Only 4 21st Century Epics Are Better Than ‘Oppenheimer’

At the risk of over-generalizing, epic movies used to be a slightly bigger deal than they are now. Or it feels that way, to some extent, looking back on movie history. The likes of Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, and Lawrence of Arabia, to name just a few, were all massive movies that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and for a while, epics made some serious money, too. Gone with the Wind especially, which is the highest-grossing movie of all time, if you adjust for inflation (and you kind of should, as a side note, considering movie tickets only cost about 23 cents back in 1939). And, okay, Gone with the Wind pre-dating television as a form of entertainment does make the narrative a little more complex than “movies got big to compete with TV,” but the particularly grand epics of the 1950s and 1960s might’ve been that way, to some extent, because television was a financial threat.

Of course, nowadays, there are even more things people can do instead of going to the movies, so the idea of just making things bigger feels only so useful, but you do still have massive movies getting made, and sometimes doing well with critics and general audience members. See Oppenheimer, which is the most recent full-blown epic to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, even if 2025’s One Battle After Another almost feels like an epic. Oppenheimer did become more of a general success financially, if that counts for anything… might’ve spoken to it resonating with people, and also being a hugely significant movie that is also itself huge. It’s not the only big movie Christopher Nolan’s made, but it’s up there, and if you’re looking at general epics made in the 21st century, it’s also easily one of the best. That being said, these other movies exist, and they might well be even a little better. Also, Gladiator is not here. Maybe it should be. But it came out in 2000, and frustrating though it might sound, that was the final year of the 20th century, rather than the first year of the 21st. It is a mistake this author has made in the past. So, that’s why it’s not here. It’s a great movie, though, and like, just pretend it’s here, if you feel the year 2000 should be part of the 21st century or something.

4

‘Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India’ (2001)

Image via SET Pictures

This is said with love, even if it might sound like a joke or kind of demeaning, but Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India is like Seven Samurai if they played cricket at the end instead of getting into a massive battle, and it rocks. You might find cricket boring, and find it hard to imagine how one could make it cinematic, but that’s what this movie does. It takes place near the end of the 19th century, and involves the people of a struggling village facing harsh taxes by the English ruling over India at the time. In desperation, they accept a wager that will result in taxes being excused if they can win a game of cricket, but being increased if they lose. They also have very little experience with playing cricket at all.

So, there’s a lot of training, in typical sports movie fashion, but since this is an epic, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India also has ample room to be a full-on musical at times, and there’s quite a bit by way of romance in there. Some of it’s exciting, some of it’s inspiring, some of it’s funny, and some of it’s surprisingly tense. It’s really strong and dependable storytelling, feeling perfectly paced to the point where nearly four hours fly right by, and it’s also really well put-together technically. There are so many moving parts here, and they all move perfectly and in sync with each other. It’s wonderful to see it play out… and, again – it has to be stressed – it manages to make cricket thrilling, even to people who might otherwise consider it one of the least thrilling sports out there (and if you’ve got no idea how to play cricket, then you learn alongside the characters; it’s great).

3

‘Babylon’ (2022)

Image via Paramount Pictures

For a little while, Babylon feels like a party, albeit a pretty intense one. But it’s also very funny, for a while. The humor is broad, the references to a far-back era of Hollywood are plentiful, and the debauchery is near-constant. It’s a real rush of a movie until things come crashing down, because the industry is shown getting uprooted by the birth of the talkie (or, put another way, movies with dialogue). Singin’ in the Rain is about the same thing, but that movie’s very feel-good, and the people you like bounce back and endure. Some characters in Babylon are sympathetic, while some are flawed, but pretty much all of them face hardships as times change.

And so beyond being funny, Babylon is also pretty heavy-going. The runtime goes some way toward making this feel less chaotic in a manner that’s hard to keep up with, but you’re still supposed to feel whiplash, to some extent, but did you expect anything else from the guy who literally directed Whiplash? Babylon is daunting, owing to its length and how polarizing it was among the people who did actually watch it, but there is something magnetic and memorable about so much of it. The whole thing lingers, for reasons both good and bad. It finds a way to celebrate and condemn different aspects of the same industry within the one movie, and even if it’s a bit like going to an amazing restaurant where the waiter pressures you into eating too much, to the point where you feel more than a little nauseous afterward, you should still go to that restaurant, because it’s amazing, pushy waiter be damned.

2

‘The Irishman’ (2019)

The Irishman was very far from Martin Scorsese’s first rodeo, within the gangster genre, to put it mildly. It feels like it could be his final one, truth be told, because it feels like an older and more mature filmmaker tying a bow on the kind of film he’s often associated with making, whether that’s fair or not. Like, The Wolf of Wall Street and Killers of the Flower Moon are also relatively recent (in the overall scheme of things) epic crime movies Scorsese directed, but they weren’t really gangster movies. The Irishman is about organized crime, and an extension of Goodfellas and Casino, which were themselves extensions of Mean Streets, and there’s a lot to be gained from watching and appreciating the bunch of them. With The Irishman, you can’t really get the most out of it unless you look at it in comparison to those other films.

Also, not comparing them to those in the sense that you get the same thing out of The Irishman, necessarily, because it’s a more somber and less exhilarating film, by design. Much of it is about a man who was tied up in organized crime somehow living until his old age (not a spoiler, since Robert De Niro is, you know, old, and also, you see him old as hell in literally the first shot of the movie), and looking back on his life and unlikely survival. Scorsese also feels like he’s looking back on his filmography, but not in a cheesy “Let’s play the hits even though we’re all in our 70s and the hits don’t sound as good anymore” way, like you might see with an aging rock band doing a purported farewell tour. He builds on what came before while reflecting on it, all across a massive runtime of nearly 3.5 hours. There’s a lot to reflect on, for both The Irishman’s central character and for Scorsese, as a filmmaker… and for all the actors who have major parts here, since many of them (De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci in particular) are well-known for playing wise guys.

1

‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001–2003)

Image via New Line Cinema

If you count all three The Lord of the Rings movies as one single epic, then yeah, it’s no question that it’s the biggest and best epic of the 21st century so far, and anyone who wants to top it in terms of scale is probably not going to succeed, but good luck to them anyway. That kind of spirit is undeniably ambitious. Also, if you don’t want to count all three as one movie, then just pretend The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is here instead, as the only one. That’s the grandest of the bunch, but only really gets to be that way because The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers (the latter probably the weakest of the three, but still immense) were also essential and paved the way so well. The trilogy ends, fittingly enough, with the most impressive battle sequences and the largest number of genuinely tearjerking scenes.

You get a bit of everything with these movies, and it’s amazing how the trilogy is all about destroying a tiny ring, but it gets so massive in scale, and is about as mind-blowing as it gets in terms of ambition. There’s so much to be invested in here, and the way it works J.R.R. Tolkien’s huge novel into something a little more streamlined and digestible (without dumbing things down too much) never stops being impressive to comprehend. You’ve also got special effects that largely still hold up, some of the best casting in any movie (maybe ever?), an all-time great score, and a real momentum throughout the whole thing that stays entertaining and engaging, even if you’re not usually great with very long movies. The Lord of the Rings is just where it’s at, no matter what you’re looking for. It is the definitive epic of the century so far, without a doubt.