5 Fantasy Movie Adaptation No One Liked
Sadly, Hollywood has a history of poor fantasy adaptations...
Hollywood has a strange relationship with fantasy movies. To begin with they were seen as low quality cinema and not given the time, money and effort that they needed to bring them to the screen. But then in the early 2000s two things happened that changed all of that.
In 2001, the first film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released, as was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. These films proved that fantasy movies could be commercial and critical successes and the huge catalogue of fantasy novels gave a ready supply of source material for the studios to draw upon to find their next big blockbuster series.
In the years that followed, all kinds of fantasy novels were turned into movies, both well loved classics and modern hits. But, for many reasons, not all of them were successful. In fact, a huge amount of them flopped and were hated by critics and movie goers and fantasy proved to be one of the hardest genres to bring to the big screen.
Not all of them deserved their fates, though, because some were actually quite good films. Others were hated with good reason. When it comes to those ones, you have to wonder exactly what went wrong and why they failed so badly...
5. The Dark Tower
The 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's well-loved fantasy series did little to impress fans. It disappointed at the box office and was hated by critics everywhere.
Much of the criticism came in how much the film differed from the books, as well as the source material being compressed from several novels to fit into one film. Idris Elba's performance was one of the few things about the movie that came in for much praise.
It wasn't really surprising, considering that the film had been stuck in development hell for a decade before its release and had gone through more than its fair share of directors in the process.
The King of Horror did say that he actually thought it was a pretty good film though, so maybe they got something right, it's just a shame no one else agreed with him.
With a little more forethought and faith in the story rather than looking for box office appeal, it could have become a cinema great, instead it became just another film in the long line of poor fantasy adaptations.