Sword and Sorcery movies tend to be more plot-driven than high fantasy and focus heavily on action sequences, often pitting a physically powerful but unsophisticated warrior against an evil wizard or other supernaturally endowed enemy.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings novel as the prototypical modern example of High Fantasy in literature, and the recent Peter Jackson film adaptation of the books is a good example of the High Fantasy subgenre on the silver screen. Often, they feature a hero of humble origins and a clear distinction between good and evil set against each other in an epic struggle. High Fantasy films tend to feature a more richly developed fantasy world, and may also be more character-oriented or thematically complex. Both categories typically employ quasi-medieval settings, wizards, magical creatures and other elements commonly associated with fantasy stories. The most common fantasy subgenres depicted in movies are High Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery. Several sub-categories of fantasy films can be identified, although the delineations between these subgenres, much as in fantasy literature, are somewhat fluid. JSTOR ( December 2007) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.

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