>Gladiator (2000)
>The Last Samurai (2003)
>Troy (2004)
>Alexander (2004)
>Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
>300 (2006)
What caused this brief resurgence of the epic/historical action genre, what caused its abrupt cessation, and are there prospects of its reemergence in the future?
I would also consider Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean to be of this ilk
Completely different they are fantasy but the first two maybe three pirates can barely be kino and lotr is obviously kino.
genres come and go, can't wait for the capeshit genre to go and never come back.
pirates was hollywood's response to success of LOTR
Gladiator caused it. It stopped because most of the other movies were shit, and the genre got stale. You would need another gladiator-level kino, but instead, we will get senile Ridley and black kangs.
100% agree
what about braveheart?
that was 5 years before Gladiator
This, and gladiator was the only one to really make money outside of maybe 300, so they stopped making historical epic kino
They weren't all bombs, but they were never blockbusters. It's a really risky genre, it seems.
Gladiator
>100 budget; 465 gross
Last Samurai
>140 budget; 455 gross
Troy
>180 budget; 500 gross
Alexander
>155 budget; 165 gross (-ACK)
Kingdom of Heaven
>130 budget; 220 gross (-EEK)
300
>60 budget; 450 gross (nice)
So it seems that this genre never really cracked into the LOTR/Harry Potter/Pirates of the Caribbean/Superheroes type of franchise echelon.
90s was kind of a cinematic Renaissance after the Cold War was over. The historical epics were a continuation of this paired with a generation of directors who grew up watching the classic historical epics of cinema being at an age where they could do these epics their way. Decades of work coming together with the right people, the right environment, and the right technology.
I always saw those last three in particular as reflecting the attitudes of the Iraq/Afghan War era. West vs East, Blonde Chads vs Brown Hordes, etc. I don't think it's a coincidence that these narratives disappeared at the moment that the Iraq/Afghan Wars were becoming enormously unpopular.
I also think
Might have something to do with it, i.e., the post-Cold War era optimism caused the re-emergence of the genre. But then it was subsumed by the pessimism of the War on Terror era.
I like you were able to associate the times..there was a lot of other stuff pushed out in that time too. Everyone wanted to romanticize the desert warfare and war in general to keep us dying over there. Black Hawk Down, Restrepo, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, literally hundreds of movies with "SOULJARS DOING HIGH SPEED COWADOOBIE SHIT!" Much wartime kino.. but also quite the propaganda
Yeah a ton of stuff from that era is literal propaganda. Even stuff that is supposed to be anti-war like Generation Kill ends up glorifying the experience of being a soldier (the Pentagon purposely put journalists permanently with units so that they would become sentimental about the soldiers and this would bias their analysis).
It's Dune 3.
For
Yes and I fell pray to the desert meme and joined the Army in 2011 cause I was a jobless moron after graduating in 2008
frick. got any tales?
Many. But to sum it all up.. essentially Generation Kill. Do nothing forever..then shit gets hot. Then...nothing and it meant nothing. Just a bad way to get a check.
I watched one about King Arthur and it was interesting but also cringe because they couldn't help themselves with slipping in feminist bullshit and also they kept doing this really cringe spiny attack in combat scenes. Every time you see it, you just think "ahh stop, just stop doing that, no please just stop"
Also the pictabú warpaint was too over the top. I don't think the britons did that either, only picts
You just can't trust these people to make decent films now
Stephen Dillane is pure kino as Merlin
This one from 2004? Yeah it really sucked compared with the others in the OP, I watched it the one time in theatres and never again.
I've forgotten about it
bro that was shit and proto 'muh strong and independent 70lbs whemen that can kill actual brutal warriors quadruple their size' if I remember correctly
That's the one
gladiator was popular so others tried to cash in to the popularity. not much else
Pathfinder and The Last Legion killed it
There's so much ancient kino they could adapt but there's no money it seems.
>Caesar in Gaul
>Cyrus and Darius
>Hannibal
>Hanno the navigator
>Brennus invading Greece
>Marius & Sulla
>Last days of Assyria
It's paradoxical that now with CGI it is easier than ever to do these big battle scenes and make all these movies and yet, the CGI battle scenes look worse and worse (and darker and darker so you can't even see anything). Just compare the battle scenes of Troy with the much more recent Napoleon. I know I sound like a boomer but there's something amazing about the old movies before CGI that had to assemble and dress every single individual extra. Nevermind comparing Napoleon to Troy, compare it to a movie that came out 50 years earlier. *cracks beer* They just don't make them like this anymore.
