Serious fantasy movies

I'm looking for some fantasy movies like "Lord of the Rings" (only maybe on a smaller scale) that have a serious tone.
I.e. not some cute little children's movie. I don't mind a little humor here and there, but the overall plot should be treated seriously, with drama and maybe also deaths etc.

When I say fantasy, I mean a world like in "Lord of the Rings" or, to use a video game analogy, "The Legend of Zelda" or "Final Fantasy": A world looking similar to the middle ages or ancient times. A place where magic exists and where they have to fight monsters.

I'm not talking about movies like "Conan". This one is more like a fictionalized version of the real world back in the past, only with some magic and supernatural stuff sprikled in here or there. In "Conan", the leader of an army might have mystical powers. But you will usually not see that Conan walks through a forest and is suddenly attacked by an army of orcs.
"Lord of the Rings" or "Final Fantasy" on the other hand are their complete own worlds, with different continents than on earth and with monsters, dwarves etc. being a common occurence.
Also, please no stuff like "Narnia" where the protagonists get into a fantasy world, but where they definitely come from our regular world. The movie's fantasy universe should be self-contained.

From the contents, it should be a story where the hero (or heroes) have to fight evil, just like in the above examples.
I.e. a soap opera playing in the Shire would not be what I'm looking for.
Neither would be a big bad like in "The Wizard of Oz". In that movie, the anatagonist is merely some annoyance that needs to be defeated because it threatens the hero directly. The evil in the movies I'm looking for should be a general threat to the world or at least to the land.