4. Saving Private Ryan
With the Allied forces arriving on Omaha Beach to face off against the Nazis, Steven Spielberg created a no holds barred twenty-four minute battle scene in Saving Private Ryan which did an incredible job of bringing the horrors of war home to moviegoers while simultaneously leaving them in awe.
A whopping $11 million was spent on this scene which included more than 1000 extras and genuine World War II crafts, and the result of all that effort was perhaps the all-time greatest battle scene ever put in a war movie.
The sheer amount of violence was dismissed as gratuitous by some, but Spielberg’s decision to take things in that direction ensured this sequence had a lasting impact and did D-Day justice.
