The best movies to watch on Cool Sword Day

polygon.com:

One of the best holidays of the year is finally here: Cool Sword Day.

Watching movies with cool swords in them is a time-honored Cool Sword Day tradition, and for good reason. It’s a perfect match of activity and holiday, naturally, but also… who doesn’t love a movie with a cool sword?

For this year’s Cool Sword Day recommendations, we’ve tried to keep away from some of the Cool Sword Day classics you probably watch every year on this great day — the Lord of the Rings movies (on Max), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Prime Video and Tubi), The Princess Bride (Disney Plus), the Kill Bill movies (Netflix), Gladiator (Paramount Plus), and any King Arthur movies. They’re all still great, and feel free to watch them, but we want to dive just a little bit deeper this time (with a few too-good-to-deny exceptions).

Without further ado, your 2024 Cool Sword Day viewing options:

Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase on Amazon,Apple TV

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic sword appears prominently in Conan the Barbarian’s posters, raised to the heavens, radiating light against an empty darkness — as if the gods themselves imbued it with divine and judgmental power. How could we see this Blu-ray cover and not expect the coolest moment to involve rampant delimbing and geysers of gore? And yet! The sequence that makes Schwarzenegger and the sword into mutual icons lacks a single drop of blood.

The bodybuilder stands on a beach, his glossy long hair flitting in the breeze. His stone brow gazes to the horizon as his shredded arm unsheathes the blade, then gingerly shifts between strike and parry positions. He sheaths and then unsheathes, now swinging the blade with crisp, forceful strikes. The camera moves closer, now looking up at Conan. Against an empty blue sky, we see nothing but man and sword. The sword doesn’t need the gods. This combination of flesh and steel will be enough.

But like, to be clear, he still chops the shit out of a ton of bad dudes, and it’s cool as hell. —Chris