Fantasy films are pretty popular and have been coming out since the dawn of cinema. There’s just something about fantasy worlds that are more interesting than real life, presenting alternate realities or even entire universes filled with magic and monsters that makes a lot of moviegoers drool with wonder. Thus, it’s generally understood that big-budget fantasy movies will likely perform well with critics and audiences.
Alas, even if they perform well at the box office, it doesn’t mean that they’ll be a hit with critics and audiences. Indeed, many fantasy movies, especially in the last couple of years or so, have been truly awful and have only tainted the genre and made it seem less interesting than it usually is. These are the worst fantasy movies of the 2020s, which aimed high but failed to reach their aspirations, crashing and burning to the ground below.
10
‘The Witches’ (2020)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
The Witches is based on a Roald Dahl book of the same name, and is actually not the first endeavour at a movie adaptation of the work. The original came out in the ’90s and was actually met with an incredible reception and high critical scores on numerous sites. To this day, audiences are still pleased with the original dark fantasy/comedy from their childhoods. Needless to say, there weren’t really a whole lot of people who wanted it to be remade just 30 years later, but here we are anyway.
See, the thing about the original film is that it was sort of a horror movie for kids, which did, admittedly, scare some children, but at least they’ll remember it and revisit it in their adulthood. The same can’t be said for this campy remake, which was utterly abhorrent, and not in the way that it was supposed to be. There was no charm, no personal flair, and nothing to set it apart from literally any other movie out there. The Witches isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it deserved to be thrown into the pool of other bad book adaptations, where it can sink with the rest of the turds.
The Witches
- Release Date
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October 22, 2020
- Runtime
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106 minutes
9
‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore’ (2022)
Directed by David Yates
By the time Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore came out, people were already weary of this disappointing new chapter in the Wizarding World. The first installment was alright, but the second was a serious disappointment, so hopes weren’t super high for this bland and uninspired third installment. The entire prequel trilogy as a whole was completely unnecessary, but at least the first film was kind of fun and exciting, unlike the latter two.
Granted, this third movie did manage to step up from the one before, but it wasn’t a very high bar to clear. None of the movies can really be considered awful, but the last two are most certainly bad, to the point where very few enthusiastic Harry Potter fans will actively defend them. Even to its fanbase, The Secrets of Dumbledore was disappointing, mediocre, and totally unwarranted. There were some good aspects of it, but other than that, it was entirely forgettable.
8
‘Monster Hunter’ (2020)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
The Monster Hunter movie committed the cardinal sin of all bad video game adaptations: they intentionally made it a shadow of the source material, barely resembling the aspects that people actually liked about the games. The game series takes place in a high fantasy world separate from our own, and involves, as the title implies, a lot of hunting monsters for various supplies or because they’re plaguing a local village. It’s not a difficult formula to understand.
So it really makes no sense that the movie decided to open up a portal to real life and have modern military commandos thrust into the game’s universe, where they are forced to adapt to their new home and fight fantastical beasts. Monster Hunter was poorly received by fans and critics, and worst of all, the camera work was all over the place, making it terribly difficult to see what’s even going on half the time. Overall, it felt like a cheap cash grab that was there to show off flashy special effects to a captive fanbase and not much else.
7
‘A Minecraft Movie’ (2025)
Directed by Jared Hess
If there’s one video game that never needed a movie, it’s Minecraft. For a long time, it was considered to be “unfilmable” due to its unique, low-resolution graphics, lack of a rigid storyline, and the absence of any real characters or setting. It’s an open-world sandbox that encourages players to be creative, but perhaps A Minecraft Movie was a little too creative. Like Monster Hunter, this film involved an unwarranted plotline about the game universe intersecting with the real world, which is a common flaw of many a bad video game adaptation.
On top of that, it made the ridiculous decision to be live action when an animated film would have been much better. What results is a mess of horrid CGI, obvious green screens, and basic, tropey comedy. The only reason people watch it is for the memes, as the movie became something of an online phenomenon for multiple reasons, both good and bad. To its credit, it did do surprisingly well at the box office. Critically speaking, though, A Minecraft Movie was a terrible idea and showed little promise from the moment it was conceived.
6
‘Black Adam’ (2022)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Black Adam isn’t terrible in concept. It was a villain movie that was meant to fit in with the DC Extended Universe and star Dwayne Johnson as the titular character, traditionally depicted as the arch-nemesis to the superhero Shazam. It seemed like it was meant to take a more comic-accurate route, focusing on Adam’s past life as an Ancient Kahndaq superhuman warrior who is awakened from slumber after two and a half millennia.
