasy adventure where Gordon produces some decent effects
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (as opposed to the original fairytale version) told from the viewpoint of the witch. Nicely produced, not much substance – the most interesting parts are when it gets to mess around with the fairytale
Nobody much liked Maleficent but did make a reasonable amount of money, hence we get this sequel. The surprise is that in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Rønning, it is far better than anything one expected
A tv mini-series adaptation of the famous Chinese legend Journey to the West made for US audiences by Hallmark Entertainment. The story remains stolidly earthbound and the meta-fictional contortions the story has to add to engage in to have the monk hero replaced by a contemporary Thomas Gibson are bizarre
Resident Evil series director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich return with an adaptation of another popular videogame series
Disney animated film based on the Chinese legend of the girl who posed as a warrior. Unlike the similar historically-based Pocahontas, this emerges as well rounded and satisfying
Mythica: A Quest for Heroes was a fan-made epic fantasy film made with a high degree of creativity and professionalism; this sequel is slightly the lesser but still maintains the high degree of quality
A popular fantasy film of the 80s that sits just between the imaginative, particularly when it comes to some its creature effects and design work, and the mawkish. It also comes with an intriguing level of meta-fiction that delivers some odd messages
Abysmal third entry in the series. The creatures lack any conviction and everything is wrecked by taking the story out of Fantasia back to Earth amid hip contemporary jokes
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
The 22nd animated film from Pixar and also the least successful (being released only a week before theatrical chains closing down due to Coronavirus). This has an appealingly quirky and original concept not unakin to Bright that takes place in an alternate reality where magic creatures live in a world akin to our own
Disney live-action film about a boy and his dragon where the dragon is represented by animation
Another Disney remake that hardly resemble its source – the original was light slapstick with a big cartoon dragon, this is a sober wild child story where the dragon is now an endangered species
A story about an apprentice at a mysterious company that deals with magic, this could well serve as a fix for those wanting something more of the Harry Potter franchise
Mind-spinning film spinoff of the tv series H.R. Pufnstuf, this plays out like The Wizard of Oz on hallucinogens
An obscure animated version of the classic fairytale that comes with excruciating puns, much slapstick and has clearly been animated on a low budget
An Arthurian legends fantasy adventure made as part of the animation renaissance of the 1990s. Anything serious aspirations are wrecked by the insertion of inane popular culture in-jokes
The 59th animated film from Disney emerges as a modest effort with a cross-Asian cultural focus that eventually builds a strong character arc
This has the interestingly original premise of being set in a post-apocalyptic world where revived dragons have eliminated most of humanity. The show is stolen by Matthew McConaughey in wild man mode
One of the more obscure films in the Disney catalogue. A part live-action, part animated dramatised tour of Disney Studios, showing how the studio runs and screening several animated short pieces
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
German animated film about the adventures of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. Lightweight and trivial, this feels like it has come along ten years too late to the fad for fairytale parodies and mash-ups we had in the mid-2000s with films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!
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 Marvel onslaught continues with this resurrection of a martial artist superhero character from the 1970s. Amid the mostly ho-hum MCU offerings of the 2020s, this becomes an energised action vehicle
Shazam! was one of the more enjoyable DCEU superhero offerings, placing a light-hearted spin on the superheroics. This is the sequel
Before this was spun out into a series of ho-hum sequels, the original was an animated film that burst with a freshness and a series of winning voice characterisations
Shrek was a fresh and original hit. The first of four insipid sequels, this seems to merely coast by on our liking of the characters while upping the fairytale parody
The third of the Shrek films settles in with a formulaic blandness where the characters turn up more because everyone expects them to than the film finds much for them to do
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
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
A live-action film based on the titular segment from Fantasia. From Jerry Bruckheimer meaning that it is a film of empty-headed special effects that fails to conjure any magic of its own
One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki’s range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near
