Epic Battle Scenes

Of all the wonderful battles in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, the best has to be The Two Towers' Battle of Helm's Deep. Return of the King's Battle of Pelennor Fields may be bigger, but this one is undeniably filled with more tension and dread. Even when you re-watch it a hundredth time, you never feel completely certain that the humans can pull off a win. Additionally, it doesn't end with a bunch of ghosts suddenly killing everything with anti-climactic ease.

Say what you want about Return of the Jedi's overall quality, but the Battle of Endor is incredible. Brilliant editing offers us three simultaneous arms of the epic battle to relish: the massive, practical-effect space battle with Lando, the deeply personal lightsaber duel between Luke and his father, and the more humorously grassroots Ewok skirmish with Han and Chewie, which, even if you hate Ewoks, is still chock full of good AT-ST action.

It's still the premium example of how to present a three-tiered epic battle on film. If you'd like to see the worst example, just watch The Phantom Menace.

The epic climax of Immortals features a beautifully executed two-tiered battle in which our hero, Theseus, fights Mickey Rourke's evil Hyperion and his army, while Zeus and the other Gods fight the newly released Titans. 

Tarsem Singh singular visual aesthetic is in full force here. It's all slow motion and beautiful arcs of blood and guts flying through the air with the grace of a ballerina. Plus, it's awesome to see Greek Gods kicking so much ass, something denied us both by Troy and Clash of the Titans.

Movie characters often talk about wartime strategy as though each battle were a chess game, but it's difficult to see the philosophy practiced when most movie battles consist of masses hacking away at each other until one side bellows in celebration. Sometimes the intricacies of war are better observed at a slower pace.

No battle does this better than Kirk and Khan's nautically influenced space duel in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is life and death, but it's also a silent, yet deeply tense, game of chess between two highly intelligent players. It also acknowledged that even the world's greatest tacticians are also gamblers at the mercy of chance.