10 Greatest Classic Epic Movies, Ranked
Classic epic movies seem to age particularly well, since the biggest and best ones were wild and expansive for their time, usually to such an extent that they’re still impressively gigantic when watched today. Epic movies do still get made, of course, but there’s something particularly great about seeing a truly ambitious grand-scale production made half a century ago or more, knowing full well that filmmakers back then couldn’t rely on any handy CGI.
Many of these films aimed to trump whatever was on television at the time, though some of the best epics did admittedly come out before TV was a competitor to the big screen. All the ones below are old, and how old is a classic, you might ask? Anything older than 50 years. If it was released before 1975, it has a chance of being ranked below. If you’re after the best epics from the last 50 years, go here.
10
‘Ben-Hur’ (1959)
In 1959, Ben-Hur was pretty much as big as movies had ever gotten, to the point where the phrase “bigger than Ben-Hur“ was coined as a way to describe things that were genuinely staggering in size. Runtime-wise, it’s not the biggest, but at 212 minutes, it’s pretty damn long. The size is even more apparent with the production of the whole thing, with massive sets and one justifiably iconic set piece involving a chariot race.
It’s not a full-on action movie as well as an epic, but it does have a little by way of that while also being a religious epic, given it takes place during the life of Jesus Christ (though he’s not the focus here, as it’s instead about Judah Ben-Hur and his quest for vengeance against a childhood friend who gravely wrongs him). Ben-Hur does feel old-fashioned in some ways, but so much of it remains monumental and almost overwhelmingly grand.
9
‘Die Nibelungen’ (1924)
This one was released further back in time than most of the other movies being mentioned here, meaning it’s kind of older than what might otherwise be considered a classic, but still, Die Nibelungen is worth mentioning. It’s a single movie that was released in two parts, and both those parts came out in 1924, so it’s being counted as one entry here.
Taking both parts as one, Die Nibelungen is just about the grandest production Fritz Lang ever helmed.
Both Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge are great in their own ways, telling one massive story, with the first probably having more fantasy elements, and the second being a little more grounded and focused on drama. Taking both parts as one, Die Nibelungen is just about the grandest production Fritz Lang ever helmed, and considering he also directed Metropolis and the 4.5-hour-long Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, that’s certainly saying something.
8
‘The Great Escape’ (1963)
It might seem a bit far-fetched and dramatic, but The Great Escape was indeed based on a true story, and is eventually pretty downbeat in a way that contrasts pretty dramatically with how entertaining most of the movie is. It works, though, and the movie plays out over nearly three hours, so it has ample room to go into different emotional territory without things feeling too jarring or scattershot.
Parts of The Great Escape are suspenseful, parts are exciting, and then some parts are also rather somber. It’s just about the ultimate prison escape movie, and is also potentially up there as the greatest prisoner of war movie of all time, too. It’s the kind of iconic film that’s been referenced and parodied a good deal, but you can still watch this and pretty easily get swept up in it, regardless of any potential cultural osmosis.
7
‘War and Peace’ (1967)
War and Peace took a look at Ben-Hur and said “hold my beer,” then went on to outdo it. It truly was bigger than Ben-Hur. Also, it was a Soviet film, so maybe it said “hold my vodka” rather than “beer,” because beer can only keep someone so warm. Anyway, it’s War and Peace. It’s based on the giant Leo Tolstoy novel, still condensing it to a pretty large extent, seeing as that one spans way more than 1000 pages, but this film adaptation is about seven hours.
Movies don’t get a whole lot longer, even ones that are released in multiple parts. It’s another Die Nibelungen kind of situation where it’s basically the one movie, but wasn’t released or screened as one movie, owing to the massive length (here, being split into four parts, with all of them feeling sweeping and essential in their own ways, all adding up to one immense whole).
6
‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968)
After his first two Westerns, everything Sergio Leone directed was pretty much an epic, and that most certainly goes for Once Upon a Time in the West. This one feels a bit like it could be the equivalent of a series finale for the entire Western genre, maybe in a way that you could also say about The Wild Bunch, but Once Upon a Time in the West isn’t as nihilistic, balancing its dark stuff with a fair bit of humor and even some heart.
