Inspirational Fantasy Movies

[GrumpyOldMan]

My top ten, not including any oriental movies, or LotR

The Lion in Winter
Name of the Rose
Excalibur
Time Bandits
The Fisher King
A Knights Tale
Ladyhawke
The Navigator
Jabberwocky
Henry V

 

[Turhan]

This may sound odd, but there are some good movies (to inspire a gamer) taken from the old testament. Even if you don't play Testament or one of the games from earth's classic history period, the visuals are good, the trials of Man can provoke good ideas and some of the characters show great strengths and weaknesses-- which we need for good NPC's, right?

 

[DM_Jeff]

Spirited Away: Planescape away.....

Castle in the Sky: Hellooooooooo Eberron.

Nausicaa: Insect druid inspiration!

Anyway, discovering Hayao Miyazaki last year was a great thing in my inspirational gaming life!

And, hey, my gaming crew watched the SECOND D&D movie last New Year's...and it was entertaining. Of course there was a little alcohol involved...

-DM Jeff

 

[TarionzCousin]

Hack and Slash Movie

OK, so what about the real classics?

Yor, Hunter from the Future
Ator the Fighting Eagle
Iron Warrior
The Blademaster

Without these, gaming might as well not exist.

Add "The Barbarians" aka "Barbarian Brothers" to this list.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0092615/

The only line I remember from this movie occurs when the young adult brothers, who have been toiling in manual labor for many years, suddenly realize that they are very muscular: "Look at us: we're huge!"

 

[Twowolves]

Moving over to the Horror genre, try out:

The Ring (Japanese version with subtitles, although, to be fair, the American version isn't bad)
Juon (Not sure what the English title for this is - The Grudge? Something like that)

Yeah, if you find reams of black hair scary.

"She's got lots of black hair, and she's staring at me!!"


I am amazed "Ronin" didn't make it for spy/Shadowrun.

 

[Thurbane]

Yeah, if you find reams of black hair scary.

"She's got lots of black hair, and she's staring at me!!"

That's great.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who found the whole Ring/Grudge deal a little underwhelming...

 

[MarkB]

I just remembered one which I'm slightly surprised hasn't made the list:

Dark City.

Technically it's SF, but a great deal of its plot, themes, scenes and images would work excellently in a psionics-themed D&D campaign. In particular, it features one of the best-realised "mage duels" seen on film.

 

[countgray]

The Raven - an old Roger Corman film, has a great mage duel, probably the first mage duel on screen. Vincent Price and Peter Lorre battle it out old school, with magic missile and magic shields. Its very cool.

Arabian Adventure - a really fun Arabian style fantasy film, with Christopher Lee. Done by the Salkinds who did the Superman movies.

My favorites, of course, are anything by Ray Harryhausen, but especially the Sinbad movies: Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (has a very cool dragon), and Golden Voyage of Sinbad (includes an awesome stop-motion Gryphon). He did a bunch of others, but those two are my favorites.

 

[taliesin15]

I posted this on the Media Lounge forum, but since this thread's here, I thought ya'll might like this, the trailer from the new Beowulf and Grendel film:
http://fantasticfest.bside.com/?_view=_filmdetails&_template=fantasticfest&filmId=4983202&

 

[countgray]

There is a great film called "The Advocate" or alternatively "The Hour of the Pig" staring Colin Firth, about of all things a medieval attorney who has to defend a pig against the charge of witchcraft. It has a great twist ending.