If anyone was going to make the word “epic” feel useful again, it was Christopher Nolan. His adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey arrives in theaters Friday, July 17, bringing one of Western literature’s foundational journeys to the screen with a production shot entirely on IMAX Film cameras. It is the kind of event movie meant to remind audiences how overwhelming cinema can feel at its largest.
The timing also makes it worth looking back at a decade that radically expanded what a movie epic could be. The 1970s inherited the enormous historical productions of old Hollywood, but its filmmakers were no longer satisfied with scale for its own sake. War epics became more skeptical about heroism. Crime dramas took on the weight of dynastic tragedies. George Lucas sent the entire form into space.
What connects the decade’s greatest epics is not simply a long runtime or thousands of extras. These movies create worlds that feel larger than the people trapped inside them, then make their most intimate choices carry enormous consequences. From doomed military campaigns to collapsing American families, the 10 greatest movie epics of the 1970s earned their size.
10
A Bridge Too Far (1977)
Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far begins this ranking with an epic built around failure. The nearly three-hour war film chronicles Operation Market Garden, the ambitious Allied campaign intended to hasten the end of World War II by capturing a series of bridges in the Netherlands. Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, James Caan, and Robert Redford are among the stars passing through its enormous battlefield.
There are few substitutes for seeing real aircraft, paratroopers, and armored vehicles filling the screen, particularly when Attenborough refuses to turn the operation into a reassuring victory. However, the sprawling cast also keeps the film at an emotional distance. A Bridge Too Far earns the No. 10 position through the staggering logistics of its production, but the movies ahead find a stronger human center within their equally ambitious stories.
9
Patton (1970)
Where A Bridge Too Far views war through a vast network of commanders and soldiers, Patton concentrates almost all that force into one man. George C. Scott plays Gen. George S. Patton as a brilliant strategist who seems unable to exist without a battlefield. His famous opening speech immediately establishes someone who views war as both a sacred calling and the only arena large enough to contain his personality.
Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor and famously refused it, but the performance has endured far beyond the story surrounding the prize. He never turns Patton into a simple hero or monster. The desert battles give the movie its size, while Scott gives it its tension. It ranks above A Bridge Too Far because its spectacle always has a face, even if later entries reach further beneath the armor.
8
The Deer Hunter (1978)
If Patton appears born for war, the men in The Deer Hunter are almost completely destroyed by it. Michael Cimino devotes much of the movie’s opening hour to Michael, Nick, and Steven’s working-class community in Pennsylvania. The wedding sequence may feel excessive at first, but its length is the point. Cimino wants viewers to know what these men had before Vietnam changed the shape of their lives.
The film’s infamous Russian roulette sequences are brutal and deliberately difficult to watch, but the real devastation comes after the surviving men return home. Robert De Niro’s restraint and Christopher Walken’s fragility turn a war epic into an examination of friendship that can no longer be repaired. The Deer Hunter ranks at No. 8 because its emotional reach exceeds the more traditional war movies below it, even when its symbolism becomes painfully blunt.
7
Sholay (1975)
After three sobering war stories, Sholay shows how much sheer entertainment an epic can hold. Ramesh Sippy’s Hindi cinema landmark follows Jai and Veeru, two small-time criminals hired by a retired police officer to protect a village from the merciless bandit Gabbar Singh. The premise draws from Westerns and samurai films, but Sholay turns those influences into something unmistakably its own.
Across more than three hours, the film finds room for action, romance, comedy, tragedy, and musical numbers without losing sight of its central friendship. Its tones should clash, yet they build toward a finale with genuine emotional force. Sholay ranks above the American war epics because it makes its size feel generous rather than burdensome. It lands at No. 7 because the next six installments do more than perfect an established form; they push it somewhere new.
6
A Touch Of Zen (1971)
Sholay transforms familiar genre ingredients into popular myth, while King Hu’s A Touch of Zen turns martial arts into something almost spiritual. The film begins patiently, following an unassuming scholar whose supposedly haunted surroundings conceal a fugitive noble woman. Nearly an hour passes before the first major clash, but once the swords come out, the entire movie seems to break free from gravity.
The bamboo forest sequence helped establish a visual language later echoed by films including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yet the beauty of A Touch of Zen lies in the way its action gradually gives way to Buddhist imagery and questions about violence itself. At No. 6, it ranks above Sholay because its ambition extends beyond entertainment. Its unconventional structure keeps it outside the top five, but that unpredictability is also why it remains so hypnotic.
