Best pre-WWI battle scene in a movie

[celedhring]

Another movie poll! Inspired by watching Napoleon, which I don't think makes the list.

I made the cutoff at WWI because I feel you could make an entire poll of its own with all the XXth century wars.

I tried to be extensive and at least include the most notable/famous ones, but I'm sure you can come up with many more examples. I.e. I don't have many Asian movies and I know Chinese love their over the top battle scenes (although myself I find them too fantastical).

I wavered about adding Helm's Deep because it's a fantasy movie but well... it's a great scene and it plays like a medieval fortress assault, there's no dragons or fireballs or shit, probably more realistic than 300.

Anyway, my votes go to Ran, War & Peace and Spartacus - three very different ways to present warfare on a movie screen, and all of them some of the best examples of it.

Honorary mention to Alexander Nevsky for essentially writing the book on how to shoot an epic battle.

[Duque de Bragança]

Seen War & Peace recently on the silver screen (7h30 or so) so the choice was easy. 

[jimmy olsen]

Voted for Helm's Deep, Marcommanic Wars and Gettysburg.

[Zanza]

Is Aqaba in Lawrence of Arabia not part of WWI?

Have only seen a few of these voted for Gladiator.

[Admiral Yi]

Borodino, Rorke's Drift, and that battle from Cromwell.

[celedhring]

Is Aqaba in Lawrence of Arabia not part of WWI?

Have only seen a few of these voted for Gladiator.

Ops, yeah totally don't know what I was thinking there 

Gotta say I don't think it's a great *war* scene. It's just a brief charge against a lightly defended position. Dramatically it works incredibly well after the ordeal crossing the Nefud, mind.

[Sophie Scholl]

Oooo! I'll have to think on this. Alas, the emotional impact and experience of Helm's Deep, to me, is made less by the "comedy" that Jackson added. For Lord of the Rings, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is peak pitched battle. As much as I love all of the Gondorian scenes (Faramir's charge spliced with Denethor eating and Pippen singing!), the Théoden speech, the music, the visuals, and ensuing charge of the Rohirrim is just...   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POdknqszMDY&ab_channel=G%C3%B6kselK%C3%B6ksal

[celedhring]

Pelennor Fields has way too much CGI imho. Theoden's speech is great, but all those compact masses of CGI cavalrymen completely take me out of it, the charge feels so plasticky and fake. There are several CGI shots of the orc army on Helm's Deep, but nighttime helps and most of the actual fighting is real, except for Eomer's charge at dawn (my least favorite scene besides the comedy bits you mention).

CGI armies are the worst. One of the reasons I find most Marvel movies' big action scenes nearly unwatchable.

[FunkMonk]

Sieges are so perfect for movies so I went with Mohicans and Helms Deep.

[HVC]

Write in vote for the battle of the bastards. I liked the claustrophobic feeling of the scene.

[The Brain]

Write in vote for the battle of the bastards. I liked the claustrophobic feeling of the scene.

Is that stretching pre-WW1 even further than LOTR? Maybe even past breaking point?

[HVC]

Write in vote for the battle of the bastards. I liked the claustrophobic feeling of the scene.

Is that stretching pre-WW1 even further than LOTR? Maybe even past breaking point?

I mean 300 isn't exactly realistic either . And I picked a battle without dragons

[Sheilbh]

Sieges are so perfect for movies so I went with Mohicans and Helms Deep.

Same - and Zulu/Rorke's Drift.

I believe, and I could be totally wrong, that Waterloo is considered very good on that sort of thing. Not least because (for reasons that are beyond me) it was a co-production with the Soviet film industry. So they basically re-created Waterloo in Russia and had thousands of off duty Red Army soldiers as extras etc. It would definitely get around people's CGI-aversion

[celedhring]

I believe, and I could be totally wrong, that Waterloo is considered very good on that sort of thing. Not least because (for reasons that are beyond me) it was a co-production with the Soviet film industry.

It's not strange - De Laurentiis had been trying to get the film off the ground for a while. Sergei Bondarchuk had just won the foreign film Oscar for War & Peace, which did exactly the same thing to recreate Borodino, and this way he could rope in the Soviets.

It's fascinating how different both battles are in both films, by the way, despite being shot by the same director using the Soviet army. Both are great, but Waterloo feels much more like a battle in a 1970s Western film - all clean with plenty of aerial shots and easy to follow and a definite narrative to it - I love how chaotic and messy Borodino is. It's half an hour of cannon fire, infantry charges and death.

[Sheilbh]

I suppose by strange I mean I can't really see what the Soviets were hoping to get out of it