Fantasy gets called ambitious way too casually, but real ambition is when a story takes a swing that could’ve collapsed under its own weight — new worlds, new rules, new visual language, big emotions — and yet still manages to land with clarity. These are the ones that don’t just have imagination — they commit to it, scene after scene, with enough craft that you stop noticing the effort and just fall in.
This ranking isn’t about the best comfort watch or the most iconic quote in a fantasy film that made it a masterpiece. No. This is about scope: how much the work tries to do, how confidently it builds its reality, and how completely it drags you into that reality, whether it’s a child stepping into a book, a puppet world that feels alive, or an epic saga that redefined what big fantasy could look like on screen.
10
‘The NeverEnding Story’ (1984)
Atreyu next to the dragon Falkor in The NeverEnding StoryImage via Warner Bros. Pictures
The NeverEnding Story earns its reputation because it uses a simple but ambitious structure: a real-world kid, Bastian (Barret Oliver), reading a story that’s collapsing, while Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) runs the quest inside it. The quest progression is clean. Each stop is a task, a rule, or a hard limit that narrows what’s possible. It’s essentially a sequence of trials that keeps pushing Atreyu toward the core problem and pushing Bastian toward responsibility.
What makes it a masterpiece is how it turns a huge, abstract idea into concrete narrative pressure. The Nothing is shown through loss of territory, loss of options, and loss of belief, and the movie keeps connecting that to character decisions. And that’s not even mentioning beautiful set-pieces like The Swamps of Sadness and the Oracle sequence. All of it is lovely. As a fan, I adore it because it respects the audience: it asks you to follow rules, take feelings seriously, and accept that the only solution is deeper than winning a fight.
9
‘The Dark Crystal’ (1982)
Image via Universal Pictures
This is one of the boldest world-building flexes ever. The Dark Crystal is a feature-length fantasy where the primary actors are puppets, and it still makes the world feel like it has history, politics, class structure, religion, and ecology. The quest is straightforward — Jen (Stephen Garlick) must restore the shard — but the film surrounds that simple goal with a world where cultures have rituals, environments have texture, and creatures have motives that aren’t just good versus evil.
The mastery is commitment to tone and mechanics. Jim Henson and Frank Oz don’t soften the implications of what’s happening. Rather, the draining ritual is staged with clarity so you understand what’s being taken and why it matters. The Skeksis, defined by greed, paranoia, vanity, and internal power games, and the film’s central concept, fracture and restoration, all lands because you can see the damage in every part of the world’s design.
8
‘The Princess Bride’ (1987)
Wesley protects Buttercup with a sword in The Princess BrideImage via 20th Century Studios
The Princess Bride is sneakily ambitious because it’s juggling multiple modes at once — romance, adventure, and parody — yet it never loses control of the story. Westley (Cary Elwes), Buttercup (Robin Wright), and Inigo (Mandy Patinkin) each add to the flow.
The sword fight teaches you who these people are, the battle-of-wits sequence is built on understandable rules, and the emotional beats — don’t even ask about it. The Princess Bride, and those who created it, know exactly when to stop winking and let a moment hit. That level of tonal control is hard, and this movie makes it look easy.
7
‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006)
The Pale Man with eyeballs in his palms in Pan’s Labyrinth.Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Pan’s Labyrinth builds two worlds with two rule-sets, the historical reality and the mythic task-world, and it keeps both equally specific. The film follows Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who is given tasks that demand decisions under pressure, where obedience and disobedience both carry consequences. Meanwhile, Vidal’s (Sergi López) violence as he controls food, time, movement, and punishment makes the real world feel like a system with its own brutal rules. Not to mention that this is created by Guillermo del Toro, and that automatically means business when it comes to fantasy.
The film earns this position for its excellent set-pieces as logic problems with stakes (the Pale Man sequence is terrifying because the constraints are clear and the consequence is immediate). The chalk door isn’t just a cool idea but a clear plot tool with risks and timing. And the ending lands because the film pays off character consistency. Pan’s Labyrinth makes you feel it because the story has been measuring what Ofelia values and what she refuses to become.
6
‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ (2005–2008)
Aang air-gliding with a large smile in Avatar: The Last Airbender.Image via Nickelodeon
This show is ambitious because it treats fantasy like a complete civilization map: nations have political goals, bending has consistent limitations, spirituality has rules, and history matters. Avatar: The Last Airbender follows Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen), the chosen one, and his conflict is both moral (what he refuses to do) and practical (what the world demands anyway). And Zuko (Dante Basco) is the proof that the writers were playing a long game: his arc is built from wrong turns, rationalizations, shame, and genuine self-correction.
Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have planted setups that return later with meaning, evolve relationships instead of resetting them, and keep the world’s rules intact even when the story gets huge. Training matters. Injuries matter. Choices matter. The finale hits because it solves problems in a way that fits the ethics the show has been building. That’s why fans stay loyal to it.
