Essay: 5 Movies With Swords, From Best To Best

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Apr 10, 2025

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5. ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ (2017)

My favorite magic sword is Excalibur, King Arthur’s enchanted blade, and in Guy Ritchie’s high-energy retelling of its legend, Excalibur is imagined as a video-game power-up crackling with energy that gives its owner incredible temporary abilities, including the power of kicking ass in cool as hell slow motion. It isn’t just a pretty pig sticker. Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is 51% Camelot, 49% Lord of the Rings after a Red Bull enema. As the man who would be king, Charlie Hunnam starts out as a good lad who can handle himself in a scrap or a full-on revolution. Why does evil king Jude Law have an octopus witch living in the basement of his castle? If you don’t need an answer, then this overlooked trashy treasure is for you.

4. ‘Conan the Barbarian’ (1982)

This fantasy epic is as uncivilized as its title character—a hairless hulk who murders all those who stand in his way with his Atlantean sword, an iconic heavy-metal people chopper. Directed by John Milius, the macho filmmaker who gave the world Dirty Harry and the original Red Dawn and who wrote the screenplay with dark hippie Oliver Stone based on the pulp books by Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian is like spraying a can of aerosolized testosterone into a paper bag and huffing it deeply. The movie made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger for a performance that is easy to mock, but you know, he’s great as a big, dumb, Crom-lovin’ thug who can effortlessly cleave evil sorcerers in twain. Say what you will about him, but Conan lives, laughs, and loves (he does all three in the movie!) Shout out to The Wheel of Pain, the best metaphor for capitalism ever put on film.

3. ‘Gladiator’ (2000)

Has Ridley Scott directed better movies than his Academy Award-winning sword-and-sandal historical epic Gladiator? Sure. Blade Runner. Alien. Um. That’s it. Russell Crowe is at his best as a smoldering betrayed general with a heart of gold who is very, very good at using his trusty Roman gladius sword. This movie is a warning to despotic madmen not to kill the family of the greatest killing machine in the empire because he will come for you. This movie shouldn’t be as good as it is, but it is superb, big-budget, R-rated grown-up fun that somehow earns its weepy ending. But don’t worry, there are almost two and a half hours of blood spurts and gladiators hacking away at each other with swords and tridents before the melancholy kicker. (The sequel is lackluster, but there are swords!)

2. ‘The Mask of Zorro’ (1998)

I loved Zorro growing up, mostly because he was the only Mexican superhero I knew. Well, there was another, but she was my mom, born and bred in El Paso, Texas. As a kid, I would transform sticks into Zorro’s sword with my imagination and dramatically draw Zs in the air with theatrical flicks of my wrist. That was a favorite Zorro bit: he'd carve the first initial of his name into the flesh of his foes. Loco! So when The Mask of Zorro came out, I was as excited as a grown man should be about a make-believe masked man who slashes, slices, and stabs bad hombres with his razor-sharp rapier. It’s a really good old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure movie with strong Raiders of the Lost Ark vibes. The sword fights are non-stop, including an epic, graceful clash of blades between newborn superstar Catherine Zeta-Jones as Elena and the young, brash Zorro, played by Antonio Banderas. If the movie has a tiny flaw, it’s this: Antonio Banderas is Spanish, not Mexican. Also, Zorro’s mentor, played by Anthony Hopkins, is very much not Mexican. In fact, like Zeta-Jones, he is Welsh and wearing an unfortunate amount of brown makeup. No one from the United Kingdom can pull off a tan. I hereby forgive The Mask of Zorro for not casting any Mexicans in those three main roles. The 90s were, you know, looser. I would, however, love to see a new badass Zorro movie (are you there, Hollywood, it’s me, John DeVore).

1. ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954)

This gritty black-and-white Japanese classic, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a perfect movie. The story is simple: A village threatened by bandits asks a samurai for help, who then gathers six others trained in the art of killing to teach the peasants how to fight. He makes sure these ronin, or masterless samurai, are hungry and will share their swords and knowledge for food. The influence this movie—and all of Kurosawa’s body of work, really—has had on Hollywood cannot be understated, from an actual remake, The Magnificent Seven from 1960, to Pixar’s 1998 A Bug’s Life. Those are just two examples, too. And then there’s George Lucas, whose entire Star Wars saga is basically space samurai fighting with katana swords made out of lasers. Seven Samurai is a movie about duty and loyalty, love between friends, and the importance of both individuality and community. The violence is not gory but constant; the sword fights fast, fluid, and deadly—a must-see, in my opinion.