Gladiator is a movie that, if you didn’t know who Russell Crowe was before Gladiator, then you sure as hell did afterwards. Russell Crowe stars as Maximus Decimus Meridius, a Roman General betrayed by Commodus who kills his wife and child as forces him into slavery, where he must battle as a Gladiator. However, due to his skills as a warrior and his performances in the ring, he soon begins to win over the favour of the people.
During a recent rewatch I started to think of all the other films like Gladiator who some of you may want to tick off your bucket list. Below are my picks. How many have you seen? Let me know on social media.
1. 300
300 charges headfirst into stylized ancient carnage as King Leonidas leads just 300 Spartan warriors to bottleneck the Persian empire’s massive invading army at the Hot Gates, turning a narrow pass into a blood-soaked thesis on stubbornness and steel. While Xerxes rolls in with monsters, immortals, war elephants, and enough ego to blot out the sun, Leonidas and his red-caped death squad carve through wave after wave with supernatural grit and zero chill. Back in Sparta, Queen Gorgo fights political snakes to rally support, but betrayal seals the Spartans’ fate. The last stand ends in a heroic, defiant slaughter – Leonidas dead, arrows blotting out the sky – but the sacrifice becomes the spark that ignites all of Greece into open war.
2. Braveheart (1995)
Braveheart tracks William Wallace, a Scottish everyman turned war machine, as he launches a rebellion after English soldiers murder his wife, kicking off a full-throttle campaign against King Edward I. Wallace rallies clans with firebrand speeches, guerrilla battles, and enough blue face paint to terrify medieval dermatologists, scoring shocking victories before betrayal from Scotland’s own nobles fractures the uprising. Captured and tortured in London, Wallace refuses to submit, screaming “Freedom!” as his final act of defiance. His death ignites the spark that leads Scotland to rise again under Robert the Bruce – proof that one furious outlaw can shake an empire to its rotten core.
3. Troy (2004)
Troy turns Homer’s ancient blood-opera into a sun-bleached clash of egos, steel, and very bad decisions. Paris steals Helen, Menelaus throws a kingdom-sized tantrum, and suddenly Greece is rolling up to Troy’s front door with a thousand ships and Brad Pitt doing god-tier slow-mo sword work as Achilles. Battles erupt, heroes fall – Hector vs. Achilles becomes the film’s emotional gut-punch – and politics chew through everyone faster than any blade. It all ends with the Greeks pulling the ultimate Trojan scam: the wooden horse that cracks the city open from the inside. No gods, no magic – just betrayal, pride, and enough epic carnage to make ancient mythology feel like a beautifully brutal fever dream.
4. Spartacus (1960)
Spartacus charts the rise of a Thracian slave who refuses to stay in his assigned box and instead kicks off the ancient world’s most chaotic “burn it all down” uprising. Sold into a gladiator school, Spartacus rebels, breaks the chains – literally – and gathers a swelling army of escaped slaves who march across Rome like a freedom-fueled wildfire. While the Roman Senate freaks out and squabbles over power, Spartacus leads his people toward the promise of escape, only to be cornered by Roman legions in a final, crushing showdown. Captured but unbroken, he’s forced into a tragic fate, leaving behind a legacy that outlives the empire trying to erase him – a brutal, defiant reminder that even one man can rattle the whole damn system.
5. The Eagle (2011)
The Eagle follows Roman soldier Marcus Aquila, a guy determined to scrub the family name clean after his father famously lost Rome’s prized golden eagle standard up in the misty nightmare known as Caledonia. Injured and discharged, Marcus drags along his freed slave Esca – who just happens to be a Briton with every reason to hate Rome – on a rogue mission past the empire’s edge to retrieve the lost emblem. What follows is a brooding trek through hostile tribes, shifting loyalties, and fog-drenched violence, all building to a desperate showdown with the Seal People who guard the eagle like a holy relic. It’s grim, muddy, and all about honor, identity, and whether two men on opposite sides of history can rewrite the script before it swallows them whole.
6. King Arthur (2004)
King Arthur reimagines the legend as a gritty, mud-and-blood historical grind where Arthur isn’t a mystical king but a battle-weary Roman cavalry commander trying to get his freedom papers and retire before Britain’s chaos eats him alive. Drafted for one last “suicide mission,” Arthur and his band of Sarmatian knights – think the Round Table but angrier and with worse dental plans – escort a Roman family through Woad-occupied territory just as the invading Saxons roll in like an apocalypse with axes. Alliances twist, arrows fly, and Arthur ends up choosing the Britons over Rome, leading a final, frost-bitten showdown that forges him into the mythic leader he never wanted to be. It’s legend stripped of magic, stuffed with battlefield grime, and powered by sheer, stubborn heroism.
7. Centurion (2010)
Centurion drops you straight into Roman-era hellfire as Quintus Dias, one of the last survivors of a frontier outpost, gets scooped up by General Virilus’s legendary Ninth Legion and sent on a “simple” mission to crush the Picts – aka the absolute worst neighbors in ancient Britain. Things go sideways instantly when their guide, the silent-but-deadly tracker Etain, betrays them and helps wipe the Ninth off the map. Dias and a handful of shell-shocked survivors go full fugitive mode, sprinting across brutal landscapes while Etain hunts them like a mythic terminator. It’s a survival gauntlet of ambushes, blood squibs, and frostbitten panic, all leading to a final clash where the line between revenge, empire, and survival gets buried under the mud.
8. Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Conan the Barbarian follows Conan from orphaned slave to muscle-bound vengeance machine after the snake-worshipping cult leader Thulsa Doom massacres his village and turns his childhood into a nightmare montage of chains, wheels, and gladiator pits. Freed into a world of thieves, sorcery, and ’80s metal-album aesthetics, Conan teams up with warrior Valeria and trickster Subotai to track down Doom, whose cult is now slithering across the land like a psychedelic death march. Along the way he punches camels, steals jewels, gets resurrected, and upgrades from broadsword swinger to full-on destiny-wrecker. It all barrels toward a fiery, blood-soaked showdown where Conan dismantles Doom’s empire and finally claims the revenge that’s been carved into his bones since childhood.
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9. Pompeii (2014)
Pompeii throws you into a lava-soaked doom spiral as Milo, a gladiator with a tragic past, fights his way through arena politics, corrupt Roman elites, and a star-crossed crush on noblewoman Cassia – all while Mount Vesuvius quietly flexes in the background like a wrathful volcano just waiting for its cue. When the mountain finally blows, the whole city turns into a pyroclastic nightmare: fireballs raining from the sky, streets splitting open, tidal waves crashing the harbor, and everyone sprinting for their lives as ash swallows Pompeii whole. Milo battles to save Cassia in the middle of this apocalyptic meltdown, but the eruption levels everything, leaving their doomed love story frozen in ash – beautiful, brutal, and gone in an instant.
10. Robin Hood and the Prince of Thieves (1991)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves follows Robin of Locksley as he escapes a brutal Crusades prison, returns home to find his father murdered, and England squeezed dry by the Sheriff of Nottingham – an unhinged, scenery-devouring tyrant who basically taxes people for breathing. Robin teams up with Azeem, a Moor he freed abroad, and forms a forest-dwelling rebel squad of outcasts who wage guerilla chaos against the Sheriff’s forces. Between raiding convoys, training villagers to fight, and dodging the Sheriff’s witchy occult advisor, Robin also sparks a romance with Maid Marian that adds some heart to the medieval mayhem. It all erupts in a castle-storming finale where Robin takes down the Sheriff, rescues Marian, and proves that sometimes the best way to save England is to break every law in the book.
11. The Scorpion King (2002)
The Scorpion King tracks Mathayus, a desert assassin-for-hire with shoulders carved by the gods, as he’s sent to kill Memnon – the warlord steamrolling ancient kingdoms with the help of a prophetic sorceress. Naturally, Mathayus flips the script by kidnapping said sorceress, teaming up with ragtag rebels, and turning the whole desert into a WWE arena of arrows, camel chases, and sword-smashing chaos. As Memnon’s empire closes in, Mathayus goes full destiny-mode, storming the palace, wrecking the king’s army, and claiming victory in an explosion-heavy showdown that cements him as the legendary Scorpion King. It’s pulpy, loud, and absolutely soaked in early-2000s action movie energy.
12. The Odyssey (1997)
The Odyssey sails straight into mythic chaos as Odysseus finishes the Trojan War and immediately gets slapped with a decade-long cosmic detour because he can’t resist taunting Poseidon’s cyclops son. What follows is a greatest-hits tour of ancient nightmare fuel: man-eating giants, seductive sorceresses, soul-sucking lotus addicts, the dead whispering in the underworld, sirens weaponizing desire, and a sea god determined to ruin this man’s commute home. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, his wife Penelope fends off a swarm of sleazy suitors trying to steal the throne. Odysseus finally washes ashore, disguises himself, and unleashes divine payback in a brutal bow-and-arrow massacre that restores his kingdom – proving that the road home is sometimes a monster-filled fever dream with a killer finale.
13. Hercules (2014)
Hercules flips the myth on its head by treating the legendary strongman not as a demi-god but as a battle-scarred mercenary whose “12 Labors” might just be exaggerated war stories pumped up by his hype squad. Hired by King Cotys to train an army and crush a rebel threat, Hercules and his crew quickly realize they’re being used as muscle in a political con job. The job spirals into betrayal, uprisings, and a full-scale siege where Hercules has to decide whether he’s just a hired sword or the hero people keep insisting he is. In true rock-powered chaos, he rips chains, flips horses, smashes armies, and proves that mythology or not, brute-force destiny is very much his brand.
14. Red Sonja (1985)
Red Sonja follows Sonja, a warrior forged in rage and revenge after Queen Gedren’s soldiers slaughter her family and leave her for dead, only for a mysterious goddess to grant her supercharged combat skills and a destiny soaked in steel. When Gedren steals a reality-warping magical orb that can basically nuke the world if you sneeze at it wrong, Sonja teams up with the broadsword himbo Kalidor and a couple of chaotic tag-alongs to stop her. The quest becomes a gauntlet of monster fights, trap rooms, evil sorcery, and Sonja’s stubborn vow to never let any man claim her unless he can defeat her in combat. It all culminates in a fiery showdown where she destroys the orb, topples Gedren’s fortress, and proves – once again – that the most dangerous thing in the Hyborian Age isn’t magic or monsters, it’s a woman with a sword and zero patience for tyrants.
15. Clash of the Titans (2010)
Clash of the Titans hurls Perseus – an ordinary fisherman with divine daddy issues – into a mythological death-run after Hades unleashes chaos on humanity and demands the sacrifice of Princess Andromeda. When Perseus learns he’s actually Zeus’s son, he weaponizes that identity crisis into a quest stacked with nightmare fuel: giant scorpions, winged demon-harpies, witches with smoky eyeball magic, and of course Medusa, whose gaze turns heroes into rock garden décor. Armed with a magic sword he swears he doesn’t need, Perseus battles through monster mayhem to stop the Kraken from turning Argos into ocean pulp. He wins with a decapitated-Medusa-head mic drop, proving even the gods can get wrecked when a determined demigod is done with everyone’s cosmic drama.
What did you think of this list of movies like Gladiator?
What did you think of Gladiator? Have you seen any of these sword-swinging movies before?
Let me know in the comments.
