The 10 Most Rewatchable Fantasy Movies of the 2000s, Ranked

Image via New Line Cinema Published Oct 24, 2026, 8:33 AM EDT Born with Autism (formerly classified as Asperger syndrome), Tyler B. Searle has been obsessed with storytelling since he was old enough to speak. He gravitated towards fairy tales, mythology, the fantasy genre, and animated movies and shows aimed at family audiences. When not writing, Tyler enjoys watching more cartoons and reading fantasy books in his home in Ontario, Canada. Sign in to your Collider account The fantasy genre has been through many ups and downs in cinema. In the 1980s, there was a golden age of fantasy films beloved for their impressive practical effects and dark atmosphere, but this style faded during the 1990s. Then, in 2001, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters, spawning a new age of fantasy in their image. Many of the fantasy films released in this decade hold up when viewed decades later. Unlike the current trend of fantasy, which tries to make things as dark and realistic as possible to copy Game of Thrones, 2000s fantasy offered a mix of everything. There are whimsical low-stakes adventures, dark atmospheres that push the characters into uncomfortable places, and epic displays of heroism and bravery. 10 'Twilight' (2008) Image via Summit Entertainment Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves to Forks, Washington, to stay with her father, Police Chief Carlie (Billy Burke). While attending high school, she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a quiet young man who saves her from a van with seemingly superhuman strength and speed. Bella eventually deduces that he and his family are vampires, and despite the inherent danger, attempts to pursue a romantic relationship with Edward. Twilight has a very divisive reputation among fans of cinema and vampires, and it deserves all of its praise and criticism. That said, the first movie is worth revisiting now and again thanks to its decent pacing and the unintentional hilarity of the dialogue and performances, which quickly reaches so bad it's good quality. It also offers a fun look at where actors like Stewart and Pattinson were over a decade ago compared to where their careers have taken them now. 9 'Corpse Bride' (2005) Image via Warner Bros. Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) and Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) are two young aristocrats set to marry, but Victor messes up the wedding rehearsal. That night, he wanders into the woods and practices his vows before placing his ring on a skeletal finger. This brings the corpse, named Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), to life, and she takes Victor to the underworld with her, believing that his practice vows are sincere. Corpse Bride is a wonderful gothic-horror fantasy film inspired by Jewish folklore and brought to life by legendary macabre director Tim Burton. Despite its fantastical premise, it has a very down-to-earth story that focuses on themes of life, love, regret, and looking at death in a less terrifying light. The music by Danny Elfman is also wonderful, with the standout song being "Remains of the Day," which tells Emily's tragic story in a colorful jazz number. 8 'Stardust' (2007) Image via Paramount Pictures As the king of Stormhold (Peter O'Toole) lies on his deathbed, he throws his ruby into the sky, claiming that whichever of his three living sons gets it first will be the next king. The ruby knocks a star named Yvaine (Claire Danes) out of the sky, and she is found by Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox), a young man from the human city of Wall, who wants to retrieve her to marry his crush, Victoria (Sienna Miller). Meanwhile, the witch queen Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) is also pursuing Yvaine to cut out her heart so she and her two sisters can regain their youth. Stardust is an admirable attempt to adapt Neil Gaiman's dark satirical adult fairy tale, though it leans more on the side of whimsical and family-friendly. This isn't a bad thing, as many of the changes to the story are incredibly charming and help to give the film its own identity compared to other fantasy films released at the time. The best example of this is Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro), the captain of a group of sky pirates who acts tough to his men, but is secretly a crossdresser in love with English culture. 7 'Coraline' (2009) Image via Focus Features. Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) is not a happy child when her parents move to a new home in the Pink Palace apartment complex, which is full of odd tenants. One day, she discovers a small door in the wall, which leads to an alternate world inhabited by her Other Mother (Teri Hatcher), who has hand-crafted the world to suit Coraline's every desire. However, the more Coraline explores this other world, the more it becomes apparent that something wicked dwells beneath the glamor. Coraline is one of the best examples of a dark family film thanks to its impressive animation, creepy atmosphere, and likable characters. Coraline herself is a pretty good representation of a young girl struggling to adapt to a new house, and though she can be a bit snippy sometimes, she's overall a nice person. Her story is one about recognizing that, while life is not always perfect, it's better to appreciate what you have, because the alternative could be something much worse. 