As the latest opus from JK Rowling, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, is about to hit the screens in the US (it debuted in the UK this past Friday), let’s talk magic:
What’s the best movie ever about magic? (Spoiler: It’s not any of the Fantastic Beasts movies.) Define magic however you like: could be supernatural magic, stage magic, or any other definition of the word you can defend.
This wasn’t an easy choice for me, but I’ve settled on Peter Jackson’s 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I’d say the entire trilogy might qualify, but there’s something extra special about the first film, in how it defied expectations — which were low prior to release, to say the least — to create a fully realized world in which magic was only a small part, yet a part inextricable from the rest, and in which magic was dark, scary, and of which we seemed to only see the barest tip of.
Your turn…
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My choice is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which suggests, credibly (if that’s the right word), that magic and storytelling and lying and movies are all the same thing.
A bit of a contentious one: I still have a lot of time for The Prestige. Yes, it’s a cheat, but for me it’s a cheat that works in its context.
I’d agree that the best fantasy trilogy that has magic IN it is LOTR.
The best fictional movie about STAGE magic is The Prestige.
The best movie (of a filmed Broadway performance) that uses stage magic to explore unexpectedly moving human themes is In & Of Itself.
The best movie ABOUT magic — how it works, who gets to wield it, what preconceptions around it must be dismantled — is Star Wars: The Last Jedi. (Midichlorians be damned.)
The best movie about the nature of magic, in relation/opposition to science, is The Flight of Dragons. (I will never stop plugging this film! 🙂 Here’s a link to the opening sequence, set to a PERFECT Don McLean song.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJFcQiixYFg&ab_channel=GWOtakuTZ
The best-ever movie about magic WILL be, whenever someone makes it properly, A Wizard of Earthsea.
Possibly the best-ever existing movie about magic, though — the deep magic of nature, the magic of spirits profoundly connected to our human lives, and the magic of childlike wonder, both the characters’ and the audience’s — is My Neighbor Totoro.
High on my list of movies-about-magic is Spirited Away.
I think my first choice would also be The Fellowship of the Ring, but I also have a soft spot in my heart for The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, a charming and underrated film.
Spirited Away
The Witches of Eastwick
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947 movie)