Essential 21st Century Biopics Ranked
From Lincoln and Selma to The Queen and Jackie, check out our list of the most essential biopics to come out of the 21st Century!
Ever since the invention of film, around the time Georges Méliès’ Jeanne d’Arc dramatized Joan of Arc’s life, the biopic has been one of the go-to genres for movies. Maybe it’s because we’re drawn to stories about important, peculiar, and profound individuals, or maybe because it’s the quickest way to an Academy Award — The Hollywood Reporter mentioned it as one of the most Oscar-friendly genres. Whatever the reason, Hollywood loves biopics, and so does Rotten Tomatoes!
We love all flavors of biopics, from the ones about historical figures, like Selma, Lincoln, and The Queen, to the ones about eccentric artists, such as American Splendor, Frida, and Pollock. And not all of them need to be about great people; we enjoyed having to take a bath after watching The Wolf of Wall Street, we were ready to snatch Dick Cheney’s rifle away from him in Vice, and we felt bad getting excited about the making of an atomic bomb in Oppenheimer.
It’s also worth mentioning that music biopics are one of the only genres that can compete at the box office with the likes of Marvel, DC, and James Cameron, and we’ve gotten an impressive string of successes in the 21st Century, including Bohemian Rhapsody, Straight Outta Compton, and Elvis.
Recommended: The 50 Best Music Biopic Movies
Making a list that includes every single biopic ever made would have destroyed our site, so we’re instead keeping it to the essential biopics of the 21st century, focusing on films that felt squarely about an individual rather than an event, a product, or a fictional account that happens to have real-life figures in it. This meant excluding films like The Social Network, The Disaster Artist, or The Imitation Game. But we guarantee that every film on this list has defined the genre since the turn of the century, and will educate as much as it will entertain.
So check out our list below to see if your favorites made the cut!
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