12 Classic Fantasy Movies: Choose Your Kind of Wonder

Choose The Princess Bride for a witty adventure to watch with company, Beauty and the Beast for a spell you can almost touch, or A Matter of Life and Death for romance on a cosmic scale. Those are three very different invitations. Classic fantasy can send a ship towards a bronze giant, make a mirror passable, or put something enormous and friendly beside an ordinary bus stop.

These twelve films, released between 1939 and 1988, favour fairy tales, transformations, impossible journeys and encounters with another world. There are puppets and painted landscapes, but also hands, doors, water and light: familiar things made strange. Choose by the kind of enchantment you want, rather than by how many monsters a film contains.

Compare the 12 classic fantasy movies

Film	Time to allow	Choose it for	Before choosing
The Wizard of Oz (1939)	102 min	A musical journey through an invented world	Witches, flying monkeys and danger to a child
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)	106 min	Colour, flying carpets and extravagant adventure	Peril and a stylised Orientalist storybook setting
Beauty and the Beast (1946)	93 min	Uncanny, romantic enchantment	French; captivity and an initially frightening Beast
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)	104 min	Love, wit and an extraordinary afterlife	Wartime danger, death and surgery
Orpheus (1950)	95 min	Mirrors, poetry and dream logic	French; death, jealousy and an elusive story
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)	104 min	Mythical creatures and physical adventure	Monster attacks and combat
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)	About 100 min	A musical wonderland with sharp teeth	Threats to children and an unsettling boat ride
Time Bandits (1981)	116 min	Mischievous, unruly time travel	Violence, dark jokes and an abrupt, disturbing ending
The Dark Crystal (1982)	93 min	A world built from creatures and textures	Grotesque villains and scenes of suffering
The NeverEnding Story (1984)	94 min, US theatrical cut	A book opening into a desperate quest	Bullying, bereavement and an animal’s distress
The Princess Bride (1987)	98 min	Swordplay, romance and excellent comic timing	Sword violence, torture and threatening creatures
My Neighbour Totoro (1988)	86 min	Wonder growing out of everyday life	A parent’s illness and a missing child

Match the year when searching, especially for Beauty and the Beast and The Thief of Bagdad. The longer German version of The NeverEnding Story is discussed below.

The Wizard of Oz (1939): a world you enter through colour

Dorothy opens a door and the film changes its terms. The move from sepia Kansas into Technicolor Oz makes entering a new place a physical experience: colour feels as consequential as the tornado that brought her there. Then a road gives the adventure a shape. Each new companion brings a different movement, voice and reason for travelling, so the group itself becomes something to enjoy watching.

Choose it if you want songs woven into a clear journey, with fear and silliness close together. Judy Garland gives the elaborate sets an emotional centre; wanting to get home remains understandable even when the landscape is deliciously impossible. The witch and her flying monkeys can still be frightening. BFI programme notes.

Our guide to how Oz turns colour into a doorway follows that opening further. Next: The Thief of Bagdad for another world built to fill the eye.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940): an adventure that keeps changing scale

A small thief, a dispossessed prince, a vast genie: this film takes pleasure in putting unequal powers in the same picture. Abu’s quickness matters because he cannot match the size or authority of what confronts him. The production’s saturated colour and enormous spaces give every encounter the feeling of another illustrated page opening, while Conrad Veidt’s Jaffar brings a remarkably concentrated menace.

This is the Sabu adventure from 1940, not the Douglas Fairbanks silent film. Its imagined Bagdad belongs to a European Arabian Nights tradition, with the exoticising assumptions that entails. Pick it for invention, pace and spectacle rather than a portrait of a place. Criterion. Next: Jason and the Argonauts, where outwitting oversized creatures becomes the organising pleasure.

Beauty and the Beast (1946): the house itself is enchanted

Jean Cocteau makes magic out of things with weight. The Beast’s fur, Belle’s dresses, the castle’s candleholders and the curtains all seem capable of brushing against you. Human arms serve as furnishings; a corridor can feel watchful. Instead of explaining each impossibility, the film lets Belle enter it, giving a gesture or a slow movement enough time to become extraordinary.

The result is more intimate and stranger than a conventional quest. Choose it for a romantic fairy tale whose beauty includes unease: Belle is not simply visiting a lovely hotel. Josette Day’s poise and Jean Marais’s wounded, imposing Beast make attraction difficult to separate from apprehension. Criterion. Next: Orpheus to see Cocteau move the impossible into a recognisably modern world.

A Matter of Life and Death (1946): heaven has a paperwork problem

An airman speaks to a radio operator while expecting to die. That opening gives the romance urgency before the lovers have even occupied the same room. When he survives, a messenger from the afterlife claims there has been an administrative mistake. On Earth, a doctor tries to explain the visions Peter is experiencing. The celestial appeal and medical investigation give his wish to remain with June two different forms. BFI’s discussion of the film explores that connection between fantasy and physical reality.

Powell and Pressburger make Earth glow with colour and give the other world a monumental black-and-white order. This reverses the expectation that fantasy must be the more colourful place. Choose it for tenderness, argument and visual scale together; its courtroom passages are part of the adventure, not an interruption. Criterion. Next: Orpheus for a less reassuring border between the living and the dead.

Orpheus (1950): the other world is behind the mirror

A radio carries cryptic messages. Motorcyclists arrive with troubling authority. A mirror ceases to behave like a mirror. Cocteau relocates the ancient poet’s journey among the dead into a world of cars, cafés and personal vanity, making ordinary modern objects feel as mysterious as an enchanted castle.

