We may hate to admit it, but when it comes to movies, we’re all war-mongering bastards.

War may be good for nothing – but it certainly spices up a film. How else can you explain how we found it so difficult to cut this down these down to just 15? It was really, really hard. There are so many good battle scenes in films, it’s almost inevitable we’ll have missed a few out.

So to make it easier, we restricted it to just land battles, although spaceships, helicopters and planes are also included in the scenes. Air, space and sea battles will follow. Enjoy!

15. Battle of Klendathu
Film: Starship Troopers (1997)

OK, so it’s more of a massacre than a battle as 100,000 troops realise the hard way that these bugs are a little harder to squish. Cue limbs flying off, decapitations and general panic. Brilliant!!

14. Battle of Waterloo
Film: Waterloo (1971)

A stunning re-enactment of Napoleon’s final battle. Sergei Bondarchuk’s film is one of the greatest war movies of all time.

13. Battle of Stirling
Film: Braveheart (1995)

OK, this scene is so good we were forced to overlook three facts that should really have disbarred it from being on this list. Firstly, the entire film is a load of bollocks. Secondly, it’s directed by Mel Gibson. And thirdly, most of us at hecklerspray are English.

12. Battle of Rourke’s Drift
Film: Zulu (1964)

“Zulus sir, thousands of them.” He wasn’t kidding either, as 100 British soldiers somehow hold out against 4,000 terrifying Zulus. Michael Caine talking posh is also hilarious.

11. Battle of Stalingrad
Film: Enemy at the Gates (2001)

OK, the rest of the film is a pile of shit, but this scene is simply incredible. If Jude Law had got one in  the face, this would have been number one.

10. Battle of Pelennor Fields
Film: Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King (2003)

Would have been higher but for the fact that, like the film itself, it goes on a bit and that the final army of the dead part is just a cop out.

9. Assault on Fort Wagner
Film: Glory (1989)

This scene is so good we were almost proud to be American – even though we’re not. Does that make any sense? Probably not! Surely, the best American Civil War film to date.

8. Battle of Helm’s Deep
Film: The Lord of the Rings – The Town Towers (2002)

But for Orlando Bloom surfing down the stairs, this could have been a contender for one of the top spots.  It isn’t the first time Bloom has ruined a scene and it won’t be the last.

7. Battle of Silarus River
Film: Spartacus (1960)

Kirk Douglas‘ slave revolt all ends in tears in this gripping scene.

6. Battle of Hoth
Film: Empire Strikes Back (1980)

One of the finest moments in the series, as Luke et al are forced to beat a hasty retreat by some nasty ATs-ATs.

5. Battle in Germania
Film: Gladiator (2000)

The only bad about this superb opening scene is that we’re forced to watch the rest of the film in the knowledge the best bit has already happened.

4. Helicopter Attack
Film: Apocalypse Now (1979)

OK, once again this is more of a massacre than a battle, but the attack on the Vietnamese village to the strains of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries is hard to miss out.

3. Battle of Arnhem (parachute jump)
Film: A Bridge Too Far (1977)

The shot of thousands of doomed Allied soldiers parachuting down behind enemy lines is almost as impressive as the amount of stars Richard Attenborough managed to assemble for this superb war film. Imagine the egos he had to deal with.

2. All of the battle scenes in Ran
Ran (1985)

Want to get schoolchildren interested in Shakespeare? Just show them Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant adaptation of King Lear.

1.    Omaha Beach landing
Film: Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The first 30 minutes is the closest we ever want to get to real combat. Really scary stuff!

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It’s been a long time coming, but finally New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have announced that they’re packing Guillermo del Toro off to New Zealand for the next four years so he can concentrate on making The Hobbit and its sequel, The Hobbit 2: The Hobbit In Space.

It doesn’t take a genius to see why Guillermo del Toro was chosen to direct the Hobbit movies – his flair for visual invention as demonstrated in Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy will really bring a sense of panache to his task of filming a bunch of midgets walking across the side of a mountain for six and a half titting hours.

There’s no doubting that the Lord Of The Rings trilogy was a landmark piece of cinema that moved the artform of self-indulgent, needlessly-overlong, self-important wankery that gave you deep vein thrombosis in your face just by making you watch it on by years, if not decades.