It might be as sentimental as Sergio Leone ever got, though much of it’s still intense and subversive if you want to compare it to many of the non-spaghetti Westerns that came out in the decade or two before it. Once Upon a Time in the West also boasts one of the best Ennio Morricone scores of all time, and speaking of great Sergio Leone Westerns that have legendary Morricone scores that accompany stories told on an epic scale…
5
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966)
…Here’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which is the only thing that stops Once Upon a Time in the West from being Leone’s definitive Western. That one might be a more mature or emotionally balanced sort of film, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly delivers arguably more by way of spectacle and sheer entertainment, having a simple but satisfying story about three men (none of them actually all that good, but some more bad and/or ugly than others) competing with each other to find a fortune buried in the desert.
It all builds to what has to be one of the best endings in cinema history, but then again, everything before the ending of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also excellent. This is one of those quintessential Westerns worth watching even if you don’t really like Westerns all that much, and it feels like it goes by remarkably fast for a movie that nears three hours in duration all up.
4
‘The Godfather’ (1972)
The Godfather is great enough to be a contender for the crown of “greatest gangster movie of all time,” and is only called a contender here because there are some others that are 10/10-worthy, and it almost feels like picking a favorite child. And hey, why would you want to do that, especially when The Godfather is also all about family? A crime family, sure, but it’s also a family family.
More than a surprisingly bloody family drama and a gangster film, The Godfather is also an epic, with a whole bunch of moving parts and memorable characters explored (and, almost more often than not, killed off) across a runtime of about three hours. And then it had a sequel that’s being counted here as a second film, rather than including both of them together, since it was made after The Godfather and released two years apart.
3
‘The Godfather Part II’ (1974)
And that sequel is unsurprisingly called The Godfather Part II, but then so much of the film beyond its title does end up being surprising. It’s part sequel and almost a prequel at the same time, with a good chunk of The Godfather Part II covering Vito’s early life, and he’s played by Robert De Niro this time instead of Marlon Brando (and both actors won an Oscar for their role; two Academy Awards effectively given for the same character).
The rest of The Godfather Part II is about Al Pacino’s character, Michael, devolving morally and struggling to continue running the Corleone empire in a way even remotely comparable to how his father did. It ends up being more gut-wrenching and harrowing than the already pretty heavy first movie, and The Godfather Part II has an even greater scope, so it might well be a marginally better epic than the already pretty much perfect The Godfather.
2
‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962)
Just as it’s difficult to talk about The Godfather and its sequel, owing to how much has already been said about two movies so beloved, so too is it kind of hard to find any novel or interesting way to introduce and discuss Lawrence of Arabia. It’s almost the quintessential epic, since it’s a blend of genres, it covers a great distance physically, it spans a good amount of time, and it tells a story that needs a big runtime to properly tell.
It’s also a war epic, but then even just calling it that and leaving it at that is doing it a bit of a disservice. Lawrence of Arabia is more of an everything movie… well, not literally every genre, but a good many of them, all the while being distinctively its own thing and never overstuffed. It being #2 here could be controversial, but there’s one other epic that’s over 50 years old that could be just a tad better.
1
‘Seven Samurai’ (1954)
And that epic is Seven Samurai, which is one of the best and most important action films ever made, even though it’s also – like some of the other epics mentioned here – more than “just” an action movie. It is neatly divided into three acts, with each being long and fleshed out enough that watching Seven Samurai almost feels like sitting down to get through an entire trilogy in one sitting.
It’s certainly got three (or more) movies’ worth of stuff in it, and the way the story’s told, plus how the movie looks and feels, never really gets old. Seven Samurai is one of the easier epic movies to revisit time and again, because it makes three and a half hours pass by in what feels like a flash, and it’s all just so effortlessly done, timeless, and basically perfect.
Seven Samurai
- Release Date
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April 26, 1954
- Runtime
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207 Minutes
- Director
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Akira Kurosawa
- Writers
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Akira Kurosawa
