10 Greatest Epic Movie Climaxes, Ranked
It’s essential to give any movie of any length a satisfying ending for hopefully obvious reasons, but it’s even more of a necessity when you’re making something that people have to invest a lot of time in. Epics, for example, tend to be long. It’s in the genre name, really, and beyond having generally long runtimes, epics also feel grand thanks to their scope, production values, and large casts (plenty also have narratives that play out over many years, too).
These epics all satisfy when it comes to conclusions. They have amazing climaxes, with climaxes, in the traditional sense, occurring right before the very end. So, with the following, some are being highlighted because of what happens near the end, rather than at the literal end. Basically, if you’re after long movies that deliver more-than-satisfying payoffs, then the films below are all worth checking out.
This article has unavoidable spoilers for the movies discussed.
10
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is the first part of The Lord of the Rings, so it feels right to highlight it first, before inevitably highlighting the other two movies, too. The Fellowship of the Rings gets things off to an appropriately strong start, with the formation of the titular fellowship and the beginning of the quest to destroy the One Ring, preventing Sauron’s return.
But The Fellowship of the Ring is also about the breaking of the fellowship, and it happens right near the end, involving Boromir’s corruption, redemption, and death, Frodo and Sam going off on their own. The action here is exciting, of course, even if it’s rather small-scale compared to the battles that come later, but it’s probably Sam dedicating himself to Frodo, no matter what, that stands as the most impactful part of the overall climax.
9
‘Avengers: Endgame’ (2019)
Honorable mention to Avengers: Infinity War, which might’ve had a more memorable ending than Avengers: Endgame, but it was Endgame that felt the most climactic in the traditional sense, and it had to, what with the title being “Endgame” and all. Not an “endgame” for the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by any means, but a pretty spectacular conclusion for the first three phases of it, and one that’s proven hard to touch quality or impact-wise from Phase 4 onward.
The conclusion of Infinity War is resolved through a big time travel mission, and then once all the good guys are back in one piece (well, except for Black Widow… sorry), there’s one final battle that makes up much of Avengers: Endgame’s third act. It ends with a farewell to Tony Stark/Iron Man, the character whose film kicked off the MCU… but not a farewell to Robert Downey Jr., seeing as he’s coming back – thanks to some stunt-casting – in a villainous role in the next Avengers movie.
8
‘The Godfather’ (1972)
The Godfather is an epic gangster movie (some might say it’s “the” epic gangster movie) about a criminal empire run by aging patriarch Vito Corleone. Part of the film’s drama concerns the question of which of his children might be a worthy successor, and it ends up being Michael, who’s initially reluctant to get in deep with the family business, but seems to come around to the idea rather fast.
His ruthlessness as a new leader is shown in the film’s climax, which is a montage of various enemies being taken out intercut with him becoming a godfather to his nephew. The very end of The Godfather is also memorable, with Michael’s wife, Kay, realizing what he’s become, but the baptism + murder spree sequence serves as the movie’s climax, and a fittingly brutal/impactful one at that.
7
‘Babylon’ (2022)
One of the best epic movies in recent memory, even if it’s probably not for everyone, Babylon collapses many years into a bit over three hours, and is about a few different individuals navigating Hollywood during a dramatic time in cinema history. It’s the 1920s, and silent films are giving way to talkies, with this being somewhat played for comedy, or played for comedy at times, versus something like Singin’ in the Rain just being broad and comedic (the premise is very similar there, too).
People fade into obscurity or die altogether, near the end of Babylon, with Manny – the closest the film has to a protagonist – surviving that tumultuous time in cinema history. The film ends with him watching Singin’ in the Rain in 1952, and having both a flashback to what he went through, and some kind of surreal vision as to where cinema will go post-1952. It’s all ridiculous, but the climax works regardless, and manages to be thrilling, surprising, confronting, and perplexing, much like the three-ish hours of movie that preceded it.
6
‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957)
Easily up there among the greatest World War II movies of all time, The Bridge on the River Kwai is about English prisoners of war being tasked with constructing a bridge by their Japanese captors. There’s also an Allied plot to destroy the bridge, but the imprisoned commander in charge of the building takes a surprising amount of pride in his creation, which leads to further conflict among the Allies.
