War and Peace (1966-67 quadrilogy) - The acclaimed Soviet/Russian adaptation directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. Filmwise, it's a mix of epic spectacle, stunning visuals, period drama, and psychedelic moments all in one.

Pros - Massive scope. e.g. Huge non-CGI battle sequences staged with tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers and cavalrymen as extras/ And stunning cinematography thats often framed like a painting. Also great attention to period details.

Cons - Some of the actors are far too old for their roles. e.g. Bondarchuk himself as Pierre (the guy is suppose to be in his 20's).

Barry Lyndon (1974) - The only existing adaptation of the 1844 William Thackeray novel. Like War and Peace, it has a lot of stunning cinematography that's often framed like a painting, and great attention to period detail. As this is a Stanley Kubrick film, you can expect everything to be perfect.

Pros - Stunning, painterly visuals.

Cons - The story is pretty slow moving and not much exciting stuff happens.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 and 1979 adaptations) - This is probably going to be controversial, but IMO these two are better than the Netflix version, in terms of being actual adaptations of the books.

Pros - These two stick far more closely to the book. Paul's friends for example, are far more fleshed out as characters. Also, major events like Paul's visit to his hometown aren't left out. Apart from that, the themes are also very close. e.g. Paul's death which like the book, emphasises the meaningless of individual deaths in war (unlike the gung ho battle in the 2022 version).

Cons - The 1930 version is one of the earliet talkies so the acting is dated. The 1979 version has better acting, but it's made for TV so the production quality is what you get.

The final scene in Come and See (1985) - The partisans realise that they'd just be as evil as the Nazi squad if they set them on fire, so they gun them down instead.

The asssasination of Reinhard Heydrich in Atentát/The Assasination (1964) and Anthropoid (2016) - That POS arguably deserved what came to him (he eventually died of infection).

Check out Stalingrad (1993) and the older adaptations of All Quiet (both of these are far more closer to the book and also it's themes too). Another great anti-war film is Paths of Glory (1957) which is comparable to All Quiet in some ways.

If you haven't already seen it, Come and See (1985) is an absolute masterpiece.

>My first three candidates would be Journey to the Moon, Wings, and Citizen Kane. What do you think?

IMO the movies you listed (especially Wings and Citizen Kane) do not need remakes, let alone shot-by-shot ones. As an example, the original Wings has amazing non-CGI practical effects (including using actual US soldiers as extras) and I doubt a modern remake could top that.

Similarly, with Citizen Kane, you literally have Orson Welles himself as the director and star. One of the all time greats of acting and one of those things you literally cannot equal/top. Ever.

There are various reasons:

1. Money/Cost and time.
2. Sometimes longer doesn't mean better, especially if the theatrical cut is what the director prefers.

SPOILER ALERT:

Gladiator is literally a remake of a 1964 epic called The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Anyway, both movies take lots of liberties with the facts. The central plot is one example. In both movies, Commodus has a rivalry with Livius/Maximus and ends up duelling him to the death (this didn't happen in real life). Also, the rival has a romance with Lucilla (Commodus' sister) which is also fiction.

Nevertheless, both movies are worth a watch if you're not that interested about historical accuracy and just want a decent movie.

>I followed up on Potemkin with Alexander Nevsky and Ivan The Terrible. These 2 movies were, for the most part, laughably mediocre. Not good, not bad, just completely mediocre and forgettable. Nevsky had a lot of interesting moments. But Ivan The Terrible was completely forgettable. I saw it was even (rightly or wrongly) nominated for an entry in 'Fifty Worst Movies of All Time'.

You have to factor in that Stalin was in charge during this time. So Eisenstein didn't have as much creative freedom (regarding plot, character development, etc.) as he might have liked.

One of my absolute favourite historical/war epics is Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo (1970).

The movie has mind-boggling battle sequences utilising thousands of Soviet soldiers as extras, along with an entire cavalry brigade. Along with the equally epic battles in Bondarchuk's War and Peace adaptation, it's probably the closest we'll ever get to the sheer scale of Napoleonic battles. Especially considering it's all non-CGI (even Ridley Scott's upcoming Napoleon will use a lot of VFX, judging from behind the scenes shots).

However, the movie was a flop and one of the last of it's kind. Perhaps this is because the drama (and more intimate side of things) is not so good, and definitely inferior to War and Peace. Chris Plummer is outstanding as Wellington and really gives off a "pompous aristocrat" vibe. However, Rod Steiger is IMO completely awful as Napoleon and delivers some of the absolute worst lines of the movie (he also hams it up many times). Other than that, you have a relatively weak supporting cast and Orson Welles in a two-scene cameo as Louis XVIII.

Ironically, the movie's box-office failure was one of the reasons Stanley Kubrick cancelled his long-planned Napoleon project. However, the movie has since become a cult classic amongst Napoleonic era geeks and fans of historical epics in general.

For interest, it's complately available for free on YouTube, including a fan cut with stills of deleted/lost scenes (the movie was made back in the 70's when saving outtakes was almost unheard of - especially given it flopped - so the deleted footage is probably lost forever).

Interestingly, Kubrick's Napoleon project has been mooted as a HBO miniseries, with reportely Spielberg producing and the now disgraced Fukunaga directing (Spielberg himself also seems to have been named director at one point). It remains to be seen if it actually ends up being made, especially after Scott's biopic is released. Most likely though, the battles will be CGI-heavy instead of the real extras (from the Romanian army) that Kubrick envisioned.

Many of the BEST war movies were made during the pre-CGI era (read: practical sets and effects and sometimes hundreds if not thousands of real extras). Here are some of the best ones, all of which have a large war component (copy-pasted from an earlier comment):

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

War and Peace (1966-67 quadrilogy)

Waterloo (1970)

Come and See (1985)

Tora Tora Tora (1970)

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

The Great Escape (1963)

Battle of the Bulge (1965)

Patton (1970)

Cross of Iron (1977)

Stalingrad (1993)

The Longest Day (1962)

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

The Bridge at Remagen (1969)

Heaven's Gate (1980) - Technically it's about a conflict which literally has "Wars" in the title

Spartacus (1960)

Lion of the Desert (1981)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 and 1979 adaptations)

El Cid (1961)

Spartacus (1960)

Ben Hur (1959)

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

Cleopatra (1963)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Quo Vadis (1951)

Potop/The Deluge (1974)

Mihai Viteazul/Michael the Brave (1972 duology)

Khan Asparuh (1981 trilogy)

Dacii (1967)

Columna (1968)

Gallipoli (1981)

Chunuk Bair (1992)

The Lighthorsemen (1987)

Battle of Neretva (1969)

Liberation (1970 film series)

Battle of Moscow (1985 film series)

Dr. Zhivago (1965)

Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

The Dam-Busters (1955)

Dunkirk (1958)

Dacii (1967)

Columna (1968)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Napoleon (1927)

Napoleon (1955)

Austerlitz (1960)

Das Boot (1981)

Glory (1989)

Gettysburg (1993)

Note: Most of the films on this list are free of the gore present in more recent movies since Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (which kind of revolutionarised this aspect of war movies). But they do offer a sense of the epic spectacle and sheer scale which a lot of newer movies lack.

>Also, which movies would you consider the most essential? There's a chance I haven't seen or even heard of a good amount of them honestly. I'm 21 and even of the ones I mentioned, I still haven't seen a few (namely Rocky & Die Hard bc there's like a million films in each of their series)

Some films that are an absolute MUST SEE if you haven't watched them (I've tried to include a mixture of mostly older masterpieces, and in different genres):

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

War and Peace (1966-67 quadrilogy)

Waterloo (1970)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 and 1979 adaptations)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Come and See (1985)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Spartacus (1960)

Ben Hur (1959)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Cleopatra (1963)

El Cid (1961)

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

Khartoum (1966)

Tora Tora Tora (1970)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

A Night to Remember (1958)

Titanic (1997)

Solaris (1972)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Heaven's Gate (1980)

The Dollars Trilogy (1964-66)

Schindler's List (1993)

City of Life and Death (2009)

Red Sorghum (1987)

Empire of the Sun (1987)

Battle of Algiers (1966)

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Patton (1970)

Potop/The Deluge (1972)

Battle of Neretva (1969)

Stalingrad (1993)

Andrei Rublev (1966)

Stalker (1979)

Ran (1985)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Dersu Uzala (1975)

The Piano (1993)

Far and Away (1992)

Whale Rider (2002)

Once Were Warriors (1994)

James Bond fanchise (Connery to Craig)

Out of Africa (1985)

The Goonies (1985)

One Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The Longest Day (1962)

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Lion of the Desert (1981)

Khan Asparuh (1981 trilogy)

Mihai Viteazul (1972 duology)

The Lord of the Rings (2001-03 trilogy)

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Dunkirk (1958)

Dunkirk (2017)

Das Boot (1981)

Gallipoli (1981)

The Lighthorsemen (1987)

Chunuk Bair (1992)

Napoleon (1927)

Napoleon (1955)

Austerlitz (1960)

Darkest Hour (2017)

The Fifth Element (1997)

The Evil Dead fanchise

Bad Taste (1987)

Meet the Feebles (1989)

Braindead /Dead Alive (1992)

Heavenly Creatures (1993)

The Frighteners (1996)

King Kong (1933)

King Kong (2005)

Here are some great pre-CGI (thousands of real extras) war movies (some are not strictly in the war genre, but they all have a large war component):

War and Peace (1966 quadrilogy) - Epic adaptation of the Tolstoy novel. Comes to almost 7 hours, but it's divided into 4 parts so you don't have to watch it all at once. Not strictly in the war genre, but has some of the greatest non-CGI battle sequences.

Waterloo (1970) - Historical epic on Napoleon's final battle and defeat (Chris Plummer plays Wellington while Rod Steiger is Napoleon). Made by the same director as War and Peace, and has similar epic production values (thousands of extras and actual massed cavalry).

Liberation (1970 film series) - Covers the Soviet victories from Kursk to Berlin. Plenty of epic battle shots, with thousands of extras and lots of real tanks.

Battle of Moscow (1984 film series) - Covers the German invasion and immediate aftermath. Same director as Liberation, and similar production values.

Battle of Neretva (1969) - Yugoslav partisan epic about a battle with the Germans, Lots of famous actors like Orson Welles, Yul Brynner, etc. and great non-CGI production values.

Mihai Viteazul/Michael the Brave (1972) - Romanian (communist era) epic on the titular character. Part 1 and Part 2 are on YouTube.

Potop (1974) - Polish film set in the Polish-Lithuanian war against Sweden.

Khan Asparuh (1981) - 3-part Bulgarian nationalist epic on the country's founding. Part 3 has a massive reenactment of the Battle of Ongal.

Link to both films

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - David Lean's masterpiece on T. E. Lawrence.

Spartacus (1960) - The Kubrick epic starring Kirk Douglas.

El Cid (1961) - A classic Hollywood epic on the medieval Spanish knight, with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.

The Longest Day (1962) and A Bridge Too Far (1977) - Hollywood epics on the D-Day Landings (shot far more conventionally than Spielberg's SPR so YMMV) and Operation Market Garden, based on books by Cornelius Ryan. Both movies were filmed in the epic manner and have a lot of stars (literally) like Sean Connery, John Wayne, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Mitchum, and so on.

Dunkirk (1958) - The earlier b&w movie on the subject. Makes a great comparison to Nolan's take on the subject - this one was shot far more conventionally.