6 Swashbucklers To Watch if You Love ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’

Published Oct 7, 2026, 5:39 AM EDT

Andrea M. Ciriaco is a long-time script reader and former entertainment editor who specializes in classic movies and Hollywood history. She was a student film critic at Kent State University for three years and worked at Warner Bros Studio in Burbank and The Safran Company for several years. Based on her vast taste and range of knowledge, many consider Andrea to be a walking IMDb who knows dozens of underrated movies and is a vital assesst to any trivia night. While movies are her expertise, Andrea is also a diehard fan of iconic shows including The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, Will & Grace and South Park. Some of her favorite filmmakers are Walt Disney,John Huston, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Howard Hawks. 

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Since the 1930s, the swashbuckler genre has captivated audiences with its stories of overdue revenge, adventures on the high seas, and sword-wielding vigilantes, making it one of the most timeless film genres. While the genre reached its peak of popularity during the 1930s with classics such as The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl essentially reimagined the swashbuckler for modern moviegoers while still tipping its hat to the classic tropes and treasures of the genre.

Whether you're craving more battles on the ocean waves, cheeky banter, or daring escapes and last-minute rescues, there's a film out there ready to scratch that itch, so hoist the colors and prepare to discover your next favorite gem of the genre. From beloved classics and cult favorites like The Mask of Zorro and The Princess Bride to animated surprises such as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, these are the six best swashbuckler movies to watch for any movie fan who loves Pirates of the Caribbean!

6 'Hook' (1991)

Image via TriStar Pictures

Steven Spielberg's fantasy adventure, Hook, is a swashbuckling treat for Pirates of the Caribbean fans, especially those who love a villain with style. Based on J.M. Barrie's beloved classic, Robin Williams stars as Peter Banning, a grown-up Peter Pan and workaholic lawyer who, after his children are kidnapped by his old nemesis, Captain James Hook (Dustin Hoffman), must return to Neverland, where he must reclaim his youthful spirit before facing Hook one final time.

While Williams delivers an exceptional performance, the star attraction of this swashbuckling adventure is Hoffman's Captain Hook, a vain, wickedly funny pirate whose vanity and menace make him a joy to watch. Another notable quality of the movie is its swordplay and stunt work, which bring plenty of daring escapes, chases, and showdowns, all backed by a soaring John Williams score. Beneath the fun lies a heartfelt story about family and rediscovering wonder, which gives the adventure real emotional weight. It's playful, imaginative, and full of pirate swagger, making Hook a perfect pick for anyone who wants more fun on the high seas.

5 'The Mask of Zorro' (1998)

Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

If Pirates of the Caribbean made you fall for swashbucklers, then the forgotten adventure movie, The Mask of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas, is where to sail next. Based on Johnston McCulley's fictional character of the same name, the movie tells the story of an aging Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins), who, after being wrongfully imprisoned for twenty years, escapes to take his revenge on a corrupt governor and is aided by his successor, Alejandro (Antonio Banderas), who has his own score to settle with the governor's right-hand man.

The Mask of Zorro delivers the same winning blend of daring action, sly humor, and sweeping romance that made the Black Pearl's first voyage so memorable. In many ways, it feels like a spiritual predecessor to Pirates since the screenwriters, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, later co-wrote the Pirates films. Hopkins plays the aging Zorro with uncanny ease, passing his skills to Banderas's hot-headed bandit, creating a mentor-student dynamic that is full of charm and wit. Add a rousing score by James Horner, lush period settings, and a villain you love to hate, and you have a film that captures the romance and thrill of the swashbuckler genre at its finest.

4 'Puss in Boots: The Last Wish' (2022)

Image via DreamWorks Animation

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is one of the best movies of 2022 and demonstrates that a swashbuckler can be gorgeous, hilarious, and surprisingly emotional all at once. Antonio Banderas returns as the charismatic feline, Puss, who has burned through eight of his nine lives and tries to escape his own morality by getting his paws on the Last Wish of a fallen Wishing Star. Anyone who loves Pirates of the Caribbean will recognize the movie's DNA immediately: a flamboyant rogue with a legendary reputation, a magical object everyone is desperate to claim, and a race across dangerous lands to reach it first.

