Why are there so few good movies about the Revolutionary War?
It’s one of the great mysteries of American pop culture, right up there with “who is Becky with the good hair?” and “what does MMMBop mean?”
Other conflicts in American history—especially the Civil War and World War II—have been memorialized countless times on the big screen, often to great acclaim. (Think: Gone With the Wind, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Lincoln.)
Yet when it comes to cinematic portrayals of the country’s origins, there are scant few examples, and most of them are middling to terrible. Maybe it’s the powdered wigs, or the tedium of battles fought with muskets, or the fact that it’s hard to get that excited about a war started over taxes, but the Revolutionary War has long been a cinematic flop.
And before you say, “WHAT ABOUT HAMILTON?”, allow me to explain. The Broadway musical is almost certainly the most celebrated piece of modern pop culture about our country’s founding. But the version of it you can watch on Disney+ is a filmed stage production, and it is far from certain that a proper film adaptation will ever happen.
Hamilton became such a phenomenon in part because its multicultural casting and R&B/hip-hop-infused score made remote figures from history feel accessible and vital to modern audiences. Its exceptional success actually underscores the challenges of translating a story most of us learned back in grade school into a grand cinematic narrative.
Part of what makes the Civil War and World War II such enticing filmmaking subjects is that the contrast between good and evil is so stark. Nazis are bad. Slavery? Also bad. The Revolutionary War isn’t quite so morally tidy. We don’t like kings in America. But as we know—and as certain conservative politicians would like us to forget—many of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were also enslavers. So they make for rather complicated heroes.
Outside of Hamilton, the cinematic history of the Revolutionary War is checkered at best. There’s 1776 (available to stream on Tubi), a film adaptation of the Broadway musical with “resolutely unmemorable” lyrics that “sound as if they'd been written by someone high on root beer,” according to Vincent Canby of The New York Times.
Perhaps even more dire is Revolution, a 1985 flop starring Al Pacino—yes, that Al Pacino—as an 18th-century New Yorker with a distinctly 20th-century New York accent. Gene Siskel unfavorably compared it to “grammar school filmstrips,” and that was one of the kinder reviews. Directed by Hugh Hudson, whose previous film was the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, Revolution nearly killed Pacino’s career. (It’s also on Tubi, if you’re a glutton for punishment.)
Fifteen years later, Mel Gibson took another shot with The Patriot, which applied the Braveheart formula of a vengeance-seeking family man and tried to apply it to the American Revolution, with hyper-violent and historically inaccurate results. (In this version of colonial South Carolina, Gibson’s character does not own slaves and instead employs free Black laborers.)
“But what about TV?” you ask. The small screen offers a few more examples, some of them actually watchable, like the HBO limited series John Adams. There’s also a largely forgotten TV movie from 2000 called The Crossing starring Jeff Daniels as George Washington; the AMC drama series Turn, about colonial spies who helped defeat the British; and Franklin, an Apple TV+ series starring Michael Dougles as everyone’s favorite kite-flying inventor.
This is a very long way of saying that it’s hard-bordering-on-impossible to come up with a list of movies about the original Independence Day that are worth your time.
But if you’re looking for something to watch this long weekend, I’ve compiled a list of timely summer alternatives.
You aren’t alone. Ever since Jaws was released in 1975, sharks have been a summertime obsession for Americans (and the news media). Discovery tapped into this cultural fixation by launching Shark Week back in 1988, and other networks continue to get in on the act. While Discovery’s Shark Week won’t kick off until later this month, Netflix already has several shark offerings currently available to stream, including a documentary about Ocean Ramsey, a conservationist who free dives with sharks and claims to understand how they communicate. Her goal is to prove the awesome creatures are not the monsters that pop culture has made them out to be, but Ramsey has also been criticized for promoting potentially dangerous behavior. In other words: don’t try this at home, kids!
If you want to feel slightly less stressed, try , a reality competition where underwater photographers earn points for snapping pics of, well, all the sharks in scenic locations around the world, including the Maldives. Also on Netflix.
Try in which the Oscar-winner plays a washed-up Formula 1 racer whose old teammate (Javier Bardem) convinces him to come out of retirement for one last shot at glory. You’ll never guess what happens next! There’s a bit of a meta-narrative surrounding the film and Pitt’s promotion of it. The actor hasn’t had a big hit since taking home the Academy Award for Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood in 2020 and his once-golden image has taken a hit thanks to court documents alleging abusive behavior to ex-wife Angelina Jolie and one of their children. F1, which hit theaters last Friday, made $146 million globally over the weekend, indicating that Pitt’s star power remains (mostly) intact.
Head to the local multiplex to see . Johannson stars as an ex-military covert operative recruited by a pharmaceutical company to retrieve biological samples from dinosaurs contained to a remote corner of the globe. The always delightful Jonathan Bailey co-stars as a bespectacled paleontologist (is there any other kind?). The seventh installment in the 32-year-old blockbuster franchise features the usual assortment of scientists, shadowy corporations and ferocious prehistoric beasts. It isn’t reinventing the wheel, and that’s the point. In theaters now.
…And you missed when it was in theaters this spring, then have no fear: you can stream it on Max starting Friday. Ryan Coogler’s acclaimed Southern gothic, set in the Mississippi Delta during the Great Depression, is steeped in Blues mythology and also features a double dose of Michael B. Jordan, who plays identical twins named Smoke and Stack. Also cool? Max will offer a version of Sinners in Black American Sign Language, the first streaming film to do so.
Dear. Ms: A Revolution in Print, a three-part documentary about the trailblazing feminist magazine, is available to stream on Max and may be just the thing to revitalize your fighting spirit after this week’s grim headlines. Each installment focuses on a specific article or issue of the magazine and its role in the political discourse. Co-founders Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Pat Carbine are all interviewed at length about the still very much ongoing fight for women’s rights.
Meredith Blake is The Contrarian’s culture columnist.
