Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Updated Sep 7, 2026, 5:11 AM EDT
Diego Pineda has been a devout storyteller his whole life. He has self-published a fantasy novel and a book of short stories, and is actively working on publishing his second novel.
A lifelong fan of watching movies and talking about them endlessly, he writes reviews and analyses on his Instagram page dedicated to cinema, and occasionally on his blog. His favorite filmmakers are Andrei Tarkovsky and Charlie Chaplin. He loves modern Mexican cinema and thinks it's tragically underappreciated.
Other interests of Diego's include reading, gaming, roller coasters, writing reviews on his Letterboxd account (username: DPP_reviews), and going down rabbit holes of whatever topic he's interested in at any given point.
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There are few movies more quotable than fantasy movies. These grand stories, full of rich imagination, set in grand fictional worlds with complex magic systems and mythical creatures of wonder, typically lend themselves to fun, memorable dialogue. Oftentimes, these lines of dialogue go down in movie history as some of the medium's most iconic, cementing fantasy as the perfect place for quotes that are inspiring, or funny, or badass, or all of those things at once.
Whether it's a huge fantasy franchise like the Harry Potter movies, or a one-off classic like It's a Wonderful Life, the most quotable fantasy movies usually couple their memorable lines of dialogue with colorful, vibrant characters and engrossing world-building. This ensures that, if anything, these films will go down in history as some of the most entertaining ever made.
15 'Conan the Barbarian' (1982)
Most iconic quote: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."
Image via Universal PicturesBased on the sword-and-sorcery hero Conan created by Robert E. Howard, one of the biggest icons in the history of pulp magazines, Conan the Barbarian represented Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakout role as a leading Hollywood action hero. By proving that the sword-and-sorcery genre could be big, brutal, and serious, Conan became one of the R-rated fantasy movies that changed the genre forever.
There are plenty of reasons why it has been one of the most widely beloved fantasy and action movies of the '80s for years, not least of which is the quotability of the script co-written by Oliver Stone and director John Milius. Dialogue throughout the movie is relatively sparse, but that stoicism is precisely what lends so many of the script's most memorable lines such dramatic weight.
14 'The Emperor's New Groove' (2000)
Most iconic quote: "Oh, right. The poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison. That poison?"
Image via Walt Disney AnimationOften, it's fantasy comedies that end up going down in history as some of the genre's most quotable films; and often, it's family comedies that end up having the most memorable dialogue. Case in point: Disney's The Emperor's New Groove, one of the first movies the House of Mouse released after the end of the period now known as the Disney Renaissance.
Originally envisioned as a dramatic epic musical, Emperor's New Groove ended up transforming into the delightfully comedic buddy film that allowed it to become one of Disney's biggest animated cult classics. From Kuzco and Pacha's hilarious banter to the deliciously villainous lines delivered by Eartha Kitt's Yzma, the movie is full of snappy dialogue that has endured with the rise of meme culture in the years following the film's release.
13 'Army of Darkness' (1992)
Most iconic quote: "You see this? This... is my Boomstick!"
Image via Universal PicturesSam Raimi's The Evil Dead didn't just catapult the young director's career; it altogether revolutionized low-budget horror filmmaking. Its sequel, Evil Dead II, proved to be every bit as inventive and successful. And with Army of Darkness, Raimi brought the franchise squarely into dark fantasy territory with an even more overt sense of humor than ever before.
Precisely thanks to that sense of humor, Army of Darkness is one of the most fun horror movies of all time, as well as one of the most quotable. From "this is my boomstick!" to Ash's iconic catchphrase "groovy," the film is full of lines both amusing and badass, which only add to how utterly unforgettable the whole movie is.
12 'Labyrinth' (1986)
Most iconic quote: "You remind me of the babe."
Image via Tri-Star PicturesDirected by Jim Henson and starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly in what's perhaps both their most iconic big-screen roles, Labyrinth received a mixed critical reception and underperformed at the box office upon release. In the years since, however, it has come to be recognized not just as one of the biggest Hollywood cult classics of the '80s, but also one of the most irresistibly entertaining musical movies ever made.
Whether it's the songs or the spoken dialogue, Labyrinth is filled to the brim with quotable lines that have been a paragon of Internet pop culture for years. The dialogue and song lyrics themselves are already abundantly bombastic in isolation, but the way Bowie and Connelly deliver those lines with gleeful theatricality elevates the entire film even further.
11 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' (1971)
Most iconic quote: "You get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!"
Image via Paramount PicturesOne of the most brilliantly subversive family movies of all time, Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory may have been hated by Roald Dahl upon release (then again, not that Dahl ever approved of any cinematic adaptation of his work), but cinephiles throughout the years have never stopped considering it one of the most magical family movies ever made.
