Why did the historical epic die? They're box office poison now

Why did the historical epic die? They're box office poison now.

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Because moderm audiences prefer to look at the future instead of the past

I really want a new film about reconquista and El Cid. It'd never be allowed these days though.

We'll get the Historical Cinematic Universe soon, a series of fast paced action movies.

and quips I hope?

>Richard III lay dying on the field of battle
>"Does anyone have any orange slices?"

Nigga what? Dracula fighting Muslims was allowed like a year ago with no repercussions.

Dumber audience.

Audience have been conditioned by the media to accept the fake worlds of Marvel where is no traces of anything that might be deemed politically incorrect or problematic. History on film is dying.

Because history is not politically correct

Because like dumbledore and spidey XD but who is this cazer lol?

The whole fight muslim invaders in Europe concept is a bit controversial atm is it not?

Dracula is just non-western enough not to be racist.

that's because the whole muslim world hates turks

Because they cost too much to make, which is why they're hard to finance, and audiences today just won't go to see a movie simply because "OMG it's set in ancient Rome!"

You need a combination of top talent with some kind of a catchy pop culture zeitgeist to sell it. The 300 was successful because it was sold as giant badass summer action action movie with great cinematography and simple story.

>Why did the historical epic die? They're box office poison now.
They were box office poison "then" too, because they cost too much and are not seen by enough people

I've been knocking over a few of these in the last month or so.

>Lawrence of Arabia
>Cleopatra
>Patton

All very good. I think they are very expensive to make though, with all the extras needed and expensive elaborate sets. Plus all those movies run for 3+ hours with an intermission, don't think that would fly these days.

There was a small resurgence caused by Gladiator, with the likes of Troy, Kingdom of Heaven and Alexander, but that quickly tapered off.

they were replaced by capeshit

300 is capeshit.

Figuratively, literally and by association.

It was a simpler time when you could just write a generic love plot set in Rome, hire a bunch of Italian extras for almost nothing, and have them stand in front of a matte painting.

Waterloo is my favorite film of all time and it makes me sad we will not see anything like it again. We will NEVER have thousands of extras in a movie again.
We will NEVER have something so authentically made.
And worst of all there are dozens of other amazing battles in history worthy of an entire movie dedicated to them which we will never see.

Because they haven't been good for a long time. Ben Hur remakes was shit, Alexander was garbage and Exodus was trash. The only good historical epic in recent times has been the 300 movies

Not enough CGI punching desu

According to BOM,
Cleopatra was made for 45mil and grossed 57mil.
Patton was made for 17mil, grossed 61mil.
Lawrence of Arabia did not have a recorded budget on the site but made only 44mil.

All three movies were quite successful and didn't even have the crutch of a foreign market to pad their numbers.

Because millenial cuckolds dont care about history unless it reinforces their white guilt

>The only good historical epic in recent times has been the 300 movies
I feel like I you got punched me in the face.

Faggots are too normie these days for them. They can't even handle dunkino.

>buzzwords and memes: the post

Studios don't actually get every single dollar from the box-office gross. Cleopatra was a huge bomb at the time and it's considered to be one of the key factors that killed off big-budget historical epics.
>vanityfair.com/hollywood/photos/2015/11/biggest-movie-turkeys
>The most expensive film ever made at the time, Cleopatra pushed Twentieth Century Fox to the brink of bankruptcy with its re-shoots, location changes, and celebrity scandals. The studio notoriously sold off most of its back lot to developers, giving rise to L.A.’s “second downtown” Century City, whose office towers now teem with lawyers, agents, and executives busy hatching Hollywood’s next bomb. Ironically, what few mention is that Cleopatra was also the highest grossing movie of 1963, and yet still failed to make a profit.

history is social construct

>still failed to make a profit.
I'll assume it really didn't make a profit, and not Hollywood accounting jewery at play there.
I guess things were really tough back then without home video or the chinamen to fall back on. Still not the case today and still not a good reason for why epics are kill

Especially not in the age of CGI where a massive army costs 5000 dollar instead of 5 million. CGI enables the return of epics at a reasonable cost. But they are still nowhere in sight.

Prove me wrong, has there been any good historical epic after Troy that's not 300?

Caesar and Cleopatra is better and actually a good movie by the way guys

Its probably one of the movies that kicked off the historical epics of that era and 20 years later you get Cleopatra that kills them off so that the cycle can repeat

Lol that's bullshit

They aren't hystorical and have no respect for the source material.

Gladiator did fine.

The problem is they are pushing too much diversity and the casts are awful, oh and guy richie is cancer. His style of film making aged like milk.

Apocalypto? Don't know if that counts but it was certainly a hero's journey.

Also, I think user's point was that, due to mutants, children fighting 300lbs wolves, and Xerxes being a 9ft tall gold chain fetishist, I don't think you can drop 300 in the 'historical' category.

History is useless and for faux intellectuals

Science is for people with high IQ so scifi is what sells now

>ctrl+f
>dunkirk - 0 results

Because History is misogynist, homophobic and racist.