The important choice here is whether you enjoy following an image before understanding its rules. Orpheus’s fascination with the messages and their source can be absorbing even when he is an exasperating husband. Jean Marais gives the poet both grandeur and self-absorption, while Maria Casarès makes Death a compelling presence rather than an abstract destination. Criterion. Next: Beauty and the Beast if you want Cocteau’s magic within a more familiar story.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963): creatures with their own movement

The bronze giant Talos does not move like a man in armour. His mass and deliberate turns create a different sort of danger. Later, skeletons can seem alarmingly light and quick. Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures each demand their own response, which is why the voyage feels like a succession of encounters rather than one monster repeated in different costumes.

Choose this for an outward-going adventure: a ship, a crew, a goal and obstacles worth stopping to look at. The human drama is relatively simple; the movement of bodies through space is the attraction. Sony Pictures. Next: The Dark Crystal for a world whose inhabitants are all fantastical.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971): delight with an unreliable host

The factory offers precisely what its visitors want, then makes desire look dangerous. Gene Wilder’s Wonka can seem welcoming, bored, amused and furious without giving you much warning between them. That uncertainty is the film’s special flavour. Even a room made for pleasure can become a test when nobody quite knows how seriously to take its proprietor.

Choose the 1971 musical if you like your fantasy funny, colourful and a little unkind. The songs establish wishes and deliver punishments; the boat ride takes the atmosphere somewhere much darker than the chocolate river promises. Charlie’s poverty gives the invitation a meaning beyond unlimited sweets. AFI. Next: Time Bandits for more adults who are not reliable guides.

Time Bandits (1981): history refuses to behave

Kevin escapes his parents’ appliance-filled world with a gang carrying a stolen map. The journey turns history into a series of unstable encounters: impressive people can be ridiculous, apparent rescues may be temporary, and the next place seldom obeys the rules of the last. Terry Gilliam makes cramped rooms and absurdly vast spaces part of the same child’s-eye adventure.

This is the pick for viewers who enjoy fantasy with a contrary streak. The bandits are quarrelsome companions rather than noble guardians, and the film does not consistently soften its cruelty with a reassuring explanation. Its changes of scale are exhilarating, but the ending is unusually harsh for a story centred on a child. Criterion. Next: The Princess Bride for comedy that is more affectionate towards its heroes.

The Dark Crystal (1982): a world that seems to have grown

Look beyond the speaking characters. Plants, small creatures, fabrics and the shapes of the landscape help make this place feel inhabited before the quest reaches it. The contrast between the gentle Gelflings and the grotesque Skeksis is also a contrast of posture, surface and appetite. Puppet bodies carry the story through how they sit, shuffle, loom and eat.

Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s film rewards a taste for creatures and elaborate environments more than a desire for rapid jokes. Its villains are genuinely unpleasant, and its threatened world has suffering in it. Brian Froud’s designs give the journey an unusually coherent texture. BAFTA screening notes. Next: My Neighbour Totoro for an altogether gentler encounter with non-human neighbours.

The NeverEnding Story (1984): reading becomes a responsibility

Bastian hides away with a book; inside it, Atreyu travels through a world being consumed by the Nothing. Moving between the reader and the quest makes attention itself feel consequential. The film asks what it means to become involved in an invented world, rather than simply using the book as a doorway to leave behind.

Choose it for large emotions, strange landscapes and creatures with expressive faces. The despair can be severe: the swamp sequence involving Atreyu’s horse is particularly upsetting. The 94-minute US theatrical cut is the version used here; Imprint’s release distinguishes it from the 104-minute German extended cut. Next: The Princess Bride, whose book-reading frame keeps interrupting adventure in a much lighter spirit.

The Princess Bride (1987): a fairy tale with room for heckling

The grandfather reading aloud has an audience of one, and that audience has objections. The interruptions give Rob Reiner and William Goldman’s adventure an affectionate double life: we can enjoy the romance while recognising the impatience, disbelief and excitement of somebody listening to it. The jokes do not prevent the sword fights from being excellent sword fights.

This is the easiest starting point here for a mixed group. A duel becomes a conversation; antagonists can appreciate one another’s skill; even imposing figures have comic vulnerabilities. There is genuine peril, including torture, but warmth keeps returning through the characters’ loyalties. Criterion. Next: The Thief of Bagdad for swashbuckling enchantment played with fewer winks.

My Neighbour Totoro (1988): an ordinary wait becomes magical

Rain on an umbrella can be enough. Hayao Miyazaki gives an encounter at a bus stop time to develop through waiting, sound and curiosity, rather than hurrying towards an explanation of the creature beside the children. Satsuki and Mei’s new home is interesting before it is magical: rooms, dust, trees and small discoveries invite exploration.

Choose this when you want fantasy without a villain to defeat or a kingdom to conquer. The sisters’ worries about their mother are real, and the later search for a child is tense; gentleness does not make the film emotionally empty. GKIDS. Next: The Wizard of Oz for a more eventful journey anchored in a child’s wish for home.

Choose the kind of impossible you want

For creatures and journeys, start with Jason and the Argonauts, then try The Thief of Bagdad. Both put the pleasure of the next encounter up front. The Dark Crystal asks for more patience with the world itself: its odd plants and minor inhabitants matter to the experience.

For romance and strangeness, choose Beauty and the Beast before Orpheus. The familiar fairy tale makes Cocteau’s visual language easy to enter. A Matter of Life and Death is the more conversational alternative, bringing the impossible into an argument about what one person means to another.

For a gentler evening, Totoro offers the least combative world, while The Princess Bride has the easiest comic companionship. For a more frightening evening, our classic horror selection compares films built around fear.

Momo’s Note: A castle with a thousand towers is impressive. A bus stop with one unexpected passenger may be just as good an entrance to another world.