Your favorite fantasy movie of all time?

[Mindfire]

Oh boy. I can see this puppy going 10 pages, at least.

Things I "liked" about the prequels:
Amidala bobbing her gun up and down like a flamenco dancer's noggin,
The reveal on Darth Vader actually being a descendent of Dark Helmet,
The inter-galactic cross between Mushmouth and Dumb Donald (of Fat Albert fame) we got in Jar Jar,
The wookie hugfest with Yoda,
Metachlorians...I especially liked Metachlorians.

All of those things were outweighed by the cinematography, effects, and awesome fight scenes. I didn't think the story was too bad either.

Also, I'm a 90s kid who grew up with the prequels, so I don't have this built-in anti-prequel bias that all you 70s/80s people who saw the originals when they were released have.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

All of those things were outweighed by the cinematography, effects, and awesome fight scenes. I didn't think the story was too bad either.

Also, I'm a 90s kid who grew up with the prequels, so I don't have this built-in anti-prequel bias that all you 70s/80s people who saw the originals when they were released have.

Go watch the Plinkett/Red Letter Media reviews of the prequel trilogy and then tell us that you still think they're still good movies.

 

[Mindfire]

Go watch the Plinkett/Red Letter Media reviews of the prequel trilogy and then tell us that you still think they're still good movies.

I never said they were perfect. But I found them very enjoyable and not nearly as bad as everyone over the age of 20 seems to think. I'd rate them above the first Transformers film (which I also loved).

And I'll do you one better. I've seen the Distressed Watcher's reviews of them and I still think they're good. Seeing Yoda fight Emperor Palpatine makes everything forgivable. Everything.

 

[Zophos]

...Also, I'm a 90s kid who grew up with the prequels, so I don't have this built-in anti-prequel bias that all you 70s/80s people who saw the originals when they were released have.

We shouldn't completely derail the thread so I won't go into much detail....

But, I don't think I came in with a predisposition against the prequels. Quite the opposite, I expected too much. For me, the real harm in the prequels was they weakened the originals. They brought to light the story-telling flaws in the extant works. It was as much selection of actors + characterization as it was plot + narrative. The technical acumen was still there, but the rest of the aspects of good film-making were near abominable.

 

[Reaver]

Oh boy. I can see this puppy going 10 pages, at least.

Things I "liked" about the prequels:
Amidala bobbing her gun up and down like a flamenco dancer's noggin,
The reveal on Darth Vader actually being a descendent of Dark Helmet,
The inter-galactic cross between Mushmouth and Dumb Donald (of Fat Albert fame) we got in Jar Jar,
The wookie hugfest with Yoda,
Metachlorians...I especially liked Metachlorians.

Let me add to this list:

Hayden Christiansen's stellar acting,

Natalie Portman's attempt to keep a straight face in every scene while simultaneously trying to not look at the camera,

Jake Lloyd's Special Jack imitation

Jar Jar's "Meesa..Yoosa..Thissa..Thatsa..Weesa..ad naseaum"

A Sith Lord being cut in half by a Padawan

An eight year old "accidentally" blowing up a space station

R2-D2's jet packs

Anakin Skywalker creating C-3PO

I won't even get into how Lucas defiled Episodes IV, V & VI...

@Mindfire: Narrow minded? Please. And the "Scotsman fallacy"? A TRUE FAN would be offended by what Lucas did.

 

[Mindfire]

Let me add to this list:

Hayden Christiansen's stellar acting,

Natalie Portman's attempt to keep a straight face in every scene while simultaneously trying to not look at the camera,

Jake Lloyd's Special Jack imitation

Jar Jar's "Meesa..Yoosa..Thissa..Thatsa..Weesa..ad naseaum"

A Sith Lord being cut in half by a Padawan

An eight year old "accidentally" blowing up a space station

R2-D2's jet packs

Anakin Skywalker creating C-3PO

I won't even get into how Lucas defiled Episodes IV, V & VI...

@Mindfire: Narrow minded? Please. And the "Scotsman fallacy"? A TRUE FAN would be offended by what Lucas did.

None of those things utterly break the movies as you seem to think. Again, seeing Yoda fight Palpatine makes everything forgivable. And unless you're being facetious, your "oh please" response is the definition of narrow-minded. And you continue to use the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. And what's more you fail to justify it. A true fan would be offended because the creator whose IP they're a fan of decided he wanted to change it, which is completely within his rights to do? What is that logic? I'd almost swear you thought YOU somehow owned and had rights to Star Wars instead of Lucas!