The Bridge on the River Kwai ends with various people on all sides of the whole mess dying and then the bridge itself being destroyed after all.
At the risk of oversimplifying things, it’s about the madness of war, and The Bridge on the River Kwai ends with various people on all sides of the whole mess dying and then the bridge itself being destroyed after all. It all sounds over-the-top and absurd, as far as tragedies go, on paper, but the execution sells it, and it’s remarkable how well the film – and its ending – hold up all these decades later.
5
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’ (2002)
There is a very slight awkwardness to the pacing of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but really only compared to the other two movies in the trilogy, which are hard to fault. The Two Towers is still hard to fault in the overall scheme of things, and it also doesn’t take too long to adjust to the new rhythm necessitated by the fellowship being broken up (also, concerning the source material, this stretch of Tolkien’s novel was probably always going to be the hardest to adapt).
Also, much is forgiven by the time the final act of The Two Towers rolls around, largely because the Battle of Helm’s Deep is such a knockout sequence, done on a scale fantasy epics hadn’t really gone to before that point in time. The fact that the story continues to build after that, and that Helm’s Deep is really just the climax for part 2 of a trilogy, is further incredible.
4
‘Titanic’ (1997)
The climax of Titanic is either the ship itself sinking, or the reunion of Jack and Rose in what’s either a (probably dying) dream or the afterlife. The spectacle is with the ship sinking, and that is the stretch of the movie that makes Titanic an all-timer within the disaster genre, but the emotional climax is the dream/afterlife reunion, which is fitting, because Titanic is also a full-blown romance film.
Either way, the climax or finale or ending is incredible. If you consider both the end of the extended disaster sequence and the emotional payoff of the whole thing as one massive climax, then it’s even more remarkable. Two endings for the price of one, in effect, which makes sense when Titanic is so long and simultaneously an effective blend of two films in one, if you think about it.
3
‘Seven Samurai’ (1954)
Seven Samurai is another all-timer of an epic movie, and it’s one that very purposefully builds to an amazing climax. It’s an action movie where most of the action takes place in the final act, because before then, Seven Samurai is all about assembling a team of warriors capable of defending a small village from a bandit raid, and then preparing for an inevitable battle when that raid does happen.
Call it a samurai or a martial arts film or both or something else, because however you define it, it’s about as classic as films get. The climax of Seven Samurai is long enough to almost be its own movie, and it really does feel like the ultimate payoff for a film like this, with everything that came before narratively serving to make the action itself feel more emotionally impactful.
2
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ (2003)
The last of The Lord of the Rings movies, The Return of the King, is a no-brainer to put here, since it ends amazingly when judged as its own film, and when judged as an ending to the trilogy as a whole. The most impressive parts of The Return of the King action-wise happen in what’s probably its second act, with the final act being most concerned with the final part of Frodo and Sam’s journey (the battle at the Black Gate does not try to top the Siege of Gondor/Battle of the Pelennor Fields stuff).
It’s cathartic to have the whole thing conclude, with the Ring destroyed, of course, but the really memorable part of the extended climax comes when Frodo leaves for the Undying Lands, since he’s been forever changed by his time as a Ringbearer. To call it all emotional (including the other scenes that make up the extended climax here) would be the grandest of understatements.
1
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966)
The final film in the Dollars trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one that might take place before the other two, chronologically speaking, but it makes sense as the final one of the bunch because of how huge it is. It’s the only one of the three that feels like a real epic, owing to how much ground the characters cover in their search for a buried fortune, and the runtime, which nears three hours.
Everything comes down to a three-way showdown between the three characters referred to in the title, and the climax also includes the lead-up to that showdown, which is equally enthralling. It’s a guy running around a cemetery for a while, and then three guys staring at each other in a cemetery for a while, before one of those guys gets shot. On paper, that’s it, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly makes it feel like pretty much the best thing ever (okay, slight exaggeration, but the best thing in cinema history? Sure, why not).
