What does it mean to be epic?  These days that the word epic is thrown around way to carelessly.  It seems like sometimes any movie over two hours with only a single battle scene is called an epic.  The true epic is the type of movie that proudly blasts through any restrictions put on it. The makers of the true epic don’t care about time restrictions and will gladly smash through the three hour mark that the studios sometimes think is too long for a movie.  Despite being given usually large budgets they’ll spend however much is necessary to bring their massive vision to theaters.  This list is here mainly because one day we tried searching for the most epic movies ever made and were profoundly disappointed.  There was no such list, so we made our own.  After hundreds of hours, looking up thousands of movies, here it is the, list of the great epics.  There were a few simple rules to follow as we made this list.

1. The running time had to be over three hours.  Yes I know, this eliminated a lot of very good movies that were so close to that time but just missed the mark. Movies like Braveheart or the first two Lord of the Rings were some of the ones that didn’t make it.  We feel that that mark really separates the men from the boys. 
2. No foreign films.  Again this eliminated a lot of good epics like the Seven Samurai and many others.  The problem with foreign films is that it is almost impossible to find any real listings of all the movies made from countless different countries.  We’ll probably never know just how many great epic movies that will be left off the list because of this. 
3. No “director’s cuts” or “extended” versions of films.  Sorry 5 hour long Das Boot but we felt we had to stick to theatrically released original cuts otherwise it just gets too confusing as most movies it would seem have many different cuts out there on DVD.  An honorable mentions section will be made for the really long cuts of some movies. 

So there you have it.  The one, the only, THE EPICS! (back to the list)