Which Gladiator Movie Gets the Most Thumbs Up?
In the days of the Roman Empire, plebeians and patricians alike entertained themselves by watching men fight to the death. Some two millennia later, we’re much more civilized; we entertain ourselves by watching movies where men fight to the death.
Audiences are returning to the Colosseum with the release of Gladiator II, the latest in a subgenre that dates back to Hollywood’s early days. Perhaps surprisingly, though, there aren’t actually as many true gladiator movies as the subgenre’s cultural saturation would imply. The “Joey, do you like gladiator movies?” joke from Airplane! makes it seem like there are enough gladiator movies that you’d need to bust out some of the weird letters to count them all using Roman numerals. That’s not the case, though. Excluding genre movies that have gladiatorial combat in them, like Tron: Legacy or Thor: Ragnarok, and ruling out sword-and-sandals epics that feature Romans but no actual gladiators, it’s a much smaller list of films that will scratch your gladiator itch.
We’re left with 13 gladiator movies — many of which are extremely Christian and many of which have gay undertones (not mutually exclusive) — that earn a thumbs-up from a discerning Caesar. And, in that spirit, all the movies are getting a thumbs-up or thumbs-down ranking, evaluating both how good of a movie they are and how much of the movie is about gladiators. (Chariot racing, while technically different, is acceptable because it’s a deadly sport.) In order to make this list, at least one pivotal scene needs to take place in an arena — but there are great films that have minor gladiatorial aspects, and there are movies that are packed with gladiator action but are quite bad as films. Let the thumbs serve as a guide to which type of movie you’re dealing with.
And with that, we who are about to rank, salute you.
Ben-Hur (2016)
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This remake of the 1959 original Ben-Hur (which you’ll find much higher on this list) tries to have it both ways. It aims to make the story of the Jewish prince turned slave turned charioteer who gets revenge on the Roman stepbrother who wronged him into something much grittier, stripping all the color out of what should be a lush world and replacing jaw-dropping sets with drab CGI. There’s a bigger focus on action, but none of it is good. At the same time, it also foregrounds the Christianity, making Jesus Christ into a proper character, whereas the original told its story around the Greatest Story Ever Told to great effect. The result doesn’t feel at all spiritual. Rather, it feels like a crass play to reach both faith-based audiences and kids in search of an exciting blockbuster, respecting neither. The only — only — thing the 2016 Ben-Hur might have over the original is a few shots near the end where charioteers get yeeted from their crashing chariots, an entertaining special effect the original couldn’t practically achieve but one that doesn’t make up for how crummy the rest of the sequence is in comparison.
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
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Though not an explicit remake, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is similar to The Fall of the Roman Empire, as both feature a disgraced Roman general who must fight for the future of Rome after Emperor Commodus usurps his father, Marcus Aurelius. So why, then, are The Fall of the Roman Empire and Gladiator so far apart on this list? The former was a box-office bomb that is often credited alongside Cleopatra as one of the films that ended Hollywood’s infatuation with epics. There’s plenty of spectacle — a re-creation of the Roman Forum was the largest set ever built at the time — but the execution is middling and the story is tired. It probably shouldn’t be on this list at all, since there isn’t a proper gladiator scene in it. Instead, General Livius duels Commodus with javelins for the fate of Rome in a makeshift arena made of centurion shields. When Gladiator did this same basic scene, it was significantly more exciting and more emotionally loaded. (Not to mention that Gladiator’s version was more gladiator-y.)
Quo Vadis (1951)
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The arguable first in a wave of mid-century gladiator movies, Quo Vadis follows a Roman military commander, Marcus Vinicius, who falls in love with a Christian woman and must attempt to reconcile his feelings and her faith, which was persecuted under the rule of Emperor Nero. Quo Vadis was a big hit when it came out, and it certainly has all the hallmarks of the lavish historical, biblical epics that were so in vogue at the time, but its three-hour run time really feels like three hours (if not more). The gladiator scene comes near the end, when the woman, Lygia, is tied up in an arena and her bodyguard must kill a charging bull with only his bare hands to save her. It’s not a terrible action scene, all told, but if you’re coming to this list looking for a gladiator movie, one dude wrestling with a cow probably ain’t gonna cut it.
