The fantasy genre has seen some major blockbusters over the years. The biggest of them have become utterly iconic in their own right, with titles like The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter franchise standing out as some of the genre’s most successful and consistently popular releases. While many of the best fantasy movies of all time are considered classics, that doesn’t mean that they all fare as well. The nature of fantasy stories means that the scope of the genre is incredibly broad, encompassing stories of all kinds, and seeing its movies blended with other genres such as action, horror, sci-fi, and drama. Along the way, some fantasy movies simply seem to fall apart.
In an industry where even some of the worst movies can earn a billion dollars at the box office, truly awful films always seem to stand out. There might be no set formula for what makes a great fantasy movie, but the following titles weren’t able to come even remotely close. Despite being major releases backed by big studios, the following fantasy films are completely terrible from start to finish.
Despite being based on one of the best animated TV shows of all time, 2010’s The Last Airbender was a terrible movie. The first attempt at bringing the story to life in live-action was helmed by M. Night Shyamalan, and even some of its stars have since disowned it. From terribly written dialogue to ill-informed casting choices, The Last Airbender was despised by fans of the original show, and even most casual moviegoers found it to be completely uninteresting and poorly made, especially considering its considerable budget.
Even though Dungeons & Dragons is one of the biggest names in modern fantasy, the first attempt to adapt it into a live-action movie was a spectacular failure. Released in 2000, Dungeons & Dragons brought the iconic fantasy role-playing game to life, but it failed to impress. Almost every aspect of the film drew criticism from critics and fans alike, and it proved to be a massive box office bomb. The first Dungeons & Dragons movie was so terrible that the franchise took more than two decades to deliver another blockbuster adaptation, because it’s simply terrible from beginning to end.
The first attempt to deliver a live-action adaptation of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels was reasonably respectable, but the second movie in the franchise was utterly abysmal. 2013’s Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters made a mess of the source material, angering fans and resulting in a narrative jumble that effectively killed the franchise. Sea of Monsters was a massive critical failure, and its poor quality has seen it go down in history as one of the worst fantasy adaptations of all time.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a truly seminal piece of fantasy fiction, and has been adapted many times. Tim Burton’s 2010 adaptation was a quirky and relatively average take on the tale, but its sequel, 2016’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, was a different beast entirely. Even compared to Tim Burton’s movie, Alice Through the Looking Glass is utterly awful from beginning to end. It takes Carroll’s original characters and twists them to fit its mundane and incomprehensible plot, resulting in a movie that is completely terrible from start to finish.
When it comes to major fantasy box office flops, Eragon is one of the most notorious movies in the genre. An adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s novel of the same name, it was widely panned, with criticism levelled at almost every conceivable aspect of the movie. Eragon not only thoroughly misrepresents Paolini’s original story, but fails to even stand as a respectable — or even an enjoyable — movie in its own right. It’s a terrible film from beginning to end, and has gone down in history as one of the worst cinematic entries into the fantasy genre.
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