Epic movies can afford to take their time, since time is something they’ve got a lot of. It can contribute to certain ones making you feel like you’ve gone on a similarly expansive – or life-changing – journey as the characters, for better or worse, with the likes of Gone with the Wind and the four-part 1960s version of War and Peace demonstrating this.
That’s not to say they lack excitement or things to marvel at, but they’re a little more patient, and even some of the most engrossing of all time – like Lawrence of Arabia – might be well-paced, but not constantly explosive or exciting in the same way an action/thriller film might. So, if you’re looking for movies with the runtime of a standard epic, but the pacing/feel of an action or thriller film, then maybe the following will prove worth checking out.
10
‘Red Cliff’ (2008)
Sure, John Woo is best known for making movies with gunfights and explosions, but he also knows how to do more old-school/martial arts sort of movies, as was demonstrated early in his career with Last Hurrah for Chivalry. Approximately three decades later, he made something that was a little martial arts-ish, but also kind of a war epic, with the two-part Red Cliff.
Of the two halves, the first one, from 2008, is probably better and more exciting, not to mention a little more action-packed (it’s like Kill Bill all over again), but both need to be watched to appreciate how much of an epic the whole thing is. Two halves, both a bit under 2.5 hours each, and a large-scale story about historical/political intrigue and a strong focus on war, with lots of big battle scenes as a result of the latter.
9
‘The Revenant’ (2015)
The Revenant has a pretty straightforward story for an epic, but it’s the extreme nature of the film, and how outdoors it all is, that contributes to it feeling inevitably rather large. It’s about a man who’s betrayed, made to lose everything, and then abandoned in the wilderness, so he has to battle the elements and survive, being driven pretty much purely by the desire to get revenge on the people who screwed him over.
Further, The Revenant has quite a lot of action, which makes it exciting, and it’s also an unconventional sort of Western, too. It’s not afraid to take its time on occasion, but even when it’s being a little patient and trying to build suspense, it’s still engrossing and always gives the sense that it’s going somewhere. It can’t help but have a forward kind of momentum, given the quest for eventual/bloody revenge.
8
‘Interstellar’ (2014)
Before 2014, Christopher Nolan had certainly directed films that felt epic, but the jury’s still out on whether you could count any as epics (possibly The Dark Knight Rises, but also, the sprawling/rambling quality of that film sometimes handicapped it; that was an inconsistent watch, overall). But then in 2014, Nolan directed Interstellar, and this one saw him get more ambitious than he ever had before.
Perhaps a little like The Dark Knight Rises, too, Interstellar wasn’t perfect, but its flaws were pretty easy to forgive when it did so much right, and it did all those right things on such a wild scale, too. Interstellar is about traveling out into space in search of another habitable planet, but also, it’s about the human experience, love, and things that have a shot at surviving through time and space. It’s almost corny, and it goes everywhere both internally and then also galactically, but it’s frequently thrilling and always emotionally engrossing.
7
‘Magnolia’ (1999)
It might not be the Paul Thomas Anderson movie that’s closest to flawless, but Magnolia could well be his most ambitious film, and it is objectively his longest, so maybe that’s enough to make it an epic of sorts. It tops three hours all up, and has a very large ensemble cast (pretty much everyone played by a big-name actor, too), but it doesn’t span nearly as much time as most epic movies do.
It might sound a bit dreary, but Magnolia has a ton of energy for a drama, and this makes the film, as a whole, surprisingly engaging.
In fact, Magnolia’s whole thing is that it’s a drama about people dealing with some high-intensity personal issues over the course of a single day, and sometimes, those people find their lives intersecting in unexpected ways. It might sound a bit dreary, but Magnolia has a ton of energy for a drama, with everything quite big and even melodramatic at times, and it makes the film, as a whole, surprisingly engaging for its entire (again, lengthy) runtime.
6
‘On the Silver Globe’ (1988)
On the Silver Globe is not the kind of thing that’s for everyone, but if you want something a little like Interstellar but much more arthouse, it’s probably worth checking out. You’ll see some alarming stuff that admittedly can’t be unseen, but it makes sure to be engaging while also feeling weird, telling the story of a new civilization being built – and then collapsing – over generations on a habitable planet that isn’t Earth.