Barabbas (1961)
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Barabbas shares a lot of similarities with Ben-Hur, which had been released two years earlier. The big difference is that Ben-Hur is a lot of fun while Barabbas is a bummer from start to finish. The title character is a criminal whom the crowd elected to spare over Jesus when Pontius Pilate gave them the chance, according to the New Testament. Barabbas endures a life of survivor’s guilt and misery following his pardon, toiling away in underground mines, Andor-style, for 20 years before surviving a cave-in and becoming a gladiator. There is something kinda fun about actor Anthony Quinn, who was in his mid-40s at the time and intentionally looks like shit following his character’s decades of slavery, being a surprisingly good gladiator. On the whole, though, watching him suffer and suffer before eventually embracing Christ is a tough hang.
Pompeii (2014)
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Kit Harington didn’t stray too far from Westeros, genre-wise, when he starred in Pompeii, which came out between the third and fourth seasons of Game of Thrones. He also didn’t exactly distinguish himself as Milo, a Celt with less personality than Jon Snow who becomes a Roman slave. Milo’s then forced to fight as a gladiator in Pompeii … which is about to explode! Pompeii’s gladiator scenes are plentiful and action-packed, but they’re extremely hamstrung by the movie’s PG-13 rating, and you can feel it holding itself back with every non-bloody swing of the sword. (That it’s so easy to compare it to Game of Thrones’s violence doesn’t help.) But, when the volcano explodes, Pompeii becomes a pretty fun disaster movie, if for no other reason than that it’s different to see the well-trod disaster tropes applied to ancient times.
Gladiator II (2024)
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Gladiator II should’ve heeded the words of Oliver Reed’s Proximus in the first movie; you become the best gladiator not because you’re the strongest or you kill the quickest but because the crowd loves you. Ridley Scott’s sequel, which comes almost a quarter-century after the first effort, stars a jacked Paul Mescal as its next-generation Russell Crowe. Unlike Crowe’s Maximus, however, Mescal’s Lucius is a hard character for crowds to love — or even care about. Saddled with a convoluted backstory that prevents him from expressing emotions beyond taciturn rage until the movie eventually fills in the gaps about what happened between the last movie and this one, Lucius drifts through the many elaborate gladiator combat scenes with a sense of disinterested detachment. There’s a whole conspiracy involving his mother, a Roman general, and the deranged twin emperors that feels detached from Lucius’s journey until it isn’t. Perhaps most damningly, Lucius never establishes a bond or rapport with his fellow gladiators — which, it turns out, is something of a load-bearing Corinthian column for gladiator movies. It’s clear why Maximus earned their love and respect; why his comrades come to revere Lucius is something Gladiator II just assumes. It’s disappointing and not helped by the fact that the action scenes — like a naval battle in the Colosseum and a rhino fight that Scott dreamed of for the first movie but couldn’t pull off — feel somewhat perfunctory despite how elaborate they aspire to be.
The Sign of the Cross (1932)
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There are sexier and more violent movies than The Sign of the Cross, but none will make you go “damn” more than Cecil B. DeMille’s 1932 Pre-Code epic, which really gets a lot of mileage out of being Pre-Code. Like Quo Vadis (which itself was based on an 1890s novel), The Sign of the Cross follows a Roman named Marcus who falls in love with a Christian woman. Ostensibly a biblical epic where the ultimate ending is Marcus accepting Christ and eternal life, The Sign of the Cross features an erotic lesbian dance, actress Claudette Colbert bathing in milk, and about 20 straight minutes of gladiator games that have the general vibe of a snuff film. Men fight to the death, Christians are mauled by lions, and naked women covered only with flower garlands are tied up for crocodiles to devour and gorillas to ravage. It’s not exactly the sort of action movie a modern viewer might be expecting when they look for a gladiator movie, but it certainly captures the innate debauchery of the arena in addition to capturing the realities of Old Hollywood.
The Eagle (2011)
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Strictly speaking, The Eagle should only barely count as a gladiator movie. Only one scene takes place in an arena, and it’s hardly action-packed. An enslaved Celt (Jamie Bell) is forced to duel a gladiator in a shabby, muddy arena in Roman Britain, but he refuses to put up any sort of fight and is only spared when Channing Tatum’s centurion gives his resolute bravery in the face of certain death a big ol’ thumbs-up. However, the ensuing relationship between the two echoes dynamics found in plenty of good gladiator movies, as Bell’s Esca has a complex bond with Tatum’s Marcus (another Marcus!). Esca is Marcus’s slave, in his debt because Marcus saved his life. But although he hates Rome, he seems to genuinely like Marcus, even going above and beyond when Marcus ventures north of Hadrian’s Wall to recover the eagle standard of the lost Ninth Legion. Despite having the least actual onscreen gladiator content of any movie on this list, The Eagle is without question the best movie to watch if you want to watch something in the style of 2000’s Gladiator, but worse.
Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
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Demetrius and the Gladiators is the sequel to another movie, 1953’s The Robe, though you don’t need to have seen The Robe in order to enjoy what Demetrius gets up to with those gladiators. The title character is a former Greek slave who is arrested and forced to fight as a gladiator. At first, the devout Christian refuses to kill, but when he believes the woman he loves has been killed, Demetrius throws that commandment in the garbage and goes crazy in the arena. His exploits catch the eye of Emperor Caligula, who asks the now-faithless gladiator to bring him Christ’s robe, which Demetrius was tasked with hiding following the events of the first film. The movie is about Demetrius’s crisis of faith, but his time in the arena and in gladiator training camps have all the beats and drama you’d expect from a gladiator movie. Demetrius and the Gladiators might have actually codified these tropes years before Spartacus or Ben-Hur made them iconic.
The Arena (1974)
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The Arena is exactly what you’d expect from a sexy gladiator exploitation flick made in the ’70s, for better and for worse. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov, who had starred in Black Mama, White Mama two years prior, reteamed for The Arena, which swapped the prison setting of their first film for an ancient Roman arena. After they’re captured and taken from their respective home countries by the Romans, slave girls Mamawi and Bodicia must put aside their differences and join forces if they want to have a chance at survival. The Arena is schlocky, violent, and horny — uncomfortably so at times, as there are depictions of sexual assault that might understandably be disqualifying for some viewers. But, if you know what you’re getting into and are in the mood to watch glorious trash, step into The Arena.
Spartacus (1960)
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There were gladiator movies before Spartacus, and there have been many since, but Stanley Kubrick’s epic is undoubtedly the archetypal gladiator movie. It has been endlessly referenced and copied, and there are parts of Spartacus that Gladiator rips off almost explicitly — for good reason! Kirk Douglas stars as Spartacus, an actual historical figure who led a slave rebellion and waged war against Rome, and the film follows his growth from a gladiator-school rookie to a noble leader of men and women in search of freedom. Spartacus isn’t perfect — it gets a little muddled at times and eventually, it bumps on the limits of the stoic title character’s interiority — but it’s a rousing, iconic swords-and-sandals saga.
Ben-Hur (1959)
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Ben-Hur, the first film to ever win 11 Academy Awards, is unquestionably the best movie on this list, held back from taking the top spot only because it’s not especially focused on gladiator sport until the final sequence. But oh my, what a sequence that final chariot race is. Charlton Heston stars as Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem who is betrayed by Messala, a man he once considered a brother, and sentenced to a life of slavery in the bowels of a galley ship. However, when he survives the boat’s sinking and fate gives him another chance, he has a shot at revenge against Messala on the racetrack. The deadly chariot race, a nearly 15-minute-long tour de force of practical effects and daring stunts, is one of the best action sequences ever filmed (if not the best). If Ben-Hur’s only accomplishment was the chariot sequence, it would still be a masterpiece; the fact that the race comes at the climax of an exceptional movie makes it something of a miracle, full of stirring performances and lush production design. Among the many gladiator movies that are also religious epics, Ben-Hur might be the most effective; Judah’s story plays out in tandem with a mostly unseen Jesus’, allowing the former to stand on its own while benefiting from an earnest sense of spirituality from the latter.
Gladiator (2000)
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Of course Gladiator — a movie whose title is literally just the word “gladiator” — was going to be the best gladiator movie. Director Ridley Scott understood the assignment when he brought back the historical epic after Hollywood had largely abandoned it for decades, as Gladiator’s primary goal is the same as the real-life gladiatorial games of antiquity: thrill and delight the crowd. Russell Crowe stars as Maximus Decimus Meridius, a respected Roman general whose family is murdered and is cast into slavery when Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus, who has usurped his father’s throne, (correctly) views Maximus as a threat. Maximus’s quest for revenge takes him from a ramshackle arena in Spain all the way to the Colosseum, fighting man and beast alike in the hopes of gaining vengeance and freedom. While the critical response to Gladiator is somewhat muddled (it is typically considered to be in the middle of the pack of Best Picture winners), no other gladiator movie quite captures the gory glory of Rome. Strength and honor.
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