So it was inevitable that JRR Tolkien’s other book, The Hobbit, would get turned into a movie as well. It would have happened sooner but Peter Jackson had a fight with the studio and then everyone made up except that Peter Jackson decided he wanted to devote his time to making painfully long movies about dragons or something instead, so a new director of The Hobbit had to be found.

Finding the right director was a hard task, because whoever was chosen to make The Hobbit had to a) stay true to JRR Tolkien’s original vision, b) pad the story out enough to turn it into two movies so that everyone could get twice as rich from it and c) move to New Zealand, The Prettiest Place To Die Of Utter Fucking Mind-Shredding Boredom On Earth.

And while the early favourite to direct The Hobbit was Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame, nothing was made official. Until now, as Reuters reports:

Del Toro, whose credits include “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Blade II,” will move to New Zealand for the next four years to work on both “Hobbit” films with executive producer Peter Jackson, who directed all three “The Lord of the Rings” movies, according to New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios… “We have long admired Guillermo’s work and cannot think of a more inspired filmmaker to take the journey back to Middle-earth,” Jackson and his producing partner, Fran Walsh, said in a statement.

So, with filming set to begin next year, it’s full steam ahead for Guillermo del Toro as he makes all sorts of difficult decisions about The Hobbit. Will Ian McKellan return as Gandalf? Who will play Bilbo Baggins? Will del Toro be tied to the visual style of the Lord Of The Rings movies or will he be allowed to make it his own? Will the movie have one ending or will he follow Lord Of The Rings and film 38 different endings and then make everyone sit through them all one after the other for three extra hours when all they want to do it go to the toilet?

In 2010 we’ll find out, by being thumped on the head with The Hobbit marketing campaigns for months before it even comes out until we feel like we’re terrible people if we don’t see it. Then we’ll find out alright.

Read more:

Mexico’s del Toro to direct “The Hobbit” – Reuters

However, a group of JRR Tolkien heirs called the Tolkien Trust has decided to sue the Lord Of The Rings studio for a slightly more pressing matter – it's claiming that New Line owes it $150 million in unpaid royalties.

Of course, $150 million is a lot of money, and if New Line is forced to pay it to the Tolkien Trust, one of its upcoming films might gave to be cancelled. So, if it's the sequel to The Golden Compass, everybody wins.

The Lord Of The Rings trilogy has so far made about $6 billion in box office and DVD receipts – a staggering amount of money, especially when you realise that it was generated by three pain-inducingly long films about a wizard and a midget walking across the side of a mountain and occasionally watching Liv Tyler babble on in a made-up language. 

And when something makes that much money, there will always be people trying to claw themselves a share of it. Peter Jackson sued New Line over cash in 2005, 15 actors from New Zealand sued New Line over Lord Of The Rings cash last year, and now some people who are probably a bit related to Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien are suing New Line for a wedge of the cash, too.

Back in 1969, members of the Tolkien Trust signed a contract with United Artists that guaranteed them 7.5% of the gross receipts of any Lord Of The Rings movies, a contract which passed down to New Line when it inherited the movie rights in 1998. Cue angry poshos, courtesy of the New York Times:

In a complaint filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, trustees of the Tolkien Trust, a British charity, joined trustees of a private family trust of Tolkien heirs and the British arm of HarperCollins Publishers in suing New Line Cinema for breach of contract. Charging “unabashed and insatiable greed,” … in the complaint, the plaintiffs argue that New Line has “clearly engaged in the infamous practice of creative ‘Hollywood accounting,’ ” by excluding certain revenue from calculations and racking up costs that have so far prevented the studio from paying out a single dime.

However, as much as you're probably naturally predisposed to stick up for the tiny underdogs tugging at the shirt-tails of a $6 billion machine, know this – if the Tolkien Trust is successful it wants to hoik away New Line's rights to make the long-anticipated Hobbit movies as well. And since they're likely to be among the top-grossing films of the next decade, New Line has every reason to be worried.

Imagine what the world would be like if the Hobbit movies didn't get made. Imagine how dreadful it'd be not to go and spend £10 of your hard-earned money to watch an offensively long movie about a midget walking to a dragon's house  for no other reason than because the months and months of relentless hype have bullied you into it. Twice. Imagine how dreadful that'd be. Dreadful.

Read more:

Tolkien Heirs Sue New Line Over Millions From ‘Rings’ – New York Times