5
‘Princess Mononoke’ (1997)
San and Moro in the forest in Princess MononokeImage via Studio Ghibli
The ambition in Princess Mononoke is moral complexity without confusion. Ashitaka (Yōji Matsuda) enters a conflict where each side has real incentives and real costs. San (Yuriko Ishida) is defending a home. Eboshi (Yūko Tanaka) protects outcasts and builds infrastructure, while still doing damage that can’t be undone. The film refuses to reduce that into a slogan, which is exactly why it feels adult and serious.
It comes from the king of anime, Hayao Miyazaki, and he is known to make the fantasy elements function as consequences. Nothing is mere decoration. Corruption spreads with momentum. Gods have presence and boundaries. Violence has fallout that changes the world’s balance. And through all of it, the story stays readable because every major beat is tied to clear wants: survival, territory, dignity, revenge, protection. It’s ambitious because it gives you spectacle and makes you sit with what the spectacle costs.
4
‘Spirited Away’ (2001)
Chihiro standing among flowers and looking up in ‘Spirited Away’.Image via Studio Ghibli
This is ambition through system design — Spirited Away is diverse, one of a kind, and also comes from Miyazaki. The bathhouse, an extremely whimsical setting, operates like an economy with rules: labor hierarchy, contracts, greed, rituals, and punishments. Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi), who is just a kid, gets stuck there, has to find a way to fix her parents, and becomes brave through her due process. She survives by learning procedures, negotiating with power, doing work, making trade-offs, and resisting the ways the system tries to erase her identity (literally, via her name). It’s almost scary, and that’s why it is a masterpiece.
Plus, every major character acts as a pressure test. Haku (Miyu Irino) is memory and obligation. Yubaba (Mari Natsuki) is transactional power. No-Face is hunger and distortion — what happens when desire has no boundary. The film’s ambition is an amalgamation of “look how imaginative this is” and “watch a child adapt without losing empathy.” The story proves that through repeated choices and consequences. It’s a weird fantasy for some, but the spot-on logic covers all ends.
3
‘Game of Thrones’ (2011–2019)
Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister with Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark in HBO’s Game of ThronesImage via HBO
Game of Thrones is the kind of fantasy that makes you feel stupid for ever thinking dragons and castles couldn’t be serious. Even if most people hate how it ended, the run-up is still unreal because it treats politics like physics: every decision creates a weakness, and someone always notices. The scale is insane — Westeros, the factions, the betrayals, the wars, the dragons. But it never feels like a lot for the sake of it. It feels like a living system. Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) survives because he can read a room faster than anyone and turn danger into leverage, and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) becomes a force because she makes brutal choices. It builds momentum and keeps paying the cost; the beauty of it all is unexplainable.
And that’s the addiction: the show doesn’t hand out plot armor. It turns every win into a future problem and makes consequences show up like a debt collector. It’ll give you a favorite character, or dozens of favorite characters, for long seasons and then kill them off as if they never were in the story. George R. R. Martin built a world where a sentence can start a war, and when David Benioff and D. B. Weiss were firing on all cylinders, every episode felt like a pressure shift: someone gains protection, someone loses it, and the entire board changes.
2
‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939)
Image via MGM
The Wizard of Oz is one of those movies that shouldn’t work this well this far removed from its era, and that’s exactly why it’s a masterpiece. It’s ambitious, but it’s also insanely disciplined: the characters are instantly readable, the goal is simple, and the geography is clean. Dorothy (Judy Garland) just wants to get home, and the film turns that into a tight, step-by-step journey where she meets allies, follows the road, faces a threat, and reaches the Wizard. Each stop raises the stakes without ever confusing the audience, and that clarity is the secret weapon. It’s why Oz feels huge even though the story stays easy to track.
The emotional design is what makes it timeless. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion — they’re the movie’s core argument made into characters: the things Dorothy thinks she needs (a brain, a heart, courage) are already inside her group, proven through pressure and choice. And all the craft choices people call “iconic” (the visual transitions, the songs, the color-world identity, the Witch as a real threat) are doing real story work. They lock the world in your head and make the ending feel emotionally complete.
1
‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001–2003)
Image via New Line/courtesy Everett Collection
The Lord of the Rings is still #1 because it pulls off the hardest combo in fantasy: massive mythic scale with completely human emotional weight. The trilogy juggles wars, multiple interlocking arcs, and deep character deterioration without losing clarity. Frodo (Elijah Wood) is carrying a symbolic burden, but you watch the Ring wear him down, step by step. Sam (Sean Astin) is there for him throughout. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) arrives to save the hobbits on the run and earns leadership through responsibility and restraint later on, and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) anchors the moral and strategic spine.
Peter Jackson, through the franchise, has translated Tolkien into cinematic mechanics that actually still work over two decades later: distinct cultures, readable geography, battles with clear objectives, and spectacle that always stays tied to character choices. And it respects cost — victory leaves damage, relationships strain, innocence breaks — and the ending gives you aftermath instead of pretending everything resets. That’s why it’s the standard in fantasy world-building even after all these years.
