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Curated playlist

American fantasy adventure films

  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)11 minSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs arrived at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on the 21st of December, 1937, and the audience rose to its feet before the final frame had faded. Among those in that standing ovation were Judy Garland,…
  • The Return of the King (1980 film)8 minThe Return of the King begins at a birthday party in Rivendell. Bilbo Baggins turns 129, and his nephew Frodo is asked why he's missing a finger. The answer arrives in a ballad, sung by the Minstrel of Gondor, telling of a quest to destroy…
  • The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)15 minRalph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings arrived in American cinemas on the 15th of November 1978, carrying a weight of ambition that very few animated films had ever attempted. Bakshi had spent years fighting to bring J. R. R. Tolkien's…
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring11 minThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring opened on the 19th of December 2001, and within its first five days in the United States and Canada it had earned more than seventy-five million dollars. That number alone might suggest a…
  • The Avengers (2012 film)14 minThe Avengers opened on the 4th of May 2012, in the United States, and within 19 days it had passed $1 billion in ticket sales, matching a record previously held by Avatar and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. No Marvel film had…
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King13 minThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King crossed the one-billion-dollar mark at the worldwide box office in February 2004, only the second film in history to reach that threshold. At the 76th Academy Awards, it swept every single one…
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers14 minThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers premiered on the 5th of December 2002 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City, and what audiences saw that night was something cinema had not quite done before. A digital creature called Gollum spoke…
  • Highlander (film)10 minHighlander, the 1986 fantasy action-adventure film directed by Russell Mulcahy, opens on a parking garage beneath Madison Square Garden where a sword fight decides who lives forever. Connor MacLeod, a Scottish Highlander born in the 16th…
  • Excalibur (film)10 minExcalibur, the 1981 epic fantasy film directed by John Boorman, opens not with a hero but with a sorcerer. In the Dark Ages, Merlin retrieves a magical sword from the depths of a lake and sets in motion a story that will swallow kingdoms,…
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves11 minDungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves premiered at South by Southwest on the 10th of March 2023. The film's existence owed as much to legal history as to creative ambition. A decade of competing visions, multiple studios, and a revolving…
  • Barbie (film)18 minBarbie, Greta Gerwig's 2023 satirical fantasy comedy, drained the entire remaining global supply of a specific shade of pink paint during production. Its supplier, Rosco Laboratories, had been weakened by COVID-19 supply-chain problems and…
  • The 13th Warrior4 minMichael Crichton published his novel Eaters of the Dead in 1976. This book merged two distinct historical threads into a single narrative. The first thread was the ancient Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. The second thread came from the…
  • Yellow Submarine (film)12 minYellow Submarine, the 1968 animated musical film inspired by the music of the Beatles, opens not with its famous band but with an act of colour theft. The Blue Meanies sweep through Pepperland, draining every hue from the landscape and…
  • Conan the Barbarian (1982 film)13 minConan the Barbarian arrived in North American theaters on the 14th of May 1982, opening in 1,400 theaters simultaneously. Before that day, 1,000 people had been turned away at a Houston screening because tickets sold out. In Washington,…

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