Waterloo flopped with 100% real battle scenes.
the big problem with a Napoleon movie is that Napoloen wasn't psychologically interesting, he was just a regular autistic strongman who benefited from a lot of long-delayed social, legal, scientific and military developments.
his relationship with Joséphine is the most humanizing thing about him and its still obviously a toxic relationship between two narcissists.
>the big problem with a Napoleon movie is that Napoloen wasn't psychologically interesting
This is a very hot take, but it's not relevant because the Napoleon played by Steiger in the movie *was* psychologically interesting.
>with CGI it is easier than ever to do these big battle scenes
its because theyre using CGI wrong. instead of enhancing the modern movie, its building the movies supposedly due to cost effectiveness, but i dont buy that excuse
my brain disengages whenever I see computer animated battles.
endgame was the height of that rubbish, just felt like watching someone play a very boring computer game, and eventually just turned into a digital soup with indistinguishable masses mashing together.
>oh look that bit of carrot just bumped into that half a pea and something flashed a bit
>oh, now it's happening with lots of bits of carrots and peas, I wonder what the stain on the wall looks like in comparison
My issue with Endgame wasn't that it was CGI exactly, but that it was just shit. I mean that literally: it looked like the color of shit. Most Marvel movies look like this, but Endgame was egregious especially since this was supposed to be the 'heckin epicest' fight scene evar. Comic book superheroes are some of the most (literally) colourful characters ever invented, they just pop with the bright colors right off the page. Spider-Verse is a much better depiction of comic book aesthetic, or even (sorry) the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Even in this scene when there is color its muted and shit. Blech
Thanks for the reminder gonna watch Julius Caesar (2002) right now!
Ah, it has a blue filter so you know it's historical. Bravo!
Are you challenging Sir Ridley?
It's to depict a cloudy dark day, usually at dusk. Nothing wrong using a blue filter for that. That's what some days look like in Europe
This is fine because it is meant to depict the dark forests of Germany. You notice the contrast when he goes back to Spain and it's full of lush yellows. Germany here is a wild, unknown, untamed land, and further to the North. So the choice of color here is excellent.
More or less.
Is this frim dunc?
They made no money. Same with the Russel Crowe boat movie. You can cry all you like but since you didn’t watch it, no point in making it.
In case it wasn't mentioned yet: Spartacus was enjoyable. Came later, but still.
It was enjoyable but if we are going to mention a TV show in this breath it really must be HBO's Rome. I still think season 1 of Rome is some of the finest television ever produced.
Never seen it. I'll give it a try.
Oh frick, it's so good. Like, the absolute highest tier of TV-good. They shitcanned it to make Game of Thrones, and I will never forgive them.
Twow him, to the fwoow.
Trivia: That's the only depiction of Pontius Pilatus in media where he's in proper clothing of a governor instead of wearing some random armor.
They needed propaganda to encourage white people to go die for israelites.
Hopefully gladiator 2 kicks it all off again
That napoleon movie was fricking ass
who are you kidding, ridley scott hasn't made a good movie in 20 years
let's hope he makes a sequel to aliens again, and have the engineers appear but it turns out the engineers were made by jellyfish aliens as an experiment, then the jellyfish alien turns a human into a jellyfish/engineer hybrid, and she becomes pregnant, but then aborts it, but then a zombie comes along and the zombie is a wizard too, and then he magics her uterus into a dollhouse for the jellyfish to play in, but then it turns out the dolls are real and the dolls attack them and one of the dolls rebels against the zombie and tricks the zombie so the zombie flies to the jellyfish planet only to find out it's fake and made of papier mache, so the zombie uses a 3d printer to make the jellyfish home planet real and then just when the jellyfish/engineer pregnant hybrid girl thinks she's safe a big wheel of papier mache cheese rolls behind her and squashes her.
something like that
>What caused this brief resurgence of the epic/historical action genre
Gladiator (2000)
>what caused its abrupt cessation
capeshit
The first season of Barbarians was kino. The second one was pure shit.
Its amazing how shows now fizzle out after a season of kino only to turn into white dog shit the next
white dog shit is calcium rich and exceedingly rare these days
one might say, a delicacy
Checked and youre right. Id rather eat white dog shit than watch some trash put out now
maybe we'll become completely disinterested in all film/tv and reach a higher plane
The timeline of those movies has me thinking, because as the genre peters off it dovetails with the emergence of (and I use this term advisedly) the 'golden age of television'. It's not like interest in historical, or even epic, subject matter disappeared: it simply migrated to the living room.
I will now list a bunch of shows off the top of my head that fit the description:
>Rome
>Spartacus
>John Adams
>Black Sails
>Vikings
>Barbarians
>Marco Polo
And someone mentioned Lord of the Rings as an essential epic, well it could be seen to be succeeded by
>Game of Thrones
And in the very present we have a reboot of
>Shogun