Forgotten Fantasy Movies You Should Go Back And Watch

The commercial failure of 1982's Blade Runner baffled Rutger Hauer, who delivered a career-defining performance as the leader of the renegade Nexus-6 replicants, Roy Batty. Worse still, Hauer was typecast as a villain after his turn in Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi, which is why Richard Donner didn't want him playing the hero in Ladyhawke, his beautifully shot and criminally overlooked medieval fantasy. "I always considered Rutger as a heavy son of a b****," Donner told the now defunct Starlog Magazine in 1985. "I couldn't see him as a real macho hero, the whole make-my-day kind of thing."

Donner also wanted someone younger, but the imposing Dutch actor talked the director out of it, telling him, "If you want to tell a story about someone who is about strength, endurance, and love, you need an actor with balls." Hauer was proud of his turn as Etienne Navarre, a hunted knight who's been cursed by a jealous bishop — Navarre turns into a wolf by night, while his true love, Isabeau of Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer), transforms into a hawk during the day, keeping them together yet always apart. Young pickpocket the Mouse (Matthew Broderick) comes along for the ride as the trio set about defeating the bishop and lifting the dreadful curse, and SyFy called Ladyhawke an "underseen gem" when it revisited the movie after Hauer's passing in 2019.

You'll get some serious Lord of the Rings vibes from John Boorman's Excalibur, which was very much the director's intention. "I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle-earth," Boorman, who spoke directly with Tolkien about adapting his epic long before Peter Jackson's trilogy, told American Film (via BAMPFA). "I want it to have a primal clarity, a sense that things are happening for the first time," he said. "Landscape and nature and human emotions are all fresh. I tell the actors that they are not reenacting a legend, they are creating it." Boorman's masterfully shot Arthurian fantasy was well-received at the time, but when it comes to King Arthur, people tend to talk about Monty Python and the Holy Grail, instead.

Released some six years earlier, the beloved Monty Python comedy couldn't be more different to Excalibur. Boorman's film is exceedingly violent and deadly serious, leaning into the more uncomfortable parts of King Arthur's story. (It was using incest to make viewers cringe long before Game of Thrones.) The film follows Arthurian legend so closely that the final result was simply too dense for some, but for fantasy fans, it's an absolute must-see. Nigel Terry delivers a committed performance as Arthur, and Nicol Williamson's Merlin steals every scene he's in. Excalibur also features an incredibly young Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson, and it introduced Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart to American audiences, too. Plus, cinematographer Alex Thomson received an Oscar nomination for his stunning work on the movie.

The Jumanji franchise was successfully resurrected with a star-studded sequel in 2017, but what a lot of people don't know about Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is that it isn't the first follow-up to the '90s hit. A decade after the Robin Williams-led original made over $260 million at the box office, Jon Favreau directed a standalone spinoff called Zathura: A Space Adventure, a science-fantasy epic featuring early turns from future YA stars Josh Hutcherson and Kristen Stewart. The film revolves around three siblings who turn to an astronaut (Dax Shepard) for help after the titular board game transports their house to outer space.

Unlike its predecessor, Zathura bombed and was quickly written off as a failure, but the figures only tell half the story. Remarkably, somebody at Columbia thought it would be a good idea to release Favreau's family fantasy on the exact same day as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which pulled in huge crowds and left Zathura fighting an uphill battle from the start. The critical response has never matched the receipts, as this forgotten fantasy gem is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and is "a prime example of how misleading box office returns can be," according to Den of Geek, which revisited the film in 2018. "With its witty, efficient script, sense of directorial whimsy, and focus on character over special effects, it is a terrific movie worthy of reappraisal." And Favreau told Indie London that he was "very proud" of Zathura.

The work of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki is popular with fantasy fans the world over, but the Japanese animator's early films aren't nearly as well known in the West as they should be. His sophomore feature-length anime Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a great way to kill a few hours, but if you're only going to watch one fantasy gem from Miyazaki's back catalog, make it 1986's Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the first film released under the Ghibli banner. It follows a boy named Pazu (voiced by James Van Der Beek in the English dub), who befriends a magical girl named Sheeta (Anna Paquin), a descendant of Laputan royalty. Sheeta's amulet is the key to finding the lost floating city of Laputa, which is why the shady Colonel Muska (an on-form Mark Hamill) is in pursuit of the pair.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky is a sweeping movie set to a gorgeous score by Miyazaki's go-to composer, Joe Hisaishi, and the animation is simply breathtaking at times. Miyazaki dreamed up the steampunk setting after a trip to Wales, where miner strikes were raging. "I admired the way they battled to save their way of life, just as the coal miners in Japan did," he told The Guardian. "Many people of my generation see the miners as a symbol; a dying breed of fighting men." It may not be Miyazaki's best film, but skipping it is a big mistake.

A forgotten fantasy that found a new audience via Netflix, 2009's Solomon Kane is an unapologetic genre film. The eponymous character (created by Robert E. Howard, the man behind Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja) is a former pirate who denounces his wicked ways and embraces pacifism after an encounter with a demon. Kane (James Purefoy) then falls in with a family of Puritans on their way to the New World, but when one member is kidnapped and the rest are slaughtered, he comes out of retirement to avenge them. Michael J. Bassett's film was supposed to kick-start a trilogy, but it still works as a standalone feature and "definitely deserves more recognition," according to The Cultured Nerd. "This movie is not talked about enough. ... [It's) totally worth watching, especially for the lover of fantasy."

The director earned praise from fans of the source material (it stays true to the "core of Howard's original character," Fanboys of the Universe said), but what really makes Solomon Kane worthy of reconsideration is the leading man's performance. Best known for his turns in Netflix shows Altered Carbon and Sex Education, James Purefoy is excellent as the Puritan Avenger, underplaying Kane's inner turmoil to great effect. He took a deep dive into the character's history after Bassett approached him about the film, and he was instantly hooked. "I saw this very British, 17th-century swaggering swordsman, and I thought, 'Yeah, let's have a go at that,'" Purefoy told Den of Geek.

Never mind fantasy, Tarsem Singh's The Fall is one of the most visually stunning films of any genre. The Indian director is said to have shot his passion project in 28 different countries, seeking out the most beautiful and/or unusual landscapes the world has to offer. The result is a true spectacle, but sadly, it never got the recognition it deserved. Singh's kaleidoscopic showpiece fell victim to "a very ill-fated premiere at Toronto in 2006, which saw two early, dismissive trade reviews kill off distributor interest," The Telegraph said. "It found champions later, and has since become a cult oddity, hidden treasure in its creator's oddball career."

Singh got away with such outlandish cinematography by setting his story in the imagination of a child. The Fall begins in 1915, when Hollywood stuntman Roy Walker (Lee Pace) sustains a potentially paralyzing injury on the set of his first picture. Roy strikes up a relationship with fellow patient Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a little girl recovering from a broken arm. To pass the time in hospital, the stricken stuntman tells her a story about her namesake, Alexander the Great, and we get to see the characters comes to life in her mind. For some, this was a cheap trick that enabled the director to indulge himself, but that's only a problem if you let it be. As From the Front Row said, "The Fall is Tarsem's imagination unleashed, brilliantly original and gloriously imperfect, and the world is a better place for it."