One of the movie's greatest strengths is its stunning animation. Its painterly, storybook style turns every sword fight into a dynamic, stylish set piece, with fast, inventive choreography that rivals any live-action duel. The villains are just as memorable, especially Wolf (Wagner Moura), a relentless bounty hunter who is truly a menacing and alluring character, and Jack Horner (John Mulaney), Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the Three Bears (Ray Winstone/ Olivia Colman/ Samson Kayo), who bring plenty of laughs to this animated swashbuckling adventure. Add sharp writing, a rousing score, and a heartfelt message about living fully, and you have an adventure that appeals to kids and adults alike, making Puss in Boots: The Last Wish a perfect choice for anyone who loves a good rogue's tale.

Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard

Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.

🐕Wick

🏁Fast

🧨Mission

🎄Die Hard

FIND YOUR FRANCHISE →

01

How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill.

REVEAL MY FRANCHISE →

Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

John Wick

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

Fast & Furious

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Mission: Impossible

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Die Hard

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

3 'The Count of Monte Cristo' (2002)

Kevin Reynolds' The Count of Monte Cristo is a marvelous adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel of the same name and is a superb pick for Pirates of the Caribbean fans who want a swashbuckler with a darker, more satisfying edge. The movie tells the story of Edmond Dantès (Jim Caviezel), a sailor wrongly imprisoned and left to rot in the island prison of Château d'If by his close friend (Guy Pearce), who escapes to claim a fortune and exact elaborate revenge against those who betrayed him.

Like the Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Count of Monte Cristo is full of seafaring adventure, from a daring prison break to encounters with smugglers and a thrilling final duel. The swordplay is crisp and dramatic, and the sweeping coastal landscapes and period costumes give it a lavish, old-fashioned feel, immersing audiences into an intense journey of redemption and vengeance. Caviezel brings charisma and intensity to Dantès, while Pearce is deliciously hateful as the smug, treacherous Fernand Mondego. Their rivalry drives the story, and the payoff is endlessly rewarding. Other notable performances include Richard Harris, as the wise Abbé Faria, and Luis Guzmán, as the scene-stealing smuggler Jacopo, who both add warmth and humor along the way.

2 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' (1938)

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

There's no denying that The Adventures of Robin Hood defined the swashbuckler genre and any fan of Pirates of the Caribbean owes this classic at least one watch. Based on the English folklore legend, Errol Flynn stars as the Saxton knight turned outlaw with a heart of gold, Sir Robin of Locksley, who, along with his men and help from the lovely Maid Marian (Olivia de Havilland), fights to protect England and prevent the merciless Prince John (Claude Rains) from stealing the crown from his brother, Richard the Lionheart (Ian Hunter).

Flynn, without question, set the golden standard of the charming rogue with his impeccable performance, making him an icon of the swashbuckler genre. His Robin Hood laughs in the face of danger, taunts his enemies, and wins hearts with confidence and a mischievous grin. It's easy to see his influence on Captain Jack Sparrow, a hero who survives as much on wit and showmanship as on skill with a blade. The movie was one of the highest-grossing films of the year and went on to win three Oscars, notably for Best Original Score and Best Art Direction. While some might be put off by the age of the film, The Adventures of Robin Hood provided the blueprint for everything that makes swashbucklers so much fun, and is still a worthwhile watch for audiences today.

1 'The Princess Bride' (1987)

Image via 20th Century Studios

Rob Reiner's swashbuckling adventure The Princess Bride is one of the greatest fantasy cult classics that wins you over with wit as much as swordplay, which is exactly why Pirates of the Caribbean fans should seek it out. Based on William Goldman's novel of the same name, the movie follows a swashbuckling farmhand, Wesley (Cary Elwes), who, after being away for five years and presumed dead, returns home where he sets out to rescue his true love, Buttercup (Robin Wright), from the evil Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon).

While the story captivates audiences with fairy tale nostalgia and unpredictable humor, the swordplay in The Princess Bride is a main highlight, ultimately setting it apart from other modern swashbuckling adventures. The cliffside duel between Elwes and Mandy Patinkin's Inigo is a masterclass in banter and elegance, as two skilled fencers trade compliments and jabs, and the final showdown is just as satisfying. Add Wallace Shawn's scheming Vizzini, Andre the Giant's gentle Fezzik brings heart and humor, and a wonderfully theatrical Billy Crystal, and the villains and supporting players are unforgettable. Beneath the jokes and humorous antics lies a sincere love story and a loving tribute to classic adventure tales, proving that a great swashbuckler needs just as much heart as it does a sword.

The Princess Bride