Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer handled the score on this one…just as he does for pretty much every epic.

We're only sort of kidding. Zimmer's the musical talent behind Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Thