Epic

[Grand Moff Muffin]

What do you consider to be 'epic' in film and television?

I've been giving it some thought because the term is used quite freely these days. Some people call anything with a big special effects budget or large cast an epic, but that just cheapens the term and I don't really go along with it.

Looking at the films in my DVD collection, there are very few that actually give me a strong feeling of, "Yes, that was an epic," when I reach the end. The original Star Wars trilogy, while fun, doesn't give me that feeling, and I think that's because it's too episodic - the original film was just 2 hours and had a sense of closure at the end, which knocked out its momentum for building up a real 6-hour epic. James Bond films are certainly not epics in my view.

Some of the films in my collection that really do hit me with that epic feeling are:

The Lord of the Rings (extended version trilogy)
Kingdom of Heaven (director's cut)
Gulliver's Travels (3-hour TV movie)

When I look for what these have in common, I find the following:
- They are all 3+ hour films.
- The all involve great journeys.
- They all have large, strong secondary casts.
- They all end with the heroes returning home to where they began, but so changed by their experiences that they seem almost out of place, and I'm left with the thought, "I'd forgotten it all began here - cripes, we've come a long way with these characters - one long journey, and now it's over."

I think the feeling of having come a long way from where we began, and perspectives on life having changed irreversibly, are the most important things for giving me that sense of the epic. Long distances and a sense of time having passed are important, but the key thing is having seen things that the characters who stayed at home can't understand.

The length of the films is quite important to me too, because 2-hour films never seem to have room to flesh out the secondary characters, and without them having depth the world I'm travelling through doesn't have the same sense of scale.

But there are exceptions to my various loose rules. Labyrinth feels epic to me despite being only around 90 minutes. Transformers Masterforce and Babylon 5 have a lot of epic qualities, though the episodic format makes them a bit more jerky than epic movies. Babylon 5 is less epic than Masterforce in my mind because Masterforce begins with normal humans discovering the world of the Transformers for the first time, while B5 begins with the characters already in space and used to dealing with aliens.

What does 'epic' mean to you, and what are your favourites?

Martin

[Deleted]

I consider The Planet of the Apes films to be epics. In terms of length of a film Titanic certainly counts as an epic.

[legios]

Mar 1, 2009 18:27:13 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

What do you consider to be 'epic' in film and television?

That is a very good question, and it isn't something that I am entirely sure that I know how to answer.

I know what it isn't. It isn't necessarily having a Cecil B Demille-esque "Cast of Thousands!" that much is for certain.

I've been giving it some thought because the term is used quite freely these days. Some people call anything with a big special effects budget or large cast an epic, but that just cheapens the term and I don't really go along with it.

I'd agree. Especially the issue of special effects budgets. All a large special effects budget establishes is that someone has given the film a lot of money to play with. I'm not sure it necessarily in itself establishes anything about the nature of the film.

But then, I tend to be the sort of person who doesn't necessarily find a special effect that is the latest Whizz-bangery always enhances the film. I sometimes find myself thinking that as long as I know that "space-ship goes here" I am quite capable of enjoying a primitive special effect as much as a sophisticated one. (After all, I find the rocket ship duels in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe ridiculously exciting, and those are literally hung on strings and propelled by fizzing firecrackers).

When I look for what these have in common, I find the following:
- They are all 3+ hour films.
- The all involve great journeys.
- They all have large, strong secondary casts.
- They all end with the heroes returning home to where they began, but so changed by their experiences that they seem almost out of place, and I'm left with the thought, "I'd forgotten it all began here - cripes, we've come a long way with these characters - one long hourney, and now it's over."

Interesting that you should mention this one. It is one of the essential elements in what Campbell called "The Hero's Journey". The "Return with the Elixir" as he called it, sees the hero returning to the place he set out on his quest with the prize only to discover that his experiences on his journey have irrevocably changed him in such a way that he no longer fits into the world from which he came.

I think it is this stage of Campbell's model that really puts its finger on something that I think is required for something to be truly epic. It has to be transformational. The principal character(s) must undergo experiences that profoundly change them on some fundamental level such that they cannot be the same as they were when they began the story. I'm not sure if I feel that an actual journey is essential to this, but it does serve as a nice metaphor to externalise this process.

To my mind this essential transformational effect is exactly what makes Labyrinth a bit of a epic. Sarah grows as a result of her experiences, being forced to take on the responsibility that she has previously refused and to integrate that with the person she was before in such a way that she will never be quite the same person she was at the beginning of the story (which is probably a good thing for all concerned really).

(Masterforce is certainly epic by this definition. Ginrai and the Headmaster Juniors are very different people by the end of the show than they are at the start, and their is no way that I can see them going back and fitting right into their old lives. They have internalised too much of what has happened to them. It is really the only Transformers series I think that really quite manages that. Beast Machines comes closer, and would have come closer if they had spread Primal's philosphical development out more, instead of doing in somewhat sudden jumps.).

I'd say the importance of that transformational aspect is very central to my definition of epicness. It is why I don't think of One upon a time in the west, for example, as being particularly “epic”, even though it has the kind of cinematography, length and thematic weight that leads a lot of people to label it as such. (Including a lot of critics, but then I never was very good at listening to “experts”). It is a film I am very fond of, but it doesn't fit the bill as epic to me because no-one changes as a result of their experiences. The events that unfold are the inevitable result of a collision of who the various characters are and the outside forces that are acting on them. But they are not changed by their experiences. They end the film the same people as they began it, the situation has changed markedly but they have not passed through the crucible.

I'm not sure that this is the only thing that is necessary for something to be epic, but in my estimation it is a very important criteria.

Strangely enough I don't actually have much on my shelves that I would actually define as falling into the category of an epic, at least in terms of films and television series. I can think of a few things that fit the category, but with me renting so much more these days I tend to see far more than I actually retain on my own shelves.

Karl

[The Doctor]

I've never felt any correlation between length/duration of a story and it's 'epicness'. I like circular storytelling. I like it when the end comes back to the beginning. So a 30 minute sitcom can feel 'epic' to me if it has that type of structure. As can a 5 page short story.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Mar 4, 2009 21:40:36 GMT legios said:

To my mind this essential transformational effect is exactly what makes Labyrinth a bit of a epic.

For me, the length as well as the transformational/cyclical aspects is usually an important element because I can't view a story as being epic if it fails to suck me in and forget the world of my living room in favour of this other fictional or historic world - and it can't do that until it builds a rich and multi-faceted world for me to commit to, which requires more than just building a single convincing protagonist - it has to show me that this world contains many lives, many different story threads going off in all directions that we could follow if we weren't following one particular character's path. In films, it is very rare to do this _and_ create a strong lead character and main plot, in just 2 hours. For me, 3-hour films manage it much better.

However, Labyrinth has such imaginative settings, and fantasy characters that convince me as the viewer that they have interesting lives of their own within seconds of being introduced - something human characters are incapable of doing in such a short time, that after 90 minutes I feel I have been on as long and rich a journey as the Hobbits took me on in 11+ hours.

Martin