The most notable movies set in Ancient Greece

You may have heard of Ray Harryhausen, the famed stop-motion animator. His last film was “Clash of the Titans,” which features a famous version of Medusa and a mechanical owl. The movie is based on the myth of Perseus, and it’s a bit of a slight. Harry Hamlin isn’t the best leading man for a movie. However, it’s rich in Greek mythology and stands as a testament to Harryhausen's legacy.

In 2010, “Clash of the Titans” was remade, and it arrived during that dark era of post-production 3D conversion. This time, Sam Worthington played Perseus, but people remember this film for only one reason. Liam Neeson, as Zeus, yells “Release the Kraken!” in this movie. This is where that meme came from.

In Greek mythology, the character’s name is “Heracles.” “Hercules” is his Roman name. And yet, when Disney decided to make an animated movie about the demigod, they set it in Ancient Greece but used his Roman name. Outside of Greece, nobody seemed to care. “Hercules” came during a strong run of success for Disney; it was a big hit, and it’s still considered a solid outing from the studio, if not in the, ahem, Pantheon of Disney animated movies.

Here’s a live-action take on the same character. Don’t worry, once again the Roman name was used for a story set in Ancient Greece. Dwayne Johnson, already a bona fide movie star, was in the title role. He’s fine in the movie, and the movie is okay, but it was a hit. Notably, the same year “The Legend of Hercules,” starring Kellan Lutz, came out. It was directed by one of Hollywood’s all-time hacks, Renny Harlin, and it was a flop that got panned.

“Troy” reads as more realistic than “Clash of the Titans” or “Hercules,” but it isn’t. It’s based, roughly, on the “Iliad,” a work of Greek mythology. Brad Pitt plays Achilles in this movie. As an epic drama featuring a massive movie star, “Troy” was a big hit, and it’s the most successful retelling of the story of the Trojan War in film thus far.

Kudos to “Immortals,” a middling movie, for being the first one to put Henry Cavill in a lead role in a major motion picture. He plays Theseus, a different hero from Greek mythology (there are a lot of those), and he goes on some adventures and whatnot. The Minotaur is involved. It was directed by Tarsem Singh, who, if nothing else, knows how to make a movie look interesting.

Speaking of Henry Cavill in leading roles, Zack Snyder would certainly cast him as a Superman eventually. Before getting into the world of superheroes, Snyder made his name, and his polarizing reputation, on “300.” It’s…very Snyder. It’s different from most movies on this list in that it is about an actual event, the Battle of Thermopylae. Of course, it’s not an accurate look at that battle, but at least some of the people are real.

Alexander the Great is also a real person from Ancient Greece. He had one of the biggest empires in the world, and he died at 32. “Alexander” has quite a cast, including the rising Colin Farrell as Alexander, and it was directed by Oliver Stone. However, it was received in a cool fashion, and it was, if not a flop, then flop-adjacent.

Of course, it didn’t take until 2004 for a movie to be made about one of history’s most notable figures. Fifty years earlier, there was an old-school Hollywood epic about him. Naturally, it was shot in Spain and starred the Welsh actor Richard Burton. Burton was a good actor, off and on, but the takeaway from this film was that it was overlong and a little dull.

Helen of Troy is a key (fictional) figure in the story of the Trojan War. She is, after all, the face that launched quite a few ships. Notably, “Helen of Troy” was directed by Robert Wise, who also directed “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music.” Of course, this isn’t a musical, but Wise managed to do the quasi-historical epic fairly well, and the film deviates from the normal story of the Trojan War in a couple of interesting ways.

We started with the last Ray Harryhausen film, and now we circle back to an earlier work. This film features perhaps the most famous bit of Harryhausen animation, when Jason battles the skeleton warriors. When Tom Hanks introduced Harryhausen to receive his lifetime achievement Oscar in 1992, he called “Jason and the Argonauts” the best movie ever made.

“The Trojan Women” is interesting in that it is a fairly faithful adaptation of a play by the Ancient Greek writer Euripides. They just removed the Greek gods from the story and focused on the human characters. Vanessa Redgrave and Katharine Hepburn play those Trojan women, in part. It’s not Hepburn’s best work, but it is interesting to see her in this pared-down drama.

“Night in Paradise” blends history and fiction. It features some real people, including Croesus and Aesop. However, it also includes sorceresses. So, you know, not fully accurate. “Night in Paradise” is a whimsical comedy, though, so some flights of fancy are fine.

“The Return” is a small film, particularly for being based on an ancient epic. It’s about, well, the return half of “The Odyssey.” Though it is a small multinational film, it centers on Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope, and that is where “The Return” finds its strength. It’s an attempt to make an epic a personal story in an interesting way.

When we say this film, we wanted to include it to go properly old-school. We’re talking a century old at this point! There used to be a lot more movies based on the hook of telling the story of somebody’s “private life.” This light adventure film is notable as a silent movie released the same year as “The Jazz Singer,” the first “talkie.” “The Private Life of Helen of Troy” was nominated for Best Title Writing at the first Oscars, but because silent movies were on the way out, that was the only time that category existed.

We’re including “Cleopatra” here toward the end because it isn’t a perfect fit. Cleopatra is a figure of the ancient world, but she is primarily associated with Egypt, particularly the end of the pharaoh era at the hands of the burgeoning Roman Empire. However, “Cleopatra” hops around the ancient world owing to wars and battles, and even starts with a battle that took place in Greece. Additionally, Cleopatra was the end of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt. The family descended from Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Ptolemy was Greek, and Cleopatra was Greek, even if she is associated with Egypt. Plus, “Cleopatra” is one of the most infamous movies ever made, so we wanted to include it if we could.

Our caveat is that this is a direct-to-video movie: an animated team-up between Hercules and Xena from their respective TV shows. Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless voice their characters, as this was an actual spinoff of those programs. Those shows were both made on a tight budget, but with animation, they could do a lot of epic stuff they couldn’t do on TV.

Of course, we end here, the latest notable entry into this realm. “The Odyssey” was hyped as one of the biggest movies of 2026 for nearly a year. It is, after all, Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to “Oppenheimer,” which won a trillion Oscars. Nolan opted to tell one of the oldest epics we still have around, which is the kind of thing he can get away with. And then everybody had very reasonable reactions to the film.