5 Best Fantasy Movies Of The 21st Century, Ranked

There are a staggering 31,360 fantasy films in the Letterboxd database, and for this list of the genre's best films of the 21st century so far, we took a deep dive into it, relying on user ratings to determine the consensus. However, it wasn't as simple as picking the first five 21st century fantasy movies on the website. First, we removed all the TV animated specials and short films, spin-offs of various small screen anime, and two "Game of Thrones" episodes which were added as a single movie because they had a special IMAX release. And, for variety's sake, we removed movies belonging to the same franchise or from the same director, ensuring only the highest-rated title from a series or a specific filmmaker was included.

Once we had a clearer view of what movie fans consider the century's five best fantasy films, all that was left for us to do was rank them from worst to best — or, in this case, least favorite to most beloved is probably a better way of putting it. The five films covered below display the wealth of creativity we've seen across all forms of fantasy storytelling in the past couple of decades, from live action to animation, and from big budget epics to independent labors of love. We let the data from Letterboxd users select the movies for us this time around, but if we had decided to pick our own personal favorites for this list, then it probably would have still looked a lot like this.

It's now known as one of the best fantasy films of the 21st century, but director Tarsem Singh's self-funded labor of love "The Fall" — which was shot in 24 different countries over four years – was regarded as the quintessential love-it-or-hate-it movie upon its initial, extremely limited release. It stars Lee Pace as a 1920s Hollywood stuntman recovering from a bad injury in hospital. While there, he tells a young girl with a broken arm a fantasy story about five heroes on a quest and the audience sees the vivid tale unfold in her imagination.

A brief glance at the sharply divided initial reviews reveals how some were immediately enchanted by the way this meta period epic served as an exploration of the very act of storytelling itself while others were left confused as a seemingly straightforward fairytale re-enactment kept transforming based on which perspective we were hearing the epic revenge tale from. It languished without a distributor for years prior to its release in 2006 but gained cult status as word spread that this was one of the most ambitious, visually stunning movies ever made.

Even if the story all the visual spectacle is in aid of doesn't quite reach the heights of other, better known 21st century fantasy epics, you can't help but respect "The Fall" as a bold achievement in making an uncompromising movie independent of the studio system. We're also grateful that it gave us Lee Pace, who broke out in the dual role of paraplegic stuntman Roy Walker and the Black Bandit. The recent 4K restoration has grown the movie's cult following significantly, and as a stylish, intoxicating love letter to the possibilities of cinema, it's indeed irresistible.

If you've never been introduced to the wonderful work of Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, then there's no better starting point than the Oscar-nominated 2014 film "Song of the Sea." The second installment in director and studio co-founder Tomm Moore's unofficial Irish folklore trilogy (which also includes 2009's "The Secret of Kells" and 2020's "Wolfwalkers") earned him a reputation as his country's answer to Hayao Miyazaki, drawing on Ireland's rich cultural heritage to tell a fairytale that felt immediately timeless.

Like the very best fantasy films, "Song of the Sea" feels like an adaptation of a story handed down between generations, pulling from the likes of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen all while feeling distinctively, unmistakably Irish in its utilization of quintessential Celtic folklore. Shapeshifting faeries, Elvish daoine sí, and the goddess Macha are all weaved into this tale of two siblings making the perilous journey back to the lighthouse where they grew up to rescue their dog.

Like many of the best Studio Ghibli movies, Moore showcases an innate trust in his young audience, knowing he doesn't need to hold their hands as he explores darker themes and that he can introduce otherworldly creatures without exposition overkill. The result may scare and upset more sensitive children but will prove rewarding to animation fans as Moore brings this evocative world to life through 2D animation, relying heavily on watercolors in the flashback sequences. It's a children's picture book come to life; the best fairytale you were never told as a kid.

