5 Great Fantasy Films

These films will not only entertain but also inspire.

Cary Elwes as Westley and Robin Wright as Princess Buttercup in "The Princess Bride." MovieStillsDB

When I was growing up, my family practiced a ritual every New Year’s Eve: We watched the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in one day (about nine hours of screen time). I wasn’t allowed to watch the films any other time of year, and so I anticipated the annual New Year’s viewing marathon with a year’s worth of pent-up excitement. These were—and perhaps still are—my favorite films. Eye fatigue and excessive candy consumption aside, that yearly tradition formed me in important ways I still haven’t fully comprehended. Like all good fantasy films, director Peter Jackson’s trilogy transports you to another world, but, no matter how imaginative and “other” it may be, it remains a land where the features of our world are clearly discernible—perhaps even more clearly than they are in our daily lives. We watch fantasy in part to better understand our reality.

We suffer from a dearth of great fantasy literature and fantasy films, however. Fantasy crafted without a strong sense of universal moral and philosophical principles easily slips into the realm of the absurd or even perverted, where the “fantastic” elements are merely the grotesque productions of a twisted imagination. True fantasy, on the other hand, reflects reality and promotes the good, the true, and the beautiful, which can sometimes be distilled and magnified in fantasy and myth better than in other fictional works.