When an epic movie works, it’s unlike anything else the medium of film can offer. Epic movies are all about scale and scope, usually having long runtimes, large budgets, detailed sets, tons of extras, and stories that span a great deal of time and/or feature numerous characters. Think titles like Lawrence of Arabia, Seven Samurai, and Gladiator. There’s so much that goes into epic movies that even those that are flawed tend to have aspects that stand out or prove engaging.
Yet on occasion, these redeemable qualities are scant, if not non-existent altogether. The following epic movies showcase what happens when things go wrong and nothing really coalesces. The fact some of these films exist at all might be seen as achievements nonetheless, given their general size, but you're probably better off staying away from them and devoting numerous hours of your time to better epics instead.
10 'Raintree County' (1957)
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Raintree County feels like an epic of its time in some ways, nearing a level of watchability in parts but also falling short in other areas. It’s been generally forgotten to time, considering there are better epic movies from the 1950s and 1960s that still hold up, but it broadly functions as a historical drama with expected romance beats, and a story that branches out into both war and Western territories genre-wise.
The war in question is the American Civil War, and the setting for much of the film is decidedly Western in flavor. It looks okay and is technically decent, with a good cast that includes Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Eva Marie Saint, though it unfortunately ends up feeling like a bit of a snooze… a snooze that feels considerably longer than the 188 minutes Raintree County goes for.
As the superhero genre got increasingly more popular throughout the 21st century, there were attempts at fusing superhero stories with the epic genre, and some worked out fairly well. Zack Snyder’s Justice League, while not perfect, was an impressively huge achievement. Perhaps the best example of an epic superhero film, though, would be the two-parter that was Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, both chapters still being high points within the MCU.
Less of a success MCU-wise, though, was 2021’s Eternals, which was a nice-looking and ambitious movie, but one that fell short narratively and didn’t quite pull off the task of introducing what felt like countless new characters. It spanned a huge amount of time for a superhero movie, and it still feels unique among Marvel films in some ways, but the execution sadly left a great deal to be desired.
8 'Cavalcade' (1933)
Director: Frank Lloyd
Image via Fox Film Corporation
Though Cavalcade is less than two hours long, it feels like it stretches on for closer to three, and not in a good or immersive way. Perhaps the intent was to make the film feel long, given it spans a lengthy period of time (from the very end of the 1800s to 1933, the year the movie was released), but it does very little to make what’s happening compelling.
Perhaps some of that has to do with age, given Cavalcade is extremely old and just as clunky by modern standards. It seemed to strike a chord with people 90 years ago, given it was a Best Picture winner at the Oscars, but it hasn’t held up nearly as well as the movies from the 1930s people tend to remember more fondly. There’s not much reason to watch it, unless you want to be able to say you’ve seen every Best Picture winner.
Few people would dispute the notion that Ben-Hur is one of the greatest epic movies of all time, and similarly, one of the most epic movies of all time. It’s huge, you can see where all the money went on screen, and it has some iconic moments that are hard to forget, most notably the chariot race sequence. All things that can be said about Ben-Hur… the 1959 version, that is.
For some reason, the definitive religious epic got a do-over in 2016 that fell flat in just about every way, being less epic in every sense of the word and not really justifying its existence. Just stick to the 1959 version, or go back to the also impressive silent version from 1925 if you’re itching for a take on Ben-Hur that’s not the 1950s one.
There are differing cuts of Caligula, from an uncut original version to edited-down altered cuts to a more recent “Ultimate Cut” that has been viewed more favorably. As such, it has to be emphasized that the earlier version of Caligula – the most notorious – is one that can be seen as a failure of an epic, at least in the traditional sense.
Caligula’s history is long and complicated, but the original version that had genuine pornographic content spliced in is hard to comprehend and appreciate in the traditional sense, especially because the inclusion of such things feels jarring. It might be worthwhile for some to check out the original infamous cut of this historical epic because of its notoriety, but otherwise, the Ultimate Cut is better. It does still have shocking and explicit content, but the added coherency helps it not feel like as much of a mess.
For as divisive as Baz Luhrmann can be, the only film of his that feels like it’s close to an outright failure is Australia. His other movies all swing big numerous times and don’t miss at least some of those times, but Australia is too much and feels too messy, even by Luhrmann’s standards. It’s his biggest film, but also his worst quite comfortably.
Narratively, Australia takes place before and then during World War II, having a large number of characters played by iconic Australian actors with lots of sweeping landscape shots, war-centered set pieces, and moments of broad, melodramatic romance. It’s possible to imagine something like this working in some alternate universe, but in this current one, it doesn’t. As alluded to before, even die-hard fans of Luhrmann will probably struggle to sit through the entirety of this film.
In that sense, it’s a little like 1959’s Ben-Hur versus 2016’s Ben-Hur. 1956’s The Ten Commandments is huge in a way that still impresses, and a better take on the story than the 2014 version. Furthermore, the 1950s versions of Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments both starred Charlton Heston, and both also served as remakes/updates of silent films from the 1920s. Time really might be a flat circle.
3 'Alexander' (2004)
Director: Oliver Stone
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
Ridley Scott misfired within a genre he'd done well in before with The Ten Commandments, and, a decade earlier, Oliver Stone did something similar with Alexander. Stone’s epics are usually a little closer to modern-day, but he’s made some sprawling, dense, and impressively ambitious films of great length before; namely, JFK and the not-quite-as-good but ultimately underrated Nixon.
Alexander travels back in time more than 2000 years, and aims to dramatize the life of Alexander the Great. As an epic, it feels scattershot and doesn’t impress much beyond some massive battle sequences that nonetheless feel infrequent when the runtime sits between 167 and 214 minutes (as, like Caligula, there have been numerous cuts of Alexander. However, unlike Caligula, none are viewed particularly favorably and all disappoint to some extent).
John Wayne starred in so many movies that it’s not too surprising some weren’t very good. Few live in infamy to the extent that The Conqueror does, which makes the bold choice of casting Wayne as Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan did admittedly live centuries before photography was a thing, but the idea that he and Wayne resembled each other to any extent is laughable.
Even if you were to somehow accept this casting decision, The Conqueror is still sluggish as a historical epic about someone whose life story was more than dramatic enough to warrant a proper film. Further, The Conqueror is also infamous for production, particularly because numerous people who worked on the film developed cancer, likely as a result of the movie being shot near a nuclear test site.
Not only does Pearl Harbor shamelessly indulge in numerous clichés, but it does so for an excruciatingly long time; 183 minutes, to be precise. There are plenty of Michael Bay movies that are genuinely fun or impressive in their own strange – and sometimes vulgar – ways, but this 2001 epic about the event that contributed to the U.S. joining World War II has next to nothing to offer.
It’s a big blockbuster that probably sounded like a surefire hit on paper, looking at a tragic event from history and putting a love triangle into the middle of it, trying to appeal to those who want romance and those who want action/spectacle the same way 1997’s Titanic did. But Pearl Harbor didn’t execute anything it was trying to do well, and the result is perhaps the most disappointing traditional – and truly big – epic movie ever made.
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