The medieval film has one recurring problem: the period’s beliefs are alien and most productions can’t resist making somebody in the film a modern sceptic so the audience has an ally. The entries at the top of this list refuse that. The Seventh Seal takes the plague and the silence of God entirely seriously. The Name of the Rose builds a murder plot out of a theological dispute about whether Christ laughed. Excalibur shoots the legend as legend and not as history, with armour too shiny and forests too green.
I get more impatient with medieval films than with any other genre, because the easy mistake is so tempting. A filmmaker drops a modern sceptic into the Middle Ages to wink at us, and the whole period collapses into costume.
I want the opposite. I want people who believe plague is punishment and God is listening, and I want to live inside that for two hours.
Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year.
1. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)
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"The best fantasy adaptation ever made, and the only one that took the source entirely seriously."
The Lord of the Rings takes the top of this list and the highest rating on it. Jackson’s three films are the best fantasy adaptation made and among the best films in the genre by any measure.
The scale of the undertaking is the thing that’s hard to convey now. Three films shot at the same time across fifteen months in New Zealand, a studio betting close to three hundred million dollars on a property with no proven audience, and a director whose previous work was low-budget horror.
What makes it work is that nobody involved treated the material as childish. The languages are Tolkien’s, the production built the armor instead of renting it, and the emotional tone of the Boromir death and the Grey Havens is played entirely straight in an era that had stopped doing that. Three films shot at the same time across fifteen months in New Zealand, a studio betting close to three hundred million on a property with no proven audience, and a director whose previous work was low-budget horror.
The languages are Tolkien’s, the production built the armor instead of renting it, and the cast plays the Boromir death and the Grey Havens entirely straight in an era that had stopped doing that.
Howard Shore’s score assigns themes by culture and not by character. That’s why the Shire and Rohan are identifiable before anybody appears on screen. I’ll defend this trilogy against anybody who treats fantasy as a kids’ genre. What moves me is the seriousness. The film plays Boromir’s death without a flicker of irony at a time when blockbusters had stopped doing that, and it took real nerve from a director whose last films were low-budget horror.
2. Robin Hood (1938 / 1973 / 1991 / 2010), Contrast Review
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► Read the full review of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
"Four adaptations, and the 1938 one solved it so completely that nobody has improved on it."
The Robin Hood entry wins its place through the pattern and not through any single film. The 1938 Warner production with Flynn and Rathbone is canonical and each later attempt adds something the original deliberately didn’t have.
The defining quality of the 1938 version is confidence. Nobody in it is conflicted, the film doesn’t apologize for the adventure, and it deploys the Technicolor and Korngold score without irony.
The 1991 adds grit, the 2010 adds a political structure before the legend even begins, and each is an attempt to justify a story to an audience that never asked for justification.
Rathbone was a accomplished fencer and reportedly the better swordsman of the two, and the final duel is staged largely in shadow thrown on a wall. Korngold wrote the score as though for an opera and effectively established what a Hollywood adventure score would sound like for fifty years.
Each later version adds grit, psychology or a political structure, and each loses the confidence that made the 1938 film work. The 1938 film is the one I’d keep if I could only keep one, and I’d keep it for the confidence. Every remake since has felt the need to apologize for the legend with grit or politics, and every one of them is less fun for it. Flynn never once stops to ask whether robbing the rich needs a backstory.
3. The Seventh Seal (1957)
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"A knight plays chess with Death and the film takes both of them literally."
The Seventh Seal is the most serious medieval film ever made and it works because Bergman doesn’t supply a sceptic. A crusader returns to a plague-stricken Sweden, meets Death on a beach, and plays for time.
The chess game isn’t a metaphor that embarrasses the film. Death is a character with dialogue, a sense of humor and rules he keeps, and the knight asks his questions about God’s silence sincerely and nobody answers them. The flagellant procession, the witch burning and the dance of death on the hillside are the images the film is remembered for, and Bergman shot the final one in minutes after noticing the cloud formation and using whoever was standing nearby.
Death is a character with dialogue, a sense of humor and rules he keeps, and the knight’s questions about God’s silence are asked sincerely and not answered. The flagellant procession, the witch burning and the dance of death on the hillside are the images the film is remembered for.
Bergman shot the final dance in minutes after noticing a cloud formation, using whoever was standing nearby, several of them crew and not cast.
