For hopefully obvious reasons, it’s difficult to make a movie that’s a true epic. Movies are hard enough to make on their own, when they have just a handful of characters, no huge battle sequences or set pieces, and ultimately go about two hours, or under. Once you have scores of extras, big/stunning sequences, and runtimes that exceed three hours, the amount of work is naturally going to be greater.
So, making one epic movie, as a director, and having it be a good epic movie? That’s impressive enough, but the following directors all did something on a huge scale three or more times in their careers. Also, that’s to say that if there’s a big name not here, it’s probably because they didn’t have enough epics to their name, their epic movies aren’t as well-known or good, or that they fell a little shy of what the names below did. Sorry.
10
Sergei Bondarchuk
Epics Include: ‘War and Peace’ (1965-1967), ‘Waterloo’ (1970), ‘They Fought for Their Country’ (1975)
War and Peace was one of those multipart movies that was helmed as one massive production (with a total runtime of seven hours), but released in parts when screened theatrically, since it would otherwise be an exceedingly long time to be at the movies for, and challenging even with intermissions. Even if you consider War and Peace as one movie, Sergei Bondarchuk did some other big movies, which brings his total to at least three.
He specialized in making war films, with Waterloo not being nearly as long as War and Peace, and released in just one part, but proving similarly spectacular as far as its battle scenes were concerned… well, its battle scene. The second half of Waterloo is almost just the titular battle, and the scale of it all really does need to be seen to be believed.
9
Francis Ford Coppola
Epics Include: ‘The Godfather’ (1972), ‘The Godfather Part II’ (1974), ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola had one of the most impressive decades a filmmaker has ever had, during the 1970s, since he did The Godfather, its sequel, and Apocalypse Now all in that decade. He also did The Conversation, which is another very good film, but not quite an epic. The other three, on the other hand, are all quite immense as far as productions go, and each proved a little bigger than the last.
The Godfather is a hard-to-fault gangster epic, The Godfather Part II went bigger, more tragic, and also ventured into the past, while Apocalypse Now is an absolutely nightmarish Vietnam War epic. As for epics outside the 1970s? Well, there was Megalopolis. He swung big with that one, and it was certainly ambitious, but people have naturally been more than a little divided about its actual quality.
8
Fritz Lang
Epics Include: ‘Metropolis’ (1927), ‘Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler’ (1922), ‘Die Nibelungen’ (1924)
And like Coppola, Fritz Lang also directed some of his largest-scale movies relatively early on in his filmmaking career, at least overall. The 1920s was when a bunch of his most ambitious movies came out, including the absolute all-timer that is Metropolis: a sci-fi movie that was truly ahead of its time, and influenced countless other science fiction movies released in its wake.
He also did some movies that came out in multiple parts, so if you watch the likes of Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler or Die Nibelungen in one sitting, they’re about as epic as silent films ever got (both are over four hours in length, all up). And then there was also Woman in the Moon, at the very end of the 1920s, which still feels underrated and overshadowed compared to Lang’s other epics, but it’s comparably grand in its ambition and lengthy as far as the runtime’s concerned.
7
Peter Jackson
Epics Include: ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ (2001), ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ (2003), ‘King Kong’ (2005)
Well, this pick is here for obvious reasons. Peter Jackson directed the movies that made up The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is perhaps the defining epic of the 21st century so far, especially if you consider it to be one giant movie. If you don’t, then each movie on its own would also rank among the most impressive epics of the last 25 years. It’s just that taking them all together, you get something even more immense (obviously).
Otherwise, Jackson did also direct King Kong, which was pretty grand as a blockbuster, if a bit overlong. It wasn’t something that needed to go for broke so greatly, but there’s a lot within it that’s enjoyable. As for The Hobbit trilogy… okay, maybe Jackson loses a point or two there, but The Lord of the Rings is so great that his legacy, as a director who can tackle giant projects, remains largely intact.
6
Stanley Kubrick
Epics Include: ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975), ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968), ‘Spartacus’ (1960)
For a quality-over-quantity kind of director, for present purposes, here’s Stanley Kubrick. The quantity of epic movies he made is not high, seeing as there are only three movies of his that really fit the definition of an “epic movie,” but those three movies are all pretty damn masterful. Yes, even Spartacus, which Kubrick sort of disowned, is great as a large-scale, moving, and sometimes exciting historical epic.
