Grandeur on the Big Screen

They are grand, sweeping visions of families, villages, nations, cultures and whole planets at crossroads, ivhen every human fate depends on a decision some solitary soul must make,
—MAKY SHAFFER AND JKRRY BUNIN, “MORE THAN JUST LONG MOVIES,” TELEGRAM-TRIBUNE

Motion picture films that are so enormous in scope and intensity that they almost seem to spill out: beyond the parameters of the movie screen. The epic film blends the elements of action, grandeur, romance, and drama, woven around a single event such as the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic (1997) or a period saga such as The Ten Commandment!; (1956). The subject matter of an epic can range from treatment of war or medieval history to biography or fantasy. They usually run longer than most films, employ casts of thousands, use massive sets or vast on-location sites to frame the story, require hundreds of pieces of equipment, and are often accompanied by an extensive musical score. In the movie First Knight (1995), more than 200 horses and 250 stuntmen were employed to appear in the film’s many battle and celebration scenes. Epics often carry underlying messages—how one person can change the fate of a people (Gandhi, \ 982) or how good ultimately triumphs over evil (Gladiator, 2000).Epic motion pictures often focus on one character’s personal journey. The audience should be drawn into the crisis the character may be faced with along that journey while he/she looks for strength or wisdom to get through the situation. The difficulty should arouse our emotions and make us want to pull for the protagonist whatever the crisis—men battling one another to defend their beliefs (Gettysburg, 1993). the emergence of an individual willing to take up the cause (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962), or a realization that alters the course of a character’s destiny (Schindler’s List, 1993).
An epic may follow a story or event accurately, ot it may be infused with some fictitious elements deemed necessary to make the film more interesting for the audience. Despite the fact that an epic by definition runs longer than the average film, sometimes even an epic tale must condense its timeline, causing some parts of the stoty to be eliminated. Often, too, the focus of an epic revolves around a few main characters—Rose and Jack’s love affair in Titanic made the disaster more personal; the war raging in Europe became the backdrop in Tom Hanks’s mission to find a soldier in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Whatever elements are employed in producing an epic film, most of the time the final result is an encompassing visual, as well as entertaining, experience for the viewer.
The subject matter of an epic can be limitless. It can revolve around an historical event or time (Cleopatra, 1963), a war or conflict (Braveheart, 1995), a medieval story (First Knight, 1995), or total fantasy (Lord of the Rings, 2001). Epic movies can take months and months to shoot and are very expensive to produce—the cost of hiring crews, casts, extras, on-location travel, and the creation of period costumes and sets requires an enormous budget. For example, in First Knight, 300 suits of full body armor and armor worn by 200 horses were made in six weeks. Despite the advancements in special-effects technology, its use does not necessarily diminish costs, for the technology itself is expensive.The evolution of the epic began with silent films. Director D. W. Griffith probably produced the first commercial epic with his release of the controversial Civil War film Birth of a Nation in 1915. It was the longest film of its time, running three hours, and made about $ 1 8 million. In 1926 MGM released its $4 million silent version of the biblical tale Ben-Hur. In the famous chariot race scene, forty-two cameras filmed the action, in which five horses are killed in the ensuing chariot wreck. Several other silent epics graced the screen in the 1920s, including The Ten Commandments (1923), The Thief ‘of’Bagdad(1924), and King of Kings (1927). The sound era ushered in a whole new wave of epic films, including of the Cross (1933) and Samson and Delilah (1950). Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of The Ten Commandments (1956) was a lot more elaborate than his 1923 version. The famous parting of the Red Sea sequence required 600 extras and a 32-foot-bigh dam directing tens of thousands of gallons of water.
As the motion picture industry’s technology evolved, so did the epic. The use of special effects brought a whole new way of making epics look even more realistic or made fantasy more fantastic. In 1977 George Lucas released Star Wars, the first installment of his space-age heroism tale. The film had a modest budget ($11 million) and used computerized and digitally timed special effects not known before in motion picture history. It was a mega-blockbuster hit, breaking box-office records and grossing almost $514 million in its original release. Lucas went on to produce two other films in die trilogy and has continued to add other chapters to his space epic.
In terms of the business end of the motion picture industry, epic movies are no different from any other films released except for the higher cost to produce them. And though studios are in business to entertain, they are in business to make money, too. Just like any film project, an epic can be a success or it can bomb at the box office. To date, the most expensive movie ever made was James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic. With a staggering budget of $200 million, the movie cost more to make than the actual ocean liner ($7.5 million at the time and about $120 to Si 50 million in 1997 dollars). However, Titanic was a huge box-office hit, grossing over $600 million in the United States alone. The biggest box-office bomb was the 1963 version of Cleopatra, despite a star-studded cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison. This epic was ill-fated from the start, with Taylor becoming gravely ill and director Rouben Mamoulian being fired during filming. The movie cost an unbelievable $44 million (translating to $270 million today) and almost bankrupted Twentieth Century Fox studio.Though some of these films, such as hhtar (1987), lost money (grossing only $14 million; budget, $40 million), additional revenue is possible through international distribution, cable television, home-video rentals and sales, and commercial television, so most films do recoup their coses. With countless stories to be told and countless others to be written for everyone’s particular tastes, special effects dazzlers, such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), will continue to bring audiences to theaters in droves.