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Fantasy films can undoubtedly provide a great platform for strong female characters. Encompassing genres as diverse as horror, science fiction, action/adventure movies and family films, female characters are often given the chance to nurture complex and powerful roles.

Guillermo Del Toro's wonderfully inventive fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth features three strong female characters - Ofelia, Carmen and Mercedes. It is predominantly from their perspectives that the audience bears witness to the brutalities of the Spanish civil war. Ivana Baquero's lead performance as Ofelia, a little girl drawn into a fantasy world of dark fairy tales, is mesmerizing. Del Toro cleverly interweaves the carnage of war with Ofelia's own struggle to complete the tasks set her by Pan, effectively blurring the line between fantasy and reality in this award winning Spanish language epic.

Nicole Kidman achieved a similar feat in Alejandro Amenabar's The Others. Ostensibly an old fashioned ghost story, The Others thrills are of the vicarious, pulling-the-rug-from-under-you r-feet kind. Kidman's performance, at times frenetic and panicked, draws the viewer in to her claustrophobic world. Her character combines a mother's sensitivities with the desire to feel centered and in control of her own environment.

In the context of Pan's Labyrinth and The Others, using a female lead provides better audience identification with the feelings of fear, distress and vulnerability. Almost to the point of accepting the more fantastical elements of the stories as real. Other fantasy films revel in turning the traditional female role upside down. What would Star Wars be without Princess Leia? A smart, sassy princess who's unafraid to fight alongside the men.

In a similar vein, the 1980s film Dragonslayer features an above average plot, dispensing with the notion that females in the middle ages just hung around waiting to be rescued by knights in shining armor. Dragonslayer accommodates a brave, altruistic princess and a village girl, disguised as a boy, who leads an expedition to find the titular dragon slayer. The film is a quirky, intelligent addition to the fantasy genre.

Action films are also home to strong female characters and fantasy worlds, particularly in the genre of science fiction. The two characters that stand head and shoulders above all others being Sarah Connor in The Terminator films and Ripley in the Alien series. These films both provide a nightmare backdrop to the protagonists struggle, and

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