The other two, though, are far more Kubrickian, with one being a science fiction epic (2001: A Space Odyssey), and the other being a very much unique, somewhat comedic, offbeat, and visually striking one (Barry Lyndon), the latter being something it’s hard to imagine anyone else but Kubrick directing. He did three very different sorts of epics, and excelled at directing them all, so Stanley Kubrick very much earns his spot here, as a result.
5
James Cameron
Epics Include: ‘Titanic’ (1997), ‘Avatar’ (2009), ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ (2022)
If money mattered more than anything for a ranking like this, then you’d probably have to put James Cameron at the very top. The guy made three movies in a row that were all epics, and all earned more than $2 billion at the worldwide box office. And then, at the time of writing, a fourth is in cinemas and has made over $1 billion, so even if it’s not ultimately part of the $2 billion club, that’s still fairly impressive.
James Cameron is one of the best in the business – and of all time – at making mass-appeal movies on such a large scale.
Those epics have been Titanic and then three Avatar movies, and for what it’s worth, some of his greatest films weren’t actually true epics… though, yeah, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are ambitious and quite grand as far as sci-fi/action movies go. Anyway, Cameron is one of the best in the business – and of all time – at making mass-appeal movies on such a large scale, so he’s clearly doing something right, even if there are almost always problems/things to nitpick that are present in his movies.
4
Martin Scorsese
Epics Include: ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (1988), ‘The Irishman’ (2019), ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (2023)
Few directors working today have made as many epic movies as Martin Scorsese has, and it’s extra impressive how many of them he’s done relatively late into his career. That sets him apart from someone like Francis Ford Coppola, whose longest (and, let’s face it, best) movies came out earlier in his filmmaking career.
Scorsese made great movies earlier in his career, too, that weren’t necessarily epics, but The Last Temptation of Christ was one that demonstrated he could, and then in the last decade or so, there’s been massive films like The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Scorsese’s newer films might not be as popular as some of his classics, but they demonstrate continual growth and ambition on his part, as a filmmaker, and that’s worth celebrating, both while he’s still active and onward in time, in the bittersweet years after his final film has come out.
3
Akira Kurosawa
Epics Include: ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954), ‘Ran’ (1985), ‘Kagemusha’ (1980)
There aren’t enough good things one could say about Seven Samurai, since it’s easily one of the greatest epics of all time, and also one of the most influential. Almost any successful action movie with a runtime of more than 2.5 hours probably owes at least a little to Seven Samurai, and there are a few non-action/non-epic movies that have likely been influenced by it, too. It’s that kind of movie.
But it’s not the only big movie Akira Kurosawa directed, since you’ve got the underrated Kagemusha, made nearly 30 years later, and then the monumental Ran, which was made just over 30 years on from Seven Samurai. That one is relentlessly devastating, all the while also being one of the best-looking films ever made, and to consider that the same director managed to make both it and Seven Samurai is beyond remarkable, as an achievement.
2
Sergio Leone
Epics Include: ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968), ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966), ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984)
The commentary here could start and finish with just a list of Sergio Leone’s epic movies. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Once Upon a Time in the West. Once Upon a Time in America. There you go. Those are the reasons why he’s one of the best filmmakers of all time, and thereby also one of the best directors ever when it comes to epic movies.
If you want a little more, uh… he also did Duck, You Sucker, which is comparably epic in scope and ambition, all the while also being way too underrated. Leone didn’t direct many movies; seven all up, in fact. But he’s one of those few filmmakers who made more epics than he did “regular-sized” movies, and all those epic movies were themselves fantastic, all being well-worth devoting all those hours to.
1
David Lean
Epics Include: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962), ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957), ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (1965)
It wouldn’t feel right to put anyone here who wasn’t David Lean. Whether he’s the best director of all the ones mentioned here, that could be up for debate. But if you’re talking epic movies, no one’s handled that genre – or style of film – in quite the same way Lean has. Also, like Kubrick, he’s handled epics of different kinds, set in different periods of history, and with different blends of other genres.
Of course, Lawrence of Arabia is the best of them, but The Bridge on the River Kwai is almost just as good, with both deservedly winning Best Picture at the Oscars. Throw in Doctor Zhivago, Ryan’s Daughter, and A Passage to India (the latter two not quite as good, sure, but still impressive) and you’ve got one hell of a filmography, just looking at the stuff he did on a truly epic scale.
Source link
