If You Loved The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Watch These 8 Next

You survived all those endings. Now what? These eight share its quests, wars and wizards, and most of them pulled it off without a single orc.

The last pick has zero elves and a better claim than any Hobbit.

1. 8
   The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)7.6

   The best Hobbit, and still one dragon stretched across two movies.

   Same director, same Gandalf, and Benedict Cumberbatch as a talking dragon. It made $959 million worldwide, but a 66 on Metacritic says the padding showed.
2. 7
   Big Fish (2003)7.2

   A 2003 fantasy that's really about how stories outlive us.

   Tim Burton swaps orcs for giants and witches, but the heart is the same: why we tell stories. Audiences beat 78% of movies with it, critics only 57%.
3. 6
   The Wizard of Oz (1939)9.5

   The original mismatched party walking a long road to a wizard.

   A kid far from home, three loyal companions, a witch who wants her gone. Made for a reported $2.8 million in 1939, and it still sits at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
4. 5
   Star Wars (1977)9.6

   Farm kid, old wizard, dark lord. You know the drill.

   Same hero's journey bones, just with lasers instead of arrows. An A+ CinemaScore and nearly 1.6 million IMDb votes. It's Middle-earth with better plumbing.
5. 4
   The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)9.6

   A war epic where the real enemy is one man's pride.

   Alec Guinness plays a captive officer who gets dangerously attached to a project, which should sound familiar. 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Same weight, same doom, zero CGI.
6. 3
   Pan's Labyrinth (2006)9.6

   Darker than Mordor, and it earns every shadow.

   Fantasy creatures and a real war collide around one brave kid. Metacritic 98. Fair warning: Sergi López's villain is scarier than anything with a flaming eye.
7. 2
   The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)9.7

   Three guys, one treasure, a war in the way. Fellowship energy.

   A long, dusty quest across a war-torn country, a score you'll hum for days, and a final showdown. Made for a reported $1.2 million. Every frame looks pricier.
8. 1
   Lawrence of Arabia (1962)9.6

   The real Return of the King follow-up has zero elves.

   An outsider leads armies across an impossible landscape, and the war starts changing him. Metacritic gave it a perfect 100. Next to this desert, Mordor looks like a parking lot.

$641.53 says you start Lawrence of Arabia tonight and spend the whole desert crossing waiting for the eagles.

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Current mood: ready to fight about it