You can blame recency bias for why "The Odyssey" is already rated highly enough by Letterboxd users to be included here, but we suspect time will prove that Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Ancient Greek poem about the king of Ithaca's perilous journey home after the Trojan War is one of this era's defining fantasy films. Many already consider it to be the best Christopher Nolan movie to date. It's certainly his most ambitious, with the Brit reworking Homer's saga into something of a companion piece to his film "Oppenheimer" — he takes the archetypal hero's journey and turns it into a story about said hero's realization that he's defied Zeus' Law.

Like Cillian Murphy's theoretical physicist, Matt Damon's Odysseus realizes too late that he shouldn't have played God, and the consequences of his actions reverberate far beyond his kingdom. Nolan manages to transform one of the most foundational texts ever written into a newly relevant statement on war and political turmoil. That you can also enjoy it as a fantastical travelogue set in a time of apparent magic, and as a tortured revenge saga as our hero meets the odious suitors setting their eyes on his wife, is testament to Nolan's ability to explore weightier ideas via blockbuster spectacle.

Perhaps the biggest achievement of "The Odyssey" is that it doesn't feel like a CliffsNotes version of the epic saga designed to be shown in classrooms. It's bloody, it's visceral, and it's deeply tortured (there's one particularly jarring scene that nobody saw coming). It feels like it could be a natural conclusion to Nolan's career-long fascination with family men reckoning with burdens greater than themselves. With its stacked cast and all the hype (which was ultimately warranted), it's no surprise that "The Odyssey" blew everyone away at the box office.

The three films in Peter Jackson's original Middle-earth trilogy are the three highest-rated 21st century live-action fantasy films on Letterboxd. "The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers" are equally worthy of a spot on this list (here's our ranking of every "The Lord of the Rings" movie if you want to see how they stack up against each other), but for the sake of having some variety in this list we're only including the top rated of the three, which remains unequalled as the most satisfying trilogy-closer ever made.

Even with all the jokes about it having too many endings, no finale before or since has matched the surprisingly emotional power of 2003's "The Return of the King." Following the opening flashback to Sméagol's (Andy Serkis) initial mental corruption by the One Ring, Jackson sets the stage for wall-to-wall set pieces that aim to top the epic battle of Helm's Deep that closed out the previous installment. Building up to the thrilling Siege of Gondor, the final chapter of the journey includes more thrilling battles, more memorable monsters and Serkis' best performance to date, selling the complex tragedy of Gollum behind motion capture.

"The Return of the King" fully deserved all of the Oscars it scooped (it actually won every single Academy Award it was nominated for), but the lack of acting nominations proves that it didn't win anywhere near enough. Jackson will just have to make do with creating the most consistent blockbuster trilogy ever to grace the big screen. Let's just pretend that he didn't return for three movies of diminishing returns — the "Hobbit" trilogy may be better than you remember, but it still pales in comparison to "The Lord of the Rings."

Unsurprisingly, Hayao Miyazaki is among the most represented directors in the upper echelons of Letterboxd's top fantasy films. Once again, for the sake of variety, we're only including the highest rated of his films. Luckily, it's the one widely considered to be his ultimate masterpiece: 2001's "Spirited Away," the defining Studio Ghibli title. Not only is it among the best anime films of all time, it's one of greatest animated films of all time, period.

The film follows a young girl named Chihiro. She and her parents stumble across an abandoned theme park with a huge bathhouse, and when her folks help themselves to some food from a seemingly empty restaurant, they're transformed into pigs. It turns out the park is now frequented by spirits, and Chihiro has to get a job at the bathhouse in order to save her parents. It's a formative tale of self-discovery that also serves as a rich allegorical exploration of the conflict between Japanese tradition and the cultural excess that led to the early 1990s economic crash.

Miyazaki's previous effort, "Princess Mononoke," saw him gravitate from lighter, child-friendly tales like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" into tougher-edged, more politically engaged storytelling. With "Spirited Away" he split the difference, throwing another young heroine into a fantastical adventure but with far greater existential stakes than before, hoping that rather than encouraging children in the audience to grow up, they'd be inspired by seeing an ordinary kid overcoming the odds. It's a simple emotional starting point for a rich supernatural tale that more than deserves its widespread status as Ghibli's crowning achievement.