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

None of those things utterly break the movies as you seem to think. Again, seeing Yoda fight Palpatine makes everything forgivable.

Man, when I saw Yoda whip out his lightsaber in Episode II and go toe to toe with Dooku, I lost my freaking mind. The whole audience went berserk; you couldn't even hear the sound effects over the screaming. And seeing him fight again in Episode III was still pretty damn cool... at the time. Yet even then I knew that there were major problems with these movies.

You seem to have decided that people hate the prequel trilogy just because they're old. I think it's more that we understand that something isn't awesome just because it touches our inner fanboy nerve ("Wouldn't it be awesome to see Yoda fight the Emperor?!"). I saw The Phantom Menace on the big screen thirteen times over the course of six months (it was still playing in October), and I was 21 years old at the time. I still have the ticket stubs paper-clipped together; they're sitting on top of my desk about two feet from me. I really enjoyed it every time I saw it. Partly because I was still in a place, at that age, where I truly loved Star Wars and was willing to overlook glaring flaws just because it was a new Star Wars movie.

Even by the time the trilogy ended with Revenge of the Sith, I was still in the "Yeah, the prequels clearly aren't as good as the originals, but they've got their good points" camp. But my eyes have since been opened by the very strong cases made for why the prequel trilogy just aren't very good movies. The fact, for example, that The Phantom Menace has no protagonist; there's nobody for the audience to relate to. We don't meet Anakin for 45 minutes, and he's annoying and has basically no understanding of or control over what's happening. Qui-gon is a boring cipher; even Obi-wan spends large parts of the movie in the background, complaining.

But just because something shiny and cool happens in a movie does not excuse or forgive the ineptitude. Sure, it was pretty neat to watch Yoda fight the Emperor... but in all three movies, the dialogue is almost uniformly boring and stilted; the characters are not relatable and frequently do inane or stupid things; the acting is wooden; the plot makes no sense in about fifty different ways; the tone shifts wildly in places (e.g. the entire opening sequence of ROTS). Yes, there's some cool visuals (Lucas was definitely pushing the boundaries of what you could do in terms of building environments with CGI, I can't argue that); that's about all the prequel trilogy has going for it.

 

[JonSnow]

Yoda with a lightsaber was the only redeeming factor (well, except Natalie Portman with a torn shirt) of episodes 1-3.

Now, back to fantasy... Lord of the Rings stands alone for movies. Fellowship is my favorite of the 3... RotK was my least favorite, though still great. But the best book-to-screen adaptation has been Game of Thrones, bar none. As much as I loved Lord of the Rings, I am a fan of the more brutal, unforgiving nature of Martin's world. The blurred lines between good and evil make for more dynamic, interesting characters. And, of course, the directing, writing, and acting are all fantastic.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Yoda with a lightsaber was the only redeeming factor (well, except Natalie Portman with a torn shirt) of episodes 1-3.

Now, back to fantasy... Lord of the Rings stands alone for movies. Fellowship is my favorite of the 3... RotK was my least favorite, though still great. But the best book-to-screen adaptation has been Game of Thrones, bar none. As much as I loved Lord of the Rings, I am a fan of the more brutal, unforgiving nature of Martin's world. The blurred lines between good and evil make for more dynamic, interesting characters. And, of course, the directing, writing, and acting are all fantastic.

Although its not a movie, and therefore not an equal comparison, I agree with you Jon.

Even GRRM said GoT couldn't be done as a movie. It's too broad in its scope, too much of an epic. TV adaption was the only way to tell such a long, involved story in visual media. Because of this, it's unfair to compare a 2-3 hour feature film to, what will amount to 80 hours of television, once completed.

 

[Reaver]

None of those things utterly break the movies as you seem to think. Again, seeing Yoda fight Palpatine makes everything forgivable. And unless you're being facetious, your "oh please" response is the definition of narrow-minded. And you continue to use the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. And what's more you fail to justify it. A true fan would be offended because the creator whose IP they're a fan of decided he wanted to change it, which is completely within his rights to do? What is that logic? I'd almost swear you thought YOU somehow owned and had rights to Star Wars instead of Lucas!