It was a promising concept at first, allowing The Rock to take on a bit of a different role, as he hadn’t really played a proper superhero or villain in the DCEU or in the MCU. Unfortunately, like many DCEU efforts, this misguided movie was pretty lame. Critics admitted that it could prove to open the gates for an interesting future in the DCEU, but as a standalone movie, Black Adam was woefully boring and had little to offer to anyone outside of the most ardent fanbase.
5
‘Cinderella’ (2021)
Directed by Kay Cannon
Cinderella is a story that has been done nearly to death, and certainly isn’t asking for any more adaptations beyond the countless others. People know the story by now, and the last thing they need is another way to tell it. Yet that didn’t stop Amazon Prime Video from creating a new spin on the story that takes place in a more modern setting, yet with many of the same beats. Camilla Cabello starred as the titular character in what is truly an irritating spectacle.
Cabello herself isn’t the problem here–it’s the obnoxious writing that sounds like it came from a ’90s or ’00s teen comedy. It’s super outdated, which likely explains why the movie didn’t get more widespread attention. Not only did no one ask for it to be made, but it failed to become a hit and was largely panned by critics and audiences, who slammed it for its basic musical numbers, tired concept, and irritating characters.
Cinderella
- Release Date
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September 3, 2021
- Runtime
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113 Minutes
- Director
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Kay Cannon
4
‘Pinocchio’ (2022)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Disney live-action adaptations are something of a concern in cinema right now because the company keeps repeatedly producing these soulless versions of their classic animated musicals, and nobody wants them. Since some of the originals are several decades old, remaking them means bringing in new actors, which is understandable, but the new ones just can’t quite capture the same energy that the originals did. Unfortunately, since most of these films are fantasy, it also means that they warrant a lot of terrible CGI.
By far the worst one out of all of the Disney live-action remakes has to be 2022’s Pinocchio, which also got the least attention compared to the likes of Aladdin or Snow White. Yet, this movie was more disastrous than either of those. On top of being a blatant rehash, the titular character looked terrible on-screen, and the movie felt tired and forced. It’s a sad remake of something that was perfectly fine as it was, and is just one of many Disney live-action remakes that performed poorly with critics.
3
‘In the Lost Lands’ (2025)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Author George R. R. Martin has generally done pretty well for himself when it comes to adaptations of his work. The television adaptation of his unfinished novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, more commonly known as Game of Thrones, was a huge cultural phenomenon and has even spawned two wildly popular spin-off shows, with the second one still on its way. So a movie adaptation of one of his lesser-known short stories should have been a good idea… right?
Critics were not pleased with the mess of a movie known as In the Lost Lands, deeming it to be hideous to look at and totally incomprehensible. It looks like it should be a cool movie, incorporating elements of dark fantasy, steampunk, and Westerns, but it only proved to be a sloppy attempt at capitalizing on Martin’s success. On top of that, In the Lost Lands was a box office bomb and was quickly swept under the rug.
2
‘Dolittle’ (2020)
Directed by Stephen Gaghan
Remember the classic Dr. Dolittle film with Eddie Murphy from the ’90s? Sure, it’s not exactly high art, but a lot of people look back on it with fondness, as many watched it when they were kids, and enjoy it as a nice bit of nostalgia, if not a great movie. If you’re one of those people, it would be advised to stay away from the 2020 remake starring Robert Downey Jr. at all costs.
The film is technically fantasy, as it centres on a vet’s supernatural ability to communicate with animals, but it made even fantasy seem so much more boring than real life. The animals in question were animated with CGI and looked atrocious, far worse than they did in the ’90s. The story is based on a novel series written 100 years ago by Hugh Lofting, who must surely be rolling in his grave at this backwards adaptation of his work. Dolittle should be seen by absolutely nobody, no matter how intrigued they are by it.
Dolittle
- Release Date
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January 1, 2020
- Runtime
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101 Minutes
- Director
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Stephen Gaghan
1
‘Artemis Fowl’ (2020)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Artemis Fowl was, and still is, an extremely popular book series for young readers, consisting of eight books (and three spin-off novels) written by Irish author Eoin Colfer. The movie starred Ferdia Shaw as Artemis, the 12-year-old antagonist and a criminal mastermind with a genius-level IQ of the wealthy Fowl family, who kidnaps an 84-year-old elven woman to hold her for ransom and restore his family’s power.
To put it bluntly, Artemis Fowl is nothing short of a disaster, one of the worst movies of the 2020s. If you’re a fan of Disney, the books, or just fantasy in general, you will hate this movie. It’s pretty clear that Disney wanted to make a franchise, but after how poorly this was received, it would seem that plans for a franchise are unlikely, thankfully. It was a crushing defeat for book fans, who are unlikely to receive a proper adaptation for several more decades, assuming anyone other than the author is brave enough to touch the IP again, that is.