The Seventh Seal is the film I point to when somebody says art films are dull. Death has jokes. The knight asks the questions everybody asks at three in the morning, and Bergman has the courage to leave them unanswered. That dance on the hillside, thrown together in minutes, beats anything a modern budget has bought.
4. The Lion in Winter (1968)
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"Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine argue about the succession for two hours and it is savage."
The Lion in Winter is one of the great chamber pieces in cinema and it’s medieval only in setting. James Goldman adapted his own stage play with the dialogue intact. That means it’s two hours of people talking in rooms. The premise is Christmas court at Chinon in 1183. Henry has kept Eleanor imprisoned for ten years and releases her for the holiday so the family can argue about which son inherits, and everybody in the room is lying continuously. Peter O’Toole was thirty-six playing fifty and had already played Henry II in Becket four years earlier. Katharine Hepburn won Best Actress, and Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton both make their film debuts in it.
James Goldman adapted his own stage play with the dialogue intact. That means it’s two hours of people talking in rooms and nothing else.
Peter O’Toole was thirty-six playing fifty and had already played Henry II in Becket four years earlier. That’s the only time an actor has played the same king twice in unrelated films.
Katharine Hepburn won Best Actress, and Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton both make their film debuts in it. This is my idea of a great action film, and nobody throws a punch. Hepburn and O’Toole go at each other like two people who’ve been married to the fight longer than to each other. I’d sit through another two hours of it without blinking.
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
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"The funniest film ever made, and the medieval detail is better than most serious attempts."
Holy Grail has more quotable lines per minute than any comedy before it and most since, and it’s also a more accurate depiction of the period than a major number of straight productions.
The mud, the plague carts, the peasants arguing about political theory and the anarcho-syndicalist commune are jokes that require the period to have been understood first. The coconuts exist because the production couldn’t afford horses. Rock bands, including Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, financed it, putting up money as a tax arrangement. That produced the cheapest financing structure of any landmark British comedy.
The mud, the plague carts, the peasants arguing about political theory and the anarcho-syndicalist commune are jokes that require the period to have been understood first. The coconuts exist because the production couldn’t afford horses. That’s the most productive budget constraint in comedy history. Rock bands including Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin financed it as a tax arrangement. That produced the cheapest financing structure of any landmark British comedy.
6. Excalibur (1981)
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"Boorman shoots the legend as legend, which nobody else has had the nerve to do."
Excalibur is the definitive screen Arthur and one of the strangest studio films of its decade. Boorman’s decision was to film the myth instead of the history, so nothing in it is naturalistic and nothing apologizes for that. The armour is too shiny and characters sleep in it. The forests are lit green. Knights speak in archaic English without embarrassment. Merlin is uncanny instead of a wise old man with a beard.
Boorman had spent years trying to make Lord of the Rings and made this instead. Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and Patrick Stewart are all in it early, and the Carmina Burana over the final charge is the most imitated music cue of the period. The armour is too shiny and characters sleep in it, the forests are lit green, and knights speak in archaic English without embarrassment.
Boorman had spent years trying to make Lord of the Rings and made this instead, using the research he’d already done. Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and Patrick Stewart are all in it early, and Carmina Burana over the final charge is the most imitated music cue of the period.
7. The Name of the Rose (1986)
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"A murder mystery in an abbey, and the motive is a theological dispute about laughter."
The Name of the Rose adapts Eco’s novel and keeps the thing most adaptations would cut: the murders happen over a book. Over whether Aristotle’s lost treatise on comedy should be permitted to exist. That’s a real fourteenth-century argument. Whether Christ laughed was a real dispute with real stakes, and the film builds its plot on the position that laughter destroys fear and fear is what the Church runs on.
Connery plays William of Baskerville as a Franciscan applying empirical method two centuries early, Christian Slater is in his first significant role, and the abbey interiors were built and not found.
Whether Christ laughed was a real dispute with real stakes, and the film builds its plot on the position that laughter destroys fear and fear is what the Church runs on. Connery plays William of Baskerville as a Franciscan applying empirical method two centuries early, and Christian Slater is in his first significant role. The abbey interiors were built and not found, and the library sequence uses forced perspective to make a set that couldn’t exist. The Name of the Rose thrills me because it bets the whole plot on an idea. People are murdered over a book about laughter, and the film makes you believe it. Most thrillers assume the audience only cares about bodies. This one trusts you to care about a library, and it’s right to.
8. Henry V (1989)
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"Branagh at twenty-eight, and Agincourt is mud, not glory."
Henry V was Branagh’s first feature, made at twenty-eight, and he cast Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Judi Dench, Brian Blessed and Robbie Coltrane around himself. It exists in deliberate opposition to Olivier’s 1944 version. That was wartime morale and staged Agincourt as pageantry. Branagh stages his battle in standing water and presents the victory as survival.
The Non Nobis sequence, a single unbroken shot carrying the dead across the field while the hymn builds, runs over four minutes with no dialogue and is the best thing in any Shakespeare film.
Branagh was twenty-eight and cast Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Judi Dench, Brian Blessed and Robbie Coltrane around himself. It exists in deliberate opposition to Olivier’s 1944 version, which was wartime morale and staged Agincourt as pageantry, and Branagh’s battle is fought in standing water.
The Non Nobis sequence, a single unbroken shot carrying the dead across the field while the hymn builds, runs over four minutes with no dialogue.
9. Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
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"Two completely different films, and only one of them is any good."
Kingdom of Heaven is the clearest case in modern cinema of a cut destroying a film. The theatrical release runs a hundred and forty-four minutes. Critics dismissed it, audiences ignored it, and it’s incoherent.
The director’s cut runs a hundred and ninety-four and is a different work. The fifty minutes restored aren’t action; they’re motivation, including an entire subplot that explains who Sibylla is and why the politics matter. Scott has been explicit that the studio required the cut. Edward Norton plays the leper king Baldwin IV entirely behind a mask and is the best thing in either version.
The theatrical release runs a hundred and forty-four minutes and is incoherent, and the director’s cut runs a hundred and ninety-four and is a different work. The fifty restored minutes are motivation, not action, including an entire subplot explaining who Sibylla is and why the politics matter. Edward Norton plays the leper king Baldwin IV entirely behind a mask and is the best thing in either version.
The theatrical cut of Kingdom of Heaven is the best case I know for taking the scissors away from executives. Somebody cut the motivation out of a film about motivation, and critics and audiences punished the wrong version. Watch the director’s cut. Norton’s performance behind that mask is worth the extra fifty minutes by itself.
10. El Cid (1961)
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"Anthony Mann directing Heston, and the ending is a dead man strapped to a horse."
El Cid is magnificent to look at and thinner than the films above it. Mann shot in Spain with real castles and cavalry in the hundreds, and a Miklós Rózsa score.
Heston plays Rodrigo Díaz as an idealized figure instead of a person. That’s period-correct for the legend and limits what the film can do with him.
The final image, the corpse armored and strapped upright to ride out at the head of the army, is one of the great endings in the form and the film spends two and a half hours building toward it. Mann shot in Spain with real castles and cavalry in the hundreds, and Miklós Rózsa’s score is among the last of the great Hollywood epic scores.
Heston plays Rodrigo as an idealized figure instead of a person. That’s period-correct for the legend and limits what the film can do with him.
The final image, the corpse armored and strapped upright to ride out at the head of the army, is one of the great endings in the form. El Cid is gorgeous, and I enjoy it the way I enjoy a cathedral, from a respectful distance. Heston’s Rodrigo is a statue from his first scene, so I admire him and never worry about him. The ending deserves its reputation, though, and I wouldn’t trade it for a more human hero.
11. Becket (1964)
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"Burton and O’Toole, and the film is a break-up."
Becket is a two-hander wearing an epic’s costume. Glenville adapts Anouilh’s play, in which Henry II and Thomas Becket move from drinking companions to enemies once Becket is made Archbishop and unexpectedly starts believing in it.
The historical accuracy is loose, including the entire premise that Becket was Saxon, which Anouilh invented and later admitted was wrong. What it’s is Burton and O’Toole at full power in scenes written for two actors who can hold a room. O’Toole played the same king again four years later in The Lion in Winter, twenty years older and considerably better. Glenville adapts Anouilh’s play, in which Henry and Becket move from drinking companions to enemies once Becket is made Archbishop and unexpectedly starts believing in it.
The historical accuracy is loose, including the premise that Becket was Saxon, which Anouilh invented and later admitted was wrong.
Burton and O’Toole are at full power in scenes written for two actors who can hold a room, and O’Toole played the same king again four years later.
