Last Updated on 26 February 2024
I searched the Internet for lists of the best sword & sorcery movies of all time. Criteria included the movies being ranked, not just listed, and generally created by groups, whether teams or committees or based on general public voting (like Ranker.com).
I was able to find 15 lists. I took the 15 lists and added all their content into a spreadsheet, noting the rank of every film. I ended up averaging the rankings each movie got (there were 89 that were on at least 2 lists) and dividing that average by a factor of the number of lists that movie was on. The lowest score meant a high ranking average on many lists. The complete spreadsheet is attached at the bottom.
The movies that were on the most lists (out of 15) were:
- Conan the Barbarian (1982) – 13 lists
- Excalibur (1981) – 12 lists
- Krull (1983) – 12 lists
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) – 11 lists
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) – 10 lists
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) – 10 lists
- Willow (1988) – 10 lists
- The Beastmaster (1982) – 10 lists
- Highlander (1986) – 9 lists
Here are links to the lists I used along with dates the lists were created:
- Flickchart – 1 May 2023
- FaceOff – 2 Apr 2023
- Ranker – 31 Mar 2023
- MovieFone – 3 Sep 2022
- Fiction Horizon – 31 May 2022
- Marvelous Videos – 16 Mar 2022
- Viebly – 24 Dec 2021
- ObsidianNomad – 19 Aug 2020
- PopCrunch – 2 Apr 2020
- Letterboxd – 26 Nov 2019
- ScreenRant – 2 Mar 2016
- Deluxe Video Online – 24 Sep 2013
- The Greenman – 12 Feb 2012
- PopMatters – 25 Nov 2011
- Best Randoms – no date