NZJez

i came a bit late to this topic, but still...

the film described in the first post has to be 'Dungeons and Dragons' which ranks in my top five list of the worst films ever made, along with Battlefield Earth, Master Deamon, Skinned Deep, and The Foreigner. (im thinking of expanding the list to include such delights as Street Fighter, and the 1940's version of the Great Gatsby)

Among the many things wrong with this film are:

The ugliest SFX used by any film in that year, or in any year before or since;

the obligatory black sidekick, who is painfully 'street', and 'with it' untill he dies;

and the fact the the main character is the sidekick journalist of Clark Kent in the 'New Adventures of Superman' TV seires. He has exatly the same hairstyle in both as well.

Dungeons and Dragons is also noteable for trying to shoehorn every monster in the AD&D universe into the film, no matter how inappropriate their appearance might be.

Genesius

dude, stay on subject <.>. this thread is about "Fantasy Cliches" not "Things that were wrong with movies based on fantasy books."

And i agree with most of these, but in the end i say that all cliches can be overcome if the writter is good enough. I mean, you can have a human, a drawf, an elf and a mage get together and find the gems of fire, water, earth, and wind, because when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what your story is. Quality of books are determined by the quality of the writter, and there are people are out there, people who are writting these things based on the oldest cliche there is. All i can say is stop bickering about these things and go, use them, write a book based on cliches that works.

And to the harry potter guy, J.K. ripped off neil gaiman and the guy who wrote naruto (the manga) for harry potter, If you look up gaimans "The Books of Magic" and some manga from that other guy (Whos name and the title of his manga i cant remember) and read them, its basically the first harry potter book. George lucas and J.K. Rowling are just testaments that you can get rich by ripping someone else off.

Fyrethrid

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Beardedtroll

Just an aside. I don't know of the manga you refer to, but I've read The Books of Magic and the Harry Potter books, and I honestly can't see how people can make the claim that Harry Potter is a rip-off of the Books of Magic.

Yes, there is a superficial similarity between the main characters; they're both young boys who learn they're powerful magicians and they look similar, but there all similarities end. Harry Potter is sent off to a boarding school (and the Hogwarts setting is an essential part of the Harry Potter story), makes friends and enemies and gets involved in a fight with a Dark Overlord. Tim Hunter, on the other hand, is thrown in at the deep end (when the most trustworthy of your teachers is John Constantine you know you're in trouble.) While there are a number of enemies that makes his life interesting, the central theme of the story is his fight against himself -- not another capital-e evil Sauron-wannabe.

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Therren_Cragan

First of all, I agree with your point of staying on topic.

Secondly, I find it amusing that you class "mage" among a list of creature races. But more importantly, your point of the quality of the writer being the main focus of a books quality is true. Cliches will be made, there is no way to avoid them. The thing to avoid is making too many of them. Using them sparingly, if at all is the best way to use a cliche (aside from if you're doing something humorous of course). Also, something that people need to watch out for is mixing up an archetype with a cliche. The adventuring band of a dwarf, a human, and an elf questing to save the world from a greater evil could be placed as a fantasy archetype rather than a cliche, since it is socially accepted as a basic storyline for a fantasy story. And by socially accepted, I don't mean everyone will like it but that most will accept it as a standard. Anyways, there's my two cents.

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NZJez

Is not commenting about something in the topic staying on topic? I merely mention the film in its entirety becuase it is mentioned in the first post.

If you want to confine the topic to just 'fantasy books' for you personal posts, feel free, but the topic is 'fantasy cliches' not 'fantasy book cliches'. I therefor feel entitlesd to comment on a film which is in the fantasy genre, and which contains cliches.