12. Braveheart (1995)
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"Historically indefensible and it won Best Picture anyway."
Braveheart is the most commercially successful medieval film ever made and among the least accurate. The woad, the kilts, the prima nocta and the affair with Isabella are all invented or misplaced by centuries.
What it does have is battle staging that changed the genre. The film stages Stirling Bridge without a bridge and it still works, and the production filmed the infantry charges with reserve soldiers and sustained them for long enough that the audience feels the distance.
It won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and Patrick McGoohan’s Edward I is the best performance in it by a distance.
The woad, the kilts, prima nocta and the affair with Isabella are all invented or misplaced by centuries, and none of it damaged the film commercially. The film stages Stirling Bridge without a bridge and it still works, and the production filmed the infantry charges with reserve soldiers and sustained them long enough that the distance tones.
It won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and Patrick McGoohan’s Edward I is the best performance in it by a distance.
Braveheart infuriates historians, and they’ve got a point. I still enjoy the thing. The battles are more brutal than anything before them, and McGoohan’s Edward is cold enough to chill the room. My reservation is the invention. A film that makes up this much should stop presenting itself as history, and Braveheart never does.
13. Merlin (1998)
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"A television miniseries that takes the Arthurian material more seriously than most features."
Merlin tells the Arthurian cycle from the wizard’s position instead of the king’s. That reorganizes the familiar material into something with a different shape.
Sam Neill plays Merlin as a man caught between the old religion that made him and the new one replacing it. That’s the real historical tension underneath the legend and is rarely the subject.
It was a NBC miniseries with television effects that haven’t aged well, and the supporting cast, including Helena Bonham Carter, Isabella Rossellini and Rutger Hauer, is considerably better than the format usually attracts. Sam Neill plays Merlin as a man caught between the old religion that made him and the new one replacing it. That’s the real historical tension underneath the legend. This was an NBC miniseries with television effects that haven’t aged well, and the supporting cast includes Helena Bonham Carter, Isabella Rossellini and Rutger Hauer. Telling the Arthurian cycle from the wizard’s position instead of the king’s reorganizes familiar material into a different shape.
14. A Knight’s Tale (2001)
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"Fourteenth-century jousting scored with Queen, and it commits completely."
A Knight’s Tale opens with a crowd clapping the rhythm to We’ll Rock You at a jousting tournament, and everything about whether you’ll enjoy the film is settled in that first minute. The anachronism is deliberate and consistent and not lazy. Helgeland’s argument is that a tournament crowd in 1370 was a sports crowd, and that reproducing the feeling requires modern equivalents and not accurate ones. Heath Ledger holds it together and Paul Bettany plays Geoffrey Chaucer as a gambling addict who talks his way out of debt. That’s the funniest thing in it and isn’t entirely unhistorical. Helgeland’s argument is that a tournament crowd in 1370 was a sports crowd, and reproducing the feeling requires modern equivalents.
Paul Bettany plays Geoffrey Chaucer as a gambling addict who talks his way out of debt. That’s the funniest thing in it and not entirely unhistorical.
A Knight’s Tale is the most fun I’ve had with a joust. The Queen singalong sets the rules in the first minute and the film keeps them, and Bettany’s Chaucer steals every scene he’s in. The joke works so well that the film leans on it harder than it should, though, and by the end I wanted fewer anthems and more Bettany.
Heath Ledger holds it together and the jousting was staged with real lances and a rig that pulled riders backward off the horse.
15. The Last Duel (2021)
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"The same events three times, and the third telling is labelled the truth."
The Last Duel adapts Eric Jager’s account of the 1386 trial by combat between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris over Marguerite de Carrouges’s accusation of rape, and tells it three times. The differences between the versions are the argument. In the men’s accounts the changes are small, self-flattering and unnoticed by the teller: a hand held a moment longer, a debt described as a favor, a refusal remembered as reluctance.
The chapter heading on the third version simply states that it’s the truth. It failed commercially and the duel itself is the most brutal thing Scott has staged. The differences between the three accounts are small, self-flattering and unnoticed by the teller: a hand held a moment longer, a debt described as a favor, a refusal remembered as reluctance. The chapter heading on the third version simply states that it’s the truth. That’s the film’s only editorial intervention. It failed commercially and the duel itself is the most brutal thing Scott has staged, filmed in a single sustained sequence with no cutaways.
16. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
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"Costner does not attempt an accent and Alan Rickman takes the entire film away from him."
Prince of Thieves is remembered for two things and only one of them is intentional. Costner plays Robin with an American accent he abandoned attempting, and the film never addresses it.
Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham is the reason the film survives. He negotiated the right to rewrite his own part, played it as broad comedy against a straight production, and the resulting imbalance is the most entertaining thing in it.
Its success was enormous, the Bryan Adams song held number one in the UK for sixteen weeks, and Morgan Freeman’s Azeem was an addition the 1938 version wouldn’t have contemplated. Alan Rickman negotiated the right to rewrite his own part, played it as broad comedy against a straight production, and the resulting imbalance is the most entertaining thing in it.
Costner plays Robin with an American accent he abandoned attempting, and the film never addresses it at any point.
The Bryan Adams song held number one in the UK for sixteen weeks, and Morgan Freeman’s Azeem is an addition the 1938 version wouldn’t have contemplated.
Prince of Thieves is a film I enjoy for one man. Rickman is having a better time than anybody else in the production, and I’m having it with him. Costner sounds like he never left America, and the film’s refusal to notice drags everything around Rickman down to adequate.
17. Dragonheart (1996)
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"Sean Connery voices a dragon, and the effects were genuinely ahead of their time."
Dragonheart’s Draco was among the first fully computer-generated characters to carry significant screen time, predating Jurassic Park‘s velociraptors in ambition if not in release, and the facial animation was built to match Connery’s performance.
It’s a decent premise. A knight who trains kings and a dragon who has given half his heart to a bad one run a con together, staging slayings for payment, and the film is at its best when it’s a buddy picture.
Everything around the two leads is conventional, and the rating reflects a film carried entirely by an effect and a voice. Draco was among the first fully computer-generated characters to carry significant screen time, with facial animation built to match Connery’s performance. As premises go, this one’s decent: a knight who trains kings and a dragon who gave half his heart to a bad one run a con together, staging slayings for payment. Everything around the two leads is conventional, and the rating reflects a film carried entirely by an effect and a voice.
18. Black Death (2010)
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"A small British film about plague and faith, and the premise is better than the budget."
Black Death has a good setup. England in 1348, the plague killing everybody, and a village reported to be untouched by it, which the Church interprets as witchcraft and not as luck. A knight, a monk and a squad of veterans are sent to investigate, and the film’s real subject is that the investigators are as frightening as whatever they find.
Sean Bean is well cast and the budget shows in the final act. That needs more than it can afford. Christopher Smith made it between two better-known horror films and it’s the most serious of the three. England in 1348, the plague killing everybody, and a village reported untouched, which the Church interprets as witchcraft and not as luck.
The film’s real subject is that the investigators are as frightening as whatever they find, and Sean Bean is well cast as a man certain of his authority. Christopher Smith made it between two better-known horror films and the budget shows in a final act that needs more than it can afford.
19. Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
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"The best argument in television history for finishing your source material first."
Game of Thrones carries a composite 7 because the highs are 10s and the lows are 2s, and the distribution is chronological and not random.
The seasons adapted from published novels are among the best television ever made. The seasons written after the showrunners overtook Martin are among the most thoroughly rejected, and the collapse is visible season by season.
It’s on this list because the medieval material was taken seriously for five years, including the politics, the logistics and the winters, and because the failure is instructive about what happens when a long-form structure loses its architecture.
The seasons adapted from published novels are among the best television ever made, and the seasons written after the showrunners overtook Martin are among the most thoroughly rejected.
The medieval material was taken seriously for five years, including the politics, the logistics and the winters. That’s why the collapse registered as a betrayal. Game of Thrones leaves me more bitter than anything on this list. Five years took the politics and the winters seriously, and then the writers ran out of book and ran the show into a ditch. The early seasons deserve every bit of their praise, and that’s exactly what makes the finish so hard to forgive.
The composite 7 averages highs of 10 against lows of 2, and the distribution is chronological and not random.
My verdict on the genre comes down to trust. The films that trust the Middle Ages beat the ones that apologize for them, and Bergman and Goldman both let their people believe exactly what they believed. Lower down the page somebody always loses their nerve, and I’d swap every battle budget down there for one more scene of Hepburn and O’Toole at each other’s throats.