I thought about bringing this up but much like the actor who plays bane, its really short and to be a historical epic I think you have to have a really long run time.

Correct!

Read this

And Apocalypto can't be called historical either because the film doesn't know what time period it's set in.

Read this

I like that you have a positive outlook on the masses. It's refreshing.

Fair enough.

IQ is increasing since 50 yearso ago, and a lot more people are into science and know of IQ, so people don't buy history that's much and that's good, personally I woul destroy all museums and stop funding all archaeologists

sci-fi is for semihigh IQ

high IQ read regular novels

IQ is increasing since 50 years ago, and a lot more people are into science and know of IQ, so people don't buy history that's much and that's good, personally I would destroy all museums and stop funding all archaeologists

But dude, T-Rex skeletons? And what about the naked titty statues?

Novels?

For high IQ?

Are you fucking kidding me?

It's fairytales for manchildren, people with high IQs read manuals about engineering, physics books or mathematics texts, or maybe newspapers about economics when they wanna relax.

I'll have to check this out, thanks

This is how you actually spot people who are legitimate dumb, whenever ironical or not.

Like Gods and Generals? People loved it, it was burried by critics and was an office box failure.

>Jackson did nothing wrong

>Apocalypto
This.

Historiy is for dumbs retards who can't into science or mathematics and wanna memorize facts to sound smart, it's useless and a huge waste of time

History is racist.

No, but it IS useless, believe me.

Taking lessons from the past isn't useless, even though some things we learn are themselves useless

404 no argument found.

Next.

...

>This is how you actually spot people who are legitimate dumb
I assume you're referring to the "IQ is a measure of some absolute quality, instead of being based on a statistical model" misconception? Doesn't mean they are "legitimate dumb", necessarily, just misinformed (and allergic to research, we can assume).

>people with high IQs read manuals about engineering, physics books or mathematics texts
We don't tell you what to like, user. Just being able to understand something intuitively doesn't automatically make it interesting. And nobody reads about work stuff to "relax".

>tfw to intelligent to read about history

People have been complaining about Dunkirk, do you really think we could have a movie about the battle of vienna

Accurate.
I have little knowledge but I wanna say that unless you are time traveling to the past there's LITTLE use to any historical facts that happened over 30 years old. For pure objective purposes you will simply never need to know history plain and simple.

Its use goes more towards entertainment in form of worldbuilding in videogames, movies and other media.

Calm down, Mao.

>wahhh, why do they make us learn history, when am I ever going to need this?
Reminder that this board is for 18+

>Science is for people with high IQ so scifi is what sells now
Not only is this is incredibly wrong as the hottest shit right now is GoT which is medieval fantasy but by making reddit posts like you are nothing more than a commie piece of trash since you want to destroy marks left by our ancestors because somehow this is progressive to you. The only thing you deserve is to get your head bashed in until you piece of shit.

Because the masses have been conditioned to ignore history or replace history

>comes to Sup Forums
>complains about memes

All I'm gathering from this thread is that history teachers need to stop making people memorize dates in school and that combining history and literature into one curriculum might not be a bad idea.

Also, would O Brother Where Are Thou qualify as a historical epic?

Something tells me you read neither.

People want to watch the stuff they imagine in their heads

This, and when they try to make it so, it reasons the immersion.

All I'm gathering from this thread is that some people got Fs in History and English and thought their Bs in Maths and Science were enough to compensate (they aren't).

>would O Brother Where Are Thou qualify as a historical epic?
It's an adaptation of one, so I guess

You're all right though. Maths and Science rely on history at times, and History needs Maths and Science to prove itself.

Historical movies are a minefield when it comes to critics. Especially when it comes to European or American history, if you don't hit the right balance of white/nonwhite representation you get accused of whitewashing history. It's not worth the trouble.

Because they're usually morally black and white war epics.

And we're getting sick of endless war that's framed in the same black/white moral backdrop. And everyone with a brain knows that the reality of war is much dirtier and morally grey (or morally black all around).

It makes them ring hollow and naive. It does not provide the type of escapism that it would to a more innocent culture.

You'll notice all these huge historical hero vs villain war movies don't exist much anymore. Or they have a different moral backdrop.

Spartacus, Ben Hur, The 10 Commandments.... these types of movies would not be made today. Or if they did it would not have the refreshing heroes vs villains moral naivety. They would be morally conflicted humans vs morally conflicted humans, both sides doing what they think is right...

Even things like superheroes can't escape it. Superman can't be an unblemished hero, he has to have an existential crisis in every film. People only seem to like super-powers, not super-heroes.

Tbf the best superheroes and superhero stories always had a more human/real world element about them, something that made them relatable and complex. Spider-Man was always the middle class teen/early 20s guy struggling to balance real life with his guilt-induced superhero mission. Batman and Wolverine were edgelords decades before it became cool in movies, X-Men relied heavily on themes about genocide. If anything, Superman is almost the exception.

Blame Americans and their short attention span resulting in movies with 100 cutes in a minute.

How would they get away with shit like the roman empire and the crusades being on the same universe though?

Have you seen War and Peace by Bondarchuk?
Pretty good battles there too