6 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (2005) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures To escape the Blitz, the four Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley), are sent to live with a reclusive professor (Jim Broadbent) in the countryside. While playing hide-and-seek, Lucy goes through a wardrobe and arrives in a magical land called Narnia. Eventually, her siblings join her and learn that they are prophesied to save Narnia from its eternal winter, caused by Jadis (Tilda Swinton), the White Witch. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is a solid adaptation of the book by C. S. Lewis. Though the filmmakers included more action sequences to mimic The Lord of the Rings trilogy, they also stuck true to the book's whimsical feeling, especially when going over the seemingly contradictory nature of Narnia. The casting is also phenomenal, with the highlight being Swinton, who manages to give Jadis an unmatched level of elegance, grace, and tranquil fury befitting a magical tyrant. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance. 💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power) 👒Grand Line(One Piece) 🐺The Continent(The Witcher) 🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson) FIND YOUR WORLD → 01 What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic. ASomething ancient and half forgotten that came down through my family. BSomething completely ridiculous that works in a fight and gets a laugh. CNo magic at all, just training, potions and a very sharp sword. DSomething I inherited from a parent I have barely met. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own. AA fellowship drawn from every corner of the world who barely trust each other. BA crew I picked up one at a time, all of whom would die for me. CTwo or three people I would never describe out loud as friends. DTwo mates from school who are exactly as out of their depth as I am. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live. AA high city of white stone with the sea somewhere far below. BA ship under sail, with an island ahead that nobody has mapped. CA rented room over a tavern, in a town I am leaving in the morning. DA cabin at a summer camp with everybody else already awake outside. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse. AI am not, because somebody far older than me decided this was my duty. BTreasure, and I am not always careful about whose it used to be. CI take contracts, since people will pay well for what they will not touch. DI am fifteen and this is all technically a school trip. NEXT QUESTION → 05 There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark. ASend word to somebody who has seen this before, then hold the line. BWalk straight in, because it is interesting and possibly edible. CAsk what it has been eating and what the village is willing to pay. DWork out which myth it escaped from, then improvise very badly. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does. AAn ancient evil that has been patient for several thousand years. BA government that has spent a long time calling itself the good guys. CA man who turns out to be far worse than anything I hunt for money. DA god, or possibly my own family, and quite likely both at once. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it. ASome things are worth defending even when the odds are hopeless. BNobody gets to tell me where I can go or what I am allowed to want. CPick the lesser evil, and never pretend afterwards that it was not evil. DMy friends come before anything a prophecy has to say about it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world. AIn a song, in a language hardly anybody still speaks. BAs the one who got there first and proved the whole thing was possible. CBarely, and mostly wrongly, in ballads I would absolutely hate. DOn a plaque at a camp, read by kids about to do the same thing. REVEAL MY WORLD → The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return. Middle-earthYou belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime. This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat, fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends. You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost everything you touch is older than your entire family line. The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight. You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot. The Grand LineYou want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there. One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together. You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea. The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land harder because of that rather than in spite of it. You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of it. The ContinentYou would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated. Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept. You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer. The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people. You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story got told wrong. Camp Half-BloodYou want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you. Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners, which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse. You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for something nobody thought to test for. The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud every time a prophecy tries to get in the way. Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' (2004) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) third year at Hogwarts is shaping up to be his most difficult yet due to the escape of Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a convicted murderer linked to the death of Harry's parents. As such, the grounds of Hogwarts are now patrolled by Dementors, horrible spectral monsters who drain their victims of happiness. Still, the year has some promising moments, such as riding on the back of a hippogriff and learning from the newest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin (David Thewlis). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is widely considered the best film in the Harry Potter franchise, and with good reason. Director Alfonso Cuarón wanted to put his own stamp on the franchise, resulting in a darker, more stylistic approach to directing and creative transitional shots using the Womping Willow. The story also serves as a strong coming-of-age tale as Harry and his friends are forced to adapt to the next stage of life and leave behind their childhood for the confusing, messy world of adolescence. 4 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' (2003) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures As a young girl, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) took a pirate medallion from a young boy named William Turner (Orlando Bloom), fearing that he would be punished if found with it. Years later, she is abducted by the crew of the Black Pearl, who mistake her for the person they need to rid themselves of their curse of undeath. To rescue her, Will aligns himself with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), a pirate like no other who has a history with the Black Pearl and a score to settle with her captain, Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). A gamble upon release, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a smash hit with audiences and kickstarted an entire franchise of high-seas adventure films. This is due to its many impressive qualities, from the immersive ship-to-ship action scenes, likable characters, and iconic score by Hans Zimmer. Depp's portrayal of Jack Sparrow is also nothing short of iconic: beneath his drunken swagger and never-ending cycle of betrayals is a man whose sole purpose is to exercise his freedom, with every action he takes, good or bad, working towards that goal. 3 'Spirited Away' (2001) Image via Studio Ghibli While moving to a new home, Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi/Daveigh Chase) and her parents accidentally stumble upon a bathhouse in the Spirit World. Her parents are transformed into pigs for eating spirit food, but Chihiro is helped out by a young man named Haku (Miyu Irino/Jason Marsden), who tells her that, to survive, she will need to get a job from the witch in charge of the bathhouse, Yubaba (Mari Natsuki/Suzanne Pleshette). Chihiro succeeds, but Yubaba takes her name and renames her Sen, trapping Chihiro until she can find a way to reclaim her identity. Spirited Away is a masterpiece of hand-drawn animation and the crowning achievement of acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki. The world it brings to life is creative and lively, where each spirit is well-designed and fits perfectly with its theme and personality. Though the situation of Chihiro and her family is dire, the film knows when to take things slow and let the atmosphere suck the audience in and convey how, even in times of peril, there are moments of contemplation and beauty. 2 'Shrek' (2001) Image via DreamWorks Animation Deep within a fairy tale swamp lives Shrek (Mike Myers), an antisocial ogre who would rather keep to himself than be judged by the world. One day, several dozen fairy tale characters are forced into his swamp by Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow), who has expelled them from his kingdom. Aided by a talking Donkey (Eddie Murphy), Shrek agrees to go on a quest to rescue Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) in exchange for Farquaad removing the squatters. While Toy Story was the first fully CGI-animated movie, Shrek was the one that cemented its dominance over 2D animation and put DreamWorks on the map as an animation company that could challenge Disney. It still holds up thanks to its memorable characters, stellar voice cast, and strong story about judgment and inner beauty. The comedy is also strong, with most of the jokes poking fun at Disney and fairy tale clichés, which are also used to create a beautiful climax for Shrek and Fiona's relationship. 1 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' (2001) Image via New Line Cinema In a cozy corner of Middle-earth called the Shire, the hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) inherits a magic ring from his uncle, Bilbo (Sir Ian Holm), which is revealed to be the One Ring linked to the Dark Lord, Sauron (Alan Howard). Pursued by Sauron's agents, Frodo and his friends travel to the Elven valley of Rivendell. There, they learn that the only way to destroy the ring is by throwing it into the very volcano it was forged in, Mt. Doom, located at the heart of Sauron's domain of Mordor. The Lord of the Rings is heralded as one of the best film trilogies ever made, and Fellowship of the Ring is the one that introduces audiences to the deep world and memorable characters of Middle-earth. It makes excellent use of its runtime and pacing, especially by giving out backstory and key character information in organic ways without confusing the audience. The effects also hold up incredibly well thanks to the sheer volume of different techniques used, from practical effects and CGI to models and impressive sets that help convey a difference in size between hobbits and other species.