It was an unfinished film, too, and the film comments on the fact that it’s unfinished, making the whole thing not quite as unsatisfying as you might expect or fear. Also, On the Silver Globe cannot be faulted for its ambition, even if it’s technically incomplete, because there are so many wild ideas here, and big swings taken when it came to exploring and depicting everything at hand.
5
‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)
An undeniably suspenseful film in just about every way, Inglourious Basterds might also be the biggest film Quentin Tarantino has directed to date, even if the three that followed – Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – were all longer. Those ones were all a bit simpler on a narrative front, and didn’t have quite as many characters, or at least not as many characters who played an important role in the central story.
Inglourious Basterds has a remarkable ensemble cast, and a lot of moving pieces, with things eventually coalescing by the end in a very satisfying and surprising fashion. If it counts as an epic film, then it is one of the shorter ones out there, sure, but also, this thing feels way shorter than the length it actually is. Really, 153 minutes here feel more like 93, if that. It’s all so perfectly paced and exceptionally thrilling.
4
‘Titanic’ (1997)
There’s a lot going on in the one movie here, in Titanic, but trust James Cameron to have it all work. You might not love the guy’s movies, but he knows how to helm blockbusters that consistently have a high chance of appealing to the widest audience possible. Here, he pulled that off by making Titanic a film of two halves, with the first mostly focusing on an unlikely romance between two young people of very different backgrounds on board the Titanic.
But, yeah, they’re on the Titanic, and everyone knows what that means, so the whole thing becomes a disaster movie at a point, and a great one at that. Also, the romantic stuff here is strong, and both halves do blur and feel like one coherent whole, in the end. It’s grand and unapologetically broad, but there’s too much here to like for any kind of Titanic hate in the year of our Lord, 2025, to be worthwhile anymore. Life’s too short. This movie ain’t, but life is. Just give yourself over to Titanic. It’s okay. You won’t be judged. There, there. Shh. It’s alright. Come on in, the water’s fine.
3
‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)
Calling Apocalypse Now exciting feels a bit weird, but it is something. Like, it’s a movie you do feel and get swept up in, and it’s also possible to be impressed by the sheer size of it, all the while also being horrified by what happens. Because it is a nightmarish kind of war epic, highlighting certain horrors tied to the Vietnam War specifically, but then also capturing a more general madness tied to all kinds of warfare.
It’s easier to call it an epic, because the shortest version of Apocalypse Now is about 2.5 hours, and then there are two other significant cuts, one being three hours, and the other being about 3.5 hours. So, whatever version you choose to watch, Apocalypse Now is an epic, and it’s also persistently engrossing, a bit like a nightmare you’re just a bit too intrigued to wake up from, even though you know you probably should.
2
‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001-2003)
Rather than trying to pick one of the three, or outlining all of the three, The Lord of the Rings, as in the whole trilogy, takes this high-ranking spot and with good reason. You can honestly watch it as one giant nine-hour film and feel the whole thing go by surprisingly fast, and if you’re into the extended editions, then it’s more like one even more gigantic 11-ish-hour-long film, and that extended trilogy really doesn’t feel a great deal longer.
Either way, this story about destroying a Ring and a lot of other things is absolutely riveting, but The Lord of the Rings isn’t just about action and spectacle, because tons of it also proves exceptionally moving. It’s the real deal, the whole package, the gold standard for fantasy movies made on an epic scale, all that stuff, more hyperbole… all things you probably know already. Preaching to the choir and all that. Everyone loves these movies, and it’s not hard to see why.
1
‘The Great Escape’ (1963)
The Great Escape is about just that: an escape that’s great. It takes place during World War II, and begins in a prisoner of war camp that’s purportedly inescapable, having been designed to house Allied prisoners who’ve attempted escapes before. But the prisoners rise to the challenge and plan out a very ambitious escape, and that’s what the movie’s ultimately all about, across the span of about three hours.
It’s all based on real events, but not necessarily beholden to all of them, ultimately striking a good balance between respecting the history and making sure the whole thing remains entertaining. And entertaining it certainly is, with The Great Escape being perhaps the prison escape movie to which all others are compared, and also easily up there among the greatest World War II films of all time.
The Great Escape
- Release Date
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July 4, 1963
- Runtime
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173 minutes
- Director
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John Sturges
- Writers
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James Clavell, W.R. Burnett, Paul Brickhill
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Steve McQueen
Hilts ‘The Cooler King’
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James Garner
Hendley ‘The Scrounger’
