Colossal

Spectacular films requiring considerable financial and organizational resources to produce.

Typical characteristics of a "colossal" movie include:

• The allocation of a significant budget.
• Impressive sets and art direction, and more generally, aesthetics that aspire to the grandiose.
• The presence of a large cast rich with familiar faces.
• Frequent use of high-impact scenes, usually accompanied by makeup and special effects of a high technical level.
• A focused, well-structured promotional campaign.

 
Given the coordinated efforts directed primarily at achieving broad box-office success, such films - perhaps more accurately termed "campaigns" - are put together to meet the demands of a broad spectrum of the public, which tends to put a damper on any experimental impulses as well as toning down the complexity of the content and themes featured (there are clearly exceptions, and a good number of them, with a prime example being that masterpiece of the Seventh Art that is Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."

It should be noted that a "colossal" shares many characteristics with a "blockbuster", but an important distinction must be drawn between the two categories. A blockbuster implies a highly popular film with a huge box-office gross. A colossal doesn't necessarily achieve that level of financial success. Case in point would be "Battlefield Earth" (2000) by Roger Christian, which, despite the star power of John Travolta and Forest Whitaker and an impressive budget of $73 million, was a box-office disaster. Conversely, "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) can be considered a blockbuster although it was certainly no colossal.

Since the distinction between the two categories is well-established in Italy, we've adapted the Italian term "kolossal" for use here. Interestingly, the Italian word was itself borrowed from German and originally applied to "Sword and Sandal" (aka peplum) films and other similar productions with a historical setting, a long running time, and an extraordinary investment of money and manpower. The first film to have received this label from critics seems to have been "Hell's Angels" (1930) by Howard Hughes.