re: Braveheart vs Gladiator

I pondered this question all night and have come back with my response: Braveheart.

I like both, but I like Braveheart more. It's Top 5 for me. When the film came out, I was dating a girl who looked eerily similar to Murron.

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Gladiator from my perspective is better for rewatch at least in part because the ending is more uplifting and yea, I'm a sucker for an uplifting conclusion.

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Uh...seriously?

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Braveheart is a great film, whilst Gladiator is a good movie.

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His speech in the scene you linked is not particularly inspirational unlike the speech by Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and the carrying of Maximus' body by those who loved him.

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Yes, but you see - Robert the Bruce's speech actually accomplished something (the independence of Scotland), while Lucilla's speech did nothing for Rome. The latter continued to slowly decay until it fell apart completely a couple of hundred years later.

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hating those guys have been a thing for a couple hundreds years now.

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There are Irish drinking songs about killing the English that are 500 years old. (Whiskey In The Jar the most known Engl8sh language example.)

Braveheart is probably my favorite overall movie.

Seeing this moving in the theaters as a 12 year old, when the two armies just run into each other for the first time at stirling, was a real “holy shite” movie moment for me.

Say what you will about racist arse melly Gibson, but my god has he made some immersive movies.

The two are incomparable because they're not simply action movies.

Maximus and William Wallace's character arcs are pretty much opposite.

In one, you have a general, who becomes a slave, and finds redemption.
In the other, you have a farmer, who becomes a warlord, and becomes a great national symbol of freedom.

I won't even bother going into the film making, tone, and differences in styles.

Both films are cinematic masterpieces and shouldn't be boiled down and stuffed into the "action" section at blockbuster.

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Braveheart wins categorically.

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Well, that's subjective.

I think it depends on what you're hoping to get out of a movie.

That said, there are areas where Gladiator is better and areas where Braveheart is better.

I think, however, that a tale of a war of independence from the English(British) resonates a bit stronger with Americans than a tale of a Greek hero, so our opinions are probably biased from an emotional connection standpoint.

From a ratings standpoint, Gladiator edges out Braveheart on IMDB (8.5 to 8.3) and Rotten Tomatoes (80% to 76%). Those numbers are very close though.

Gladiator, while not entirely accurate, is more historically accurate than Braveheart, and also has the benefit of using a fictional character as the lead (Maximus) as opposed to a real-life person who was quite different from their portrayal (William Wallace).

I think, at the end of the day, saying one is "better" than another is a polarizing opinion. This isn't like comparing a movie critically acclaimed (like, The Matrix) vs a movie critically panned (like, The Matrix Resurrections). You're taking two very well-received movies and trying to claim one is "categorically" better than the other, and I would disagree with that assessment.