Do I think that I own the rights to Star Wars? Of course not. What a positively mundane thing to say. I'm not alone in my belief that the first three movies are just plain terrible and a little CGI yoda doing blackflips is not good enough to save any of it. Hmm...you say that I don't justify the "No True Scotsman" fallacy? How about the fact that I used to be a fan of George Lucas until he became a money grubbing whore and changed everything good about IV, V & VI? But you know what? This is a stupid argument to be having anyway. We both have our opinions and if you like crap movies then that's certainly your right.
As far as I'm concerned, this discussion is over.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Well while we're discussing the Star Wars trilogies, any thoughts on whether the third trilogy is going to be made at some stage, and if so, what's it going to be like? Personally, being of the seventies and eighties movie goers I loved the first (middle) trilogy, and thought the second (prequil) trilogy suffered by comparison. Yeah they ramped up the special effects but also made it too childreny for me. And also at the back of my mind I was always thinking that that Annakin kid's going to end up bad! It made it hard for me to root for him. I'd be sort of worried that they'd do the same for the third one.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[robertbevan]

"willow" was pretty much everything i feel like a fantasy movie should be.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Hi,

Well while we're discussing the Star Wars trilogies, any thoughts on whether the third trilogy is going to be made at some stage, and if so, what's it going to be like? Personally, being of the seventies and eighties movie goers I loved the first (middle) trilogy, and thought the second (prequil) trilogy suffered by comparison. Yeah they ramped up the special effects but also made it too childreny for me. And also at the back of my mind I was always thinking that that Annakin kid's going to end up bad! It made it hard for me to root for him. I'd be sort of worried that they'd do the same for the third one.

Cheers, Greg.

If they ever do make any more Star Wars movies, I hope to Godzilla that George Lucas isn't involved.

 

[Steerpike]

If they ever do make any more Star Wars movies, I hope to Godzilla that George Lucas isn't involved.

He says he't not doing any more, so I suspect we won't see any until after he's dead, if at all.

 

[Kevlar]

I've never been the biggest Star Wars fan, in my opinion it's okay leaning toward good. I was born in 1995, so that might skew my perception, and I'm about to get a lot of flak for this: I like the prequel trilogy more. I saw the orginal first. But I like the prequel more. Let me justify it by sating the two reasons why: more moral ambiguity and less clichés. Some of the clichés of the original were, of course, a little less popular back then, but nonetheless, many of them I find to be the most annoying clichés. The story hasn't aged well, in my honest opinion. Also the acting in both trilogies is bad, comparing one to the other is like comparing a kettle to a kettle: they might differ in shape or colour, but they're still the same thing.

Anyway...

The worst I've ever seen is Dungeons & Dragons. Even at six years old I couldn't force myself to watch it. It's also quite a stain on Jeremy Irons, though his role was the only quality part and then only because of the unintentional hilarity.

I hated Highlander. I've seen parts of Dune (I think) and it couldn't hold my attention. Eragon was really bad, even when I was an immature enough reader to like the book (I found myself caring less and less as the series went on, and couldn't make it thirty pages into the last one). Harry Potter was... okay, I guess. Like with the books I cared less as it went with a peak for the third and quite a dip for the fifth. And like the books the farther it went the more I hated the main character, the weakest character in the series. I can't bring myself to watch the old Conans because Arnie was a horrible casting choice starting with appearance and is a horrendous actor to begin with.

I haven't seen a whole lot of fantasy movies. I've never seen Willow or The Princess Bride, though I've kept my eye out for both over the past couple years. I can't use internet to see them either. Of what I have seen Lord of the Rings is the best, and probably will be for a long time. Each has its particular high-points and low points, but The Two Towers gets a huge penalty for the elves at Helm's Deep.

Pan's Labyrinth I didn't love quite so much as a viewer, but as a writer it was breathtaking, quite masterful.

Of course, when I was little the Black Cauldron was my favourite cartoon, so that might explain some of my preference.

Oh, and if this also included TV series I would say Game of Thrones, Season 1. Season 2 left a bad taste in my mouth, so I hope season 3 brings mouthwash.

 

[Arreth]

It's not my absolute favourite (and it's not strictly in the genre) but I thought I'd throw in a good word for King Arthur. It was bagged a fair bit but the combat is good, I liked the characters and soundtrack (Hans Zimmer) and visuals are good one for stirring up the fantasy writer in me. P.S. See the Director's Cut - makes much more sense.

 

[Pyrsa]

Ladyhawke! Love that Alan Parson's Project soundtrack.

 

[Ireth]

Ladyhawke! Love that Alan Parson's Project soundtrack.

The soundtrack was the one thing I didn't like about Ladyhawke. XD That movie is awesome.

 

[J.P. Reedman]

I was never sure about the soundtrack to Ladyhawke--sometimes liked it, sometimes didn't. Beautifully filmed movie, though.

 

[Pyrsa]

yeah, it's very inyaface eighties isn't it, that soundtrack. But what can I say, I'm a sap.