I'm a scientific thinker. An engineering thinker. Fantasy doesn't make sense to me, so I have trouble suspending disbelief, and as a consequence I don't enjoy fantasy genre as much as normal people do. That said, fantasy movies work well for me because then I don't have to try to imagine it "from scratch" in my own mind, like would with a book. I read The Hobbit cover-to-cover and I had no idea what was going on throughout the whole thing. NONE of it made sense to me.

I have noticed lately that I'm reacting the same way to "sci"-fi. Where's the science in the sci-fi? Spaceships flying around like aircraft? It's all fake!

So, yeah, I'm missing out on some entertainment.

Suggestion: Try looking for science fiction works that are written by actual scientists. For example, Carl Sagan wrote a novel called "Contact", which was later made into a movie. Try that novel/movie, or look for other such works written by scientists; they're more likely to be scientifically accurate. Maybe that will feel more real to you?

There are many kinds of fantasy and what people want in their fantasies. Some people like super-colourful fish guns and pussy soldiers fantasy where anything goes, etc.

I love fantasy, but I like fantasy with a hard edge of reality thrown in. I`m the kind of guy who says, "What if we loved in a world just like it is now, but Elves, Orcs and magic actually existed?" or, "What if magic really existed in medieval days, but everything else stayed just like real life?"

I also absolutely HATE 21st century politics walking into fantasy games that are set in another world, another place and another time. So if that means I`m in a fantasy Ancient world where Feminism didn`t exist, then feminism does not exist! Women pretty much follow women`s roles and men do their`s for example. Of course magic makes a difference so, by the use of magic we may see rare example s of stuff that could not normally work and it would explain why female magic users, witches and sorceress` exist, but not warriors for example. Any woman taking up a sword and trying to beat a male warrior would usually lose unless she used some kind of strength potion or magic, and using magic would always come with a dire cost.

Similarly, Races would tend to stay in their respective areas (blacks, asians, whites) with some mixing due to trade, etc because the old tribal ways never really die.

That don`t mean you wouldn`t get some mixes, it would just be very rare. In most places so rare to the point that if a black man was seen in a group of white soldiers, it WOULD be mentioned and vice versa. But if Elves and Orcs existed, this would offset the racism between Humans by the great threat of those creatures.

As you can see, i`m more of a realistic DARK FANTASY kind of person and am in fact working on a Steampunk Victorian book with this theme (Book 2 is complete).

The Disney movies? Those were pretty damn bad. But the BBC tv series was great.

Also you forgot Conan the Barbarian, Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Secret of Kells, Warcraft, The Black Cauldron, Dragonslayer, Dragonheart, A Monster Calls and the three Discworld movies: Hogfather, Colour of Magic and Going Postal.

Edit: also Highlander, Mirrormask, Sword of the Valiant and Mio in the Land of Faraway.

Edit 2: and Clash of the Titans and Flight of Dragons.

And of course there's all of Ray Harryhausen's stuff from the 50s, 60s and 70s like Jason and the Argonauts and the Sinbad movies. Seriously, if someone is not familiar with his work, his filmography is a treasure trove of fantasy movies.

Mmm, Mirrormask and Coraline, yeah. But the point wasn't to make anyone think it was a comprehensive list. Just tried to pick a variety of stuff I remembered that had broad appeal.

You think the Disney Narnia movies were bad but then would suggest someone should watch Warcraft on purpose? I even played and enjoyed WoW once upon a time, and I couldn't find anything appealing about the movie. Nah, stuff like Black Cauldron, Clash of the Titans, Highlander, and the Discworld movies are too iffy (and even the Bakshi rotoscoped Hobbit, which I friggin' loved). I liked 'em but they're harder to recommend to a general audience. You and I had a conversation a good while ago about books and I recall you're a big fan of Lloyd Alexander, but I wonder if Black Cauldron, minus the knowledge of and appreciation for the series, isn't just a poor man's Sleeping Beauty or an extended Fantasia skit.

Harryhausen films are sort of Advanced Nerd Cinema syllabus offerings, too, like actually reading Howard, or Verne. Credit where it's due, but cut your teeth on easier stuff to chew.
Good fantasy, like good sci-fi, isn't about the setting. It's a poor writer who relies on dragons and laser guns to fill up a novel.

The ST:TNG episode "Darmok" might be one of the best bits of sci-fi on the tv that decade, and aside from a monster that had a very advanced camouflaging adaptation, a full 80% of the episode was just two dudes hiking.

Maybe try Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle. He's a master wordsmith in those two books, and the story is a story that can be told with or without magic - though it's unseelie as all get out in some parts - and may be of interest to you. Hobbit is High Fantasy, it's the distilled essence of European and Scandanavian myths wrought into a tale for the kids of a stuffy old English linguist and professor. It's beautiful and important to the genre like maybe nothing else is, but that doesn't mean it's where you start. If you don't like the trappings of fantasy, don't just jump right in to the Jordan and Erikson and Eddings. Dip your toes in Rothfuss or Martin, stories told that happen to be in fantasy settings.

