The global success of director Ridley Scott’s historical epic film Gladiator (2000) was followed by a series of similar “historical”, mythological, Biblical, “period” costumed, “ancient” world set, big-budget Hollywood productions that could be recognised as a cinematic “trend” in the preceding two decades. This research seeks to read selected big-budget Hollywood epic films released in the second decade of the 21st century against a post 9/11 and “War on Terror” world where assertions of nationalism in American socio-political and culture domain were frequently attempted through emphasis on traditional gender roles, hypermasculine aggression, and religious/Christian rhetoric by political and non-political actors. Post-9/11 American mainstream cinema reflected these political realities associated with a nation in crisis, and this study identifies the Hollywood epic film genre as a feasible location of study.
The 20th century Hollywood epic film has been associated by scholars with the category of national cinema, embodying an American nationalist consciousness (Wood 1989; Walsh 2009; Burgoyne 2011; Elliott 2014 et.al.). Robert Burgoyne (The Epic Film in World Culture 2011) observes that the messages that have been traditionally embedded in epic film narratives, that of “the birth of a nation, the emergence of a people, the fulfillment of a heroic destiny” (2) is complicated by the historical reality of the epic film being “an international, global narrative apparatus not bound by nation or ethnicity” (2). The national as well as transnational character of the contemporary Hollywood epic film noted by Burgoyne and the genre’s critique of global concerns and significant geopolitical events as noted by Andrew B.R. Elliott (The Return of the Epic Film 2014) animates the debate within this research, as it primarily seeks to study the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic articulations of American power and American nationalism/exceptionalism in a global context by exploring the evolving link between cinematic representations of masculinity and nationalism.

The selected films revolve around a central male protagonist “chosen” by God/gods or mortal humans to fulfil a divine/heroic grand purpose and pits them against a tyrannical male “other”, unveiling an opportunity to interrogate masculinist nationalist politics of otherisation in the primary texts. Drawing on the work of theorists working on the intersection between masculinity and nationalism like, Joane Nagel and Koen Slootmaeckers, and key figures in the field of Masculinity Studies, the research questions I posit are as follows:
1. To what extent do representations of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities in post-2010, big studio-backed religio-mythological Hollywood epics reinforce or subvert perceptions of American geopolitical power in a post-9/11 and “War on Terror” era?
2. Within the interstices of the traditional nation-centric narrative of Hollywood epics and the more transnational concerns of the 21st century epic, how do the texts frame the politics of the “chosen” and the “other” in masculinist and (American) nationalist terms?
3. Do the religious and ancient mythology based texts reveal elements that frame them as popular geopolitical tools projecting American Exceptionalist tenets?

Key Words: Hollywood Epic films, Masculinity, Hollywood and Nationalism, American exceptionalism