Reasons to love Willy Wonka are abundant, and the iconicity and memorability of its dialogue is certainly no small reason. It's primarily the lines delivered by Gene Wilder as Wonka himself that have gone down in history as some of the fantasy genre's most commonly quoted, but pretty much the entire script penned by David Seltzer and Dahl himself is full of unforgettable lines of dialogue.
10 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' (2003)
Most iconic quote: "This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow!"
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesBased on the iconic Disneyland attraction, the Pirates of the Caribbean series proved that, when they put enough love and passion into it, Disney could really make an awesome movie out of any concept. The first film is Curse of the Black Pearl, where a blacksmith teams up with an eccentric pirate to save his love from the pirate's former allies, who are now undead monsters.
Curse of the Black Pearl is one of the best and most entertaining pirate swashbucklers in the history of movies, packed with creativity, humor, great action, and some genuinely scary moments. What's most memorable and fun about the whole film, though, is arguably the presence of Johnny Depp's bombastic Captain Jack Sparrow, who has most of the best quotes in the series. Curse of the Black Pearl is wonderfully written, and that includes some super strong dialogue that bolsters the story, world, and characters remarkably well.
9 'It's a Wonderful Life' (1946)
Most iconic quote: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."
Image via RKO Radio PicturesFrank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is so much more than just the quintessential Christmas classic. Part endearing rom-com, part profoundly moving character drama, part complex exploration of depression and suicide in men, it's far and away one of the best movies of Hollywood's Golden Age. It's the story of George Bailey, a frustrated businessman who thinks the world would be better off without him. So, an angel is sent from Heaven to show him what life would have been like if he had never been born.
A huge part of what makes It's a Wonderful Life one of the most uplifting drama movies in history is the outstanding screenplay, which has an emotionally riveting story, an engrossing protagonist, and a formidable villain. It also includes some of the most quotable dialogue of this era of Hollywood, from Clarence the angel's delightful bits of wisdom to George and his wife Mary's many romantic conversations.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
8 'Toy Story' (1995)
Most iconic quote: "To infinity and beyond!"
Image via Pixar Animation StudiosWhen Pixar released Toy Story, the first-ever fully CG-animated feature film in history, the animated film industry changed forever. This is one of the most iconic stories of '90s cinema, about a cowboy toy who feels jealous when a new spaceman action figure supplants him as his owner's favorite toy. Thus, the legendary filmography of the king of animation studios kicked off.
Toy Story sparked three (soon to be four) sequels, all of them with phenomenal dialogue, but no Pixar movie is more quotable than this one. Funny moments, like Woody reminding Buzz that he's only a toy; profound scenes, like the duo's heart-to-heart conversations in the third act; and, of course, larger-than-life quotes that have become staples of pop culture all make this delightful little family movie endlessly quotable.
7 The 'Harry Potter' Series
Most iconic quote: "Always."
Image via Warner Bros.There are very few fantasy movie franchises more popular, better-known, or more beloved than the Harry Potter films. Throughout these eight magical movies, fans got to grow up alongside this orphaned boy who finds out that not only is he a wizard—he's an awfully powerful one, too, destined to become the only person who can stop the evil Lord Voldemort from rising to power in the Wizarding World.
As much as it's known for its endearing characters, thrilling moments, and many entertaining storylines, all eight Harry Potter films are popular for their delightfully fun dialogue. They go from the funny, to the romantic, to the badass, to the simply unforgettable. Every character in the franchise has a very distinct way of speaking, and as a result, every few quotes that they spoke throughout the films instantly became a whole pillar of fantasy pop culture.
6 'Shrek' (2001)
Most iconic quote: "We can stay up late swapping manly stories, and in the morning, I'm making waffles!"
Image via DreamWorks PicturesThere aren't many movie moments more magical than hearing "Some...BODY" and the kick in the door that opens the story of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek. Winner of the first Best Animated Feature Oscar ever, it's a fairy tale comedy about an ogre who, after his swamp home is taken over by fairy tale creatures who have been evicted by a mean lord, must go on a quest to rescue a princess in order to get his land back.
Shrek has everything that anyone could ask for in a family movie. Plenty of fun moments and amusing jokes to charm the little ones? Check. A surprisingly even larger number of hidden adult jokes and clever deconstructions of the fairy tale movie genre? Check. Some of the greatest, most quotable lines in animated movie history? Definitely check. Awesome music, hilarious jokes, and a number of emotional moments make Shrek one of the best animated films of the 21st century, all memes aside.
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