I think it's a fun high fantasy adventure. Not an all time great classic, but a fun movie. Which is pretty much exactly what a Warcraft film should be. Narnia being reduced to a bland Hollywood action flick on the other hand is just insulting.

Iffy? Highlander is fucking amazing. It's a fantastic movie, one of the best fantasy films ever. Clash of the Titans is a classic and still holds up well. And the Discworld films, especially Hogfather and Going Postal are a lot of fun and get the source material pretty well I think. All way, waaaay better films than shit like The Mummy, any of the Potter movies (god, those are crap) which you listed :P

Sleeping Beauty is a poor man's Sleeping Beauty. It's one of the most horrendously dull films ever made. Black Caludron is I think actually better without knowing the books, since it hardly does them justice, but it's a good fantasy flick on it's own. Way better than most of Disney's boring animations.

I'm not sure why, those are pretty much all simple, fun adventure films. Nothing hard about them.

Anyway, somehow we both forgot the actual best fantasy movie ever made (except for maybe The Princess Bride): John Boorman's Exaclibur. Now if you tell me that's not a great movie I will just have to have a coronary right here.

This. I'm not sure how we got to Star Trek, but no matter, any opportunity is good to praise Darmok. It's an amazing hour of television.

But that's my point. If you go into the movies without the baggage of knowing the story, it isn't "reduced" to anything. And my post was a reply to the OP (EDIT: and more directly to ToxicTom's assertion that there are essentially no worthwhile fantasy movies), where they said that fantasy didn't get much attention. Tell me Harry Potter didn't get a bunch of eyeballs. You do that, and I'll find it in me to keep a straight face while I tell you Excalibur sucked. (EDIT 2: I actually forgot who my list was a reply to, so my thesis bifurcates and makes no damn sense. Just piece it together. Fuck I'm getting old. The ST:TNG, at least, was clearly and intentionally not to you, so that's why it seemed to come from left field)

Nah, if I had been making a list of my favorite fantasy movies, or a list of fantasy movies for people who like the genre, it would have been a very different list, indeed.

I thought the point was to recommend the good ones, as ToxicTom was asking. If we're talking popularity then sure, you're right about Potter, but then again that means I'm right about Harryhausen's films - in their day they were very, very popular.

Eh, like I said at the end of the list, I was just trying to put together some titles that I thought had broad appeal. That does often mean that genre fans will consider them lesser offerings.

Anyway, like my second edit pointed out, I mixed up what I trying to say, so it sort of fell apart. I have a good excuse but I'll save it in case I make a post in thread where it actually matters and need to dig myself out =D Gotta tell you though, I really didn't remember anyone liking Sinbad and wouldn't have remembered it at all if you hadn't mentioned it. But I wasn't around in the 50s so that's my excuse for that part.

Isn't that rather sexist of you?

Also, I disagree with the notion that magic would always come with a dire cost.

I replied before you made the edited so it's now all sort of disjointed :D

All three of his Sinbad movies were very succesfull at the box office. The two from the 70s even more so than the first one from 1958. It's just that in the same year as the last Sinbad movie Star Wars happened, and everything paled in comparison.

I wasn't around for any of that, I'm just a nerd :D

Anyway, I think my favorite fantasy settings are alien fantasy worlds; that is, those that are most different from the real world. For example, I prefer worlds in which humans don't exist as a race.

If you're going to make the game world unrealistic, why not go all the way?

Actually, I disagree on this particular point, because that would mean that strength will always beat skill. Which is not how it goes both in real life and fiction. The one who is bigger and stronger doesn't always win even in hand to hand combat.

Though I agree that if medieval culture is a basis for society, than gender roles should be like in medieval times. Author can't just say that the world has medieval setting but suddenly women are serving in army among men as regulars.

What do you think of Witcher novels?
Recommending Warcraft was a good one. :P

Seriously though, "good" is quite subjective thing. I think WarCraft was stupid and boring, regardless if you know games or not. But if you know games it was worse.

TIME FOR SOME ALDO!



What I never understood was, if the guitar shoots lasers, WTF does he need those dorks with the UZIs for?

Personally, I prefer settings that don't just mimic medieval Europe; if you want to mimic real-world culture, there are many others you can choose. Even then, there's no reason that you *have* to mimic real world; again, as I said before, I would actually prefer an alien fantasy world.

I note that many Elder Scrolls fans prefer the setting of Morrowind to that of Oblivion, for example, or even Skyrim. It's also worth noting that many players really like the Shivering Isles expansion of Oblivion, which again is a less typical setting.

Also, there's the Dark Sun series, which consists of post-apocalyptic fantasy, a setting you don't see very often.

On the other hand, I think a medieval setting with typical gender roles, but where many of the game's major characters (especially if the main character is one of them) violate them, can be quite fun, especially if the author plays with gender in interesting ways. (With that said, don't use a gender/sex change as a joke; either treat it seriously (and talk to at least one actual transgender person about it) or don't include that plot thread at all.)

Why not a french horn that lets the musician breathe fire like a dragon? (Bard's Tale series)