King Hu was such an unyielding perfectionist that principal photography for A Touch of Zen dragged on for just over three years. To achieve the breathtaking, weightless look of the characters leaping through the air during the iconic bamboo forest sword fight (which directly inspired Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Hu strategically hid tiny trampolines just beneath the lower frame of the camera, allowing his actors to launch themselves into the shots with perfect, natural-looking momentum.
5
Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)
Then the 1970s epic left Earth. George Lucas drew from movie serials, Westerns, samurai cinema, and the hero’s journey to create a galaxy that somehow felt ancient before audiences had ever seen it. Luke Skywalker’s departure from Tatooine is a simple call to adventure, but everything surrounding him—the Force, the fallen Jedi, the Galactic Empire—suggests a history extending far beyond one movie.
Few movies have altered popular cinema so completely.
Star Wars changed what audiences expected from spectacle and what studios believed a blockbuster could become. More importantly, its world never overwhelms its characters. Luke still wants purpose, Leia refuses to be rescued passively, and Han Solo would prefer to be paid. It earns the No. 5 position because few movies have altered popular cinema so completely, although the four ahead offer richer portraits of ambition and its consequences.
4
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Star Wars looked forward and found mythology in space. Stanley Kubrick looked backward and found the past preserved like an insect in amber. Barry Lyndon follows Ryan O’Neal’s Redmond Barry from rural Ireland through war, marriage, wealth, and social advancement. He is constantly moving upward, yet Kubrick’s detached narration makes his eventual fall feel inevitable from the beginning.
The movie’s candlelit interiors and meticulously composed landscapes have earned most of the attention, and with reason. John Alcott’s cinematography won an Oscar, as did the film’s art direction and adapted score. Still, the imagery is not merely decorative. Every beautiful room becomes another place where Barry does not truly belong. It ranks at No. 4 because its visual control is almost unmatched, but its intentional emotional distance leaves the final three with a slightly stronger hold.
To shoot indoor scenes entirely by candlelight, Stanley Kubrick used ultra-rare Zeiss Planar f/0.7 lenses. Originally designed for NASA to photograph the dark side of the moon during the Apollo missions, only 10 existed. The depth of field was so razor-thin that if actors leaned even two inches out of place, they went completely out of focus.
3
The Godfather (1972)
Barry Lyndon spends his life trying to join the ruling class. Michael Corleone begins The Godfather inside a powerful family and spends the movie insisting he can remain outside its business. Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel unfolds through weddings, murders, negotiations, and rituals, turning the Corleones’ criminal enterprise into a dark version of an American dynasty.
It makes a crime story feel as consequential as an ancient tragedy.
Al Pacino’s transformation is the reason the film ranks this high. Michael does not suddenly become his father’s son; the change occurs in glances and increasingly cold decisions. By the time the office door closes on Kay, the family outsider has become its unquestioned head. The Godfather ranks at No. 3 because it makes a crime story feel as consequential as an ancient tragedy. Only its own sequel and Coppola’s most audacious production surpass it.
2
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Godfather shows Michael inheriting an empire. The Godfather Part II reveals what maintaining it will cost him. Coppola moves between Michael’s increasingly isolated life in the late 1950s and the early years of Vito Corleone, played by Robert De Niro, as he rises from an immigrant child to the respected center of his Little Italy community.
The parallel timelines create one of cinema’s most devastating contrasts. Vito gains influence while building a family around him; Michael consolidates his power by removing everyone who once made that power matter. The sequel is broader than the first but also more intimate, ending not with a grand victory but with Michael sitting alone. It ranks at No. 2 because almost no epic has handled generations, politics, and personal betrayal with greater precision.
1
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola appears three times in the top three because no director tested the limits of 1970s epic filmmaking more aggressively. With Apocalypse Now, he moved Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the Vietnam War and sent Capt. Benjamin Willard upriver to assassinate Col. Walter Kurtz. What begins as a military mission gradually loses any connection to reason.
The helicopter attack set to Wagner, the burning jungle, and Robert Duvall’s terrifyingly cheerful Kilgore would be enough to secure the movie’s reputation for spectacle. Yet Apocalypse Now ranks at No. 1 because its physical size reflects the madness consuming its characters. The deeper Willard travels, the less war resembles strategy and the more it resembles ritual. Coppola created an epic that seems to be coming apart as it unfolds, which may be the truest possible portrait of the decade that produced it.
- Release Date
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August 15, 1979
- Runtime
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147 minutes
