Jeremy Urquhart is a writer at Collider who focuses on the Godzilla series, the films of Martin Scorsese, and anything in the action genre.
If a movie feels epic, and it’s long and also feels ambitious in terms of the story it tells, then there’s a good chance what you have on your hands is an actual epic. Who would've known? These sorts of movies tend to be at least a little broad, because an epic usually costs quite a bit of money to make, but those that are fairly grim or willing to tackle serious historical events might not be crowd-pleasing in the traditional sense.
The ones that are inspiring, or at least easy to enjoy , might also qualify as blockbusters and crowd-pleasers, and some of the best that fit into such a camp are ranked below. Also, for something to qualify as an epic here, it has to be around 2.5 hours long, at a minimum, so if you feel there’s a movie that feels epic and widely appealing, but it’s not here, that might be why. 10 'Braveheart' Braveheart is an exceptionally violent movie, but it has to be, to some extent, given it’s all about revenge and rebellion. It plays things a little loose regarding historical accuracy, sure, yet it makes sure to tell a good story , and maybe that’s the main thing. It’s easy to root for the good guys here, and very easy to dislike the villains. There are also some staggering battle sequences found in Braveheart, with everything escalating well throughout, since what begins as a personal quest for revenge soon expands into a full-on war fought against English rule in Scotland. Call it simple storytelling if you want, and Mel Gibson does give Oliver Stone a run for his money when it comes to being a blunt and aggressively unsubtle filmmaker, yet Braveheart also just works. 9 'Avatar' Possibly the best of the Avatar movies , Avatar seems very purposefully constructed to be as appealing as possible to pretty much everybody. It’s got some recognizable and maybe even simple characters who play the roles you'd expect them to play, and, all the while, the narrative does the whole “empathizing with a group of different individuals and then fighting for them” thing, just with a sci-fi spin. Avatar was remarkable by the standards of 2009, and it still looks and feels amazing all these years later, too. It does just enough as far as the writing goes, but then manages to go above and beyond on a technical front, because Avatar was remarkable by the standards of 2009, and it still looks and feels amazing all these years later, too. You're pretty much always going to get some backlash to something so popular, yet any potential people who are actively resisting Avatar and trying to be a naysayer are kind of missing out. 8 'Ben-Hur' It’s not as much of a biblical epic as The Ten Commandments, which is more about adapting text from the Bible, but Ben-Hur is still an epic with a good deal of religion in it, even if much of that stuff happens in the background. The narrative plays out during the events covered in the Gospels, regarding Jesus, but the focus is on the fictional Ben-Hur and what happens after he’s wronged by a former friend. That’s simplifying things a bit, but the important thing is that Ben-Hur goes big while still having an engaging and emotional personal story at its center, so it works on multiple fronts. The spectacle here is incredible for sure, and the straightforward drama is also easy to get wrapped up in, making this one of the most engaging of the truly grand-in-scale epics made around the middle of the 20th century. 7 'Gladiator' Like Braveheart and Ben-Hur before it, Gladiator tells a story about revenge set way back in history, ensuring there’s also quite a bit of action and spectacle alongside all the drama. The main character here is betrayed and sold into slavery, which results in him becoming a gladiator, and then he ends up inspiring more of a wide-scale rebellion through his personal quest for vengeance. Okay, that makes it sound a lot like Braveheart, and there are definite similarities, but what worked in Braveheart works either just as well, or even a little better, in Gladiator. It’s probably even snappier on a pacing front than the likes of Braveheart and Ben-Hur, too, which helps . 6 'The Great Escape' The Great Escape is everything a prison escape movie could or should ever be, and even if parts of it are kind of intense and somber, there’s still so much here that’s genuinely exciting and timelessly entertaining. It’s got that whole underdog thing going for it, since all the heroes are put in a prisoner of war camp that’s designed to be impossible to break out of, so they formulate a plan to prove their German captors wrong. You could look at a movie like The Great Escape and feel, at first glance, like an almost three-hour-long World War II movie made more than 60 years ago might not be the most engaging thing out there, but then if you watched it, there’s a good chance it’d prove you wrong. Like the other movies here, it’s hard to imagine many people watching it and not getting something out of it, as a piece of pure entertainment. 5 'Interstellar' The basic premise of Interstellar is that the Earth is dying, and so if humanity wants to not die as well, it has to find a different planet to live on, which leads to a desperate mission into deep space to possibly find such a place. There are a few things that shake the overall narrative up, with Christopher Nolan finding a way to bend time , which does beef things up emotionally. Interstellar is quite sentimental, which is less common for Nolan, and he does thankfully make it work, even if it might take a little while to get used to his precise filmmaking and style existing alongside a surprising number of tearjerking moments. Essentially, it’s a largely successful attempt to make a sci-fi movie on an epic scale that stands a good chance at appealing to just about everyone. 4 'Avengers: Endgame' There was a little too much heaviness found in Avengers: Infinity War for it to feel like a crowd-pleaser in the traditional sense, though it was a massive achievement, and a great blockbuster. It was also pretty epic in scale, but then Avengers: Endgame arguably went even bigger, and it went to more emotionally cathartic territory in a manner that ultimately made it feel like more of a direct crowd-pleaser. There’s a slowing down of things pacing-wise near the start of Avengers: Endgame, with the film being about grappling with defeat, all before an ambitious plan is undertaken to reverse the damage done to the universe at the end of Infinity War. Things naturally get more action-packed from there, and the big battle it all concludes with is up there among the most cathartic, grand, and crowd-pleasing sequences of the century so far . 3 'Titanic' The box office earnings here were just too much to excuse Titanic being excluded for present purposes, so here it is. Something can technically be immensely crowd-pleasing in nature and still be ignored by more people than deserved, but here, that’s not an issue. Titanic was monumental when released, and while it has detractors, much of it’s endured in pop culture since 1997 . Subscribe to the newsletter for deeper epic-movie highlights Hungry for more epic-film recommendations? Subscribe to our newsletter for curated deep dives, thoughtful context, and recommended watchlists that help you discover timeless classics and modern blockbusters and get more from every epic you watch. Get Updates By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime. You know what’s up with it by now: it’s about two people falling in love on board the Titanic, and then everything getting chaotic and deadly when that same ship hits an iceberg and begins sinking. James Cameron goes broad here, like he’d do 12 years later with Avatar, and just makes it work, with Titanic also obliterating pretty much all competition at its year’s Academy Awards as much as it dominated the box office, out of all movies released in 1997. 2 'Seven Samurai' Seven Samurai could well be the best action movie ever made, but then it’s also more than just an action movie, given that it’s a massive epic that has sufficient room to do plenty more than showcase some exciting fighting. It makes the fighting more exciting because what you get here is a very efficiently told story that has great characters and plenty by way of stakes and drama to care about before things get action-heavy. To call it maybe the best samurai movie of all time still doesn’t feel like enough by way of praise. It could be slow by today’s standards, in the eyes of some, but if you're willing to devote a fair few hours to it, Seven Samurai is very rewarding, and can still be considered a crowd-pleaser, to some extent, just because it’s quite easy to watch nowadays for a film of its age. 1 'The Lord of the Rings' Yes, all three of them. The Lord of the Rings is being counted as one massive movie here, since any time after 2003, if you watch one, you kind of have to watch them all. The three films that made up the trilogy were released one per year from 2001 to 2003, but after the theatrical releases, you pretty much have to watch them in close proximity to each other. If you can hold off, then who are you, Sting? All three movies tell one overall story about the quest to destroy a Ring and prevent an evil being from becoming all-powerful once more, and then lots of other stuff happens along the way. The Lord of the Rings is about as good as fantasy on the big screen gets, and it’s hard not to get swept up, moved, and excited by so much of what happens throughout this three-part epic. Like Follow Followed The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring PG-13 Action Fantasy Adventure Release Date December 19, 2001 Runtime 178 Minutes Director Peter Jackson Writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, J.R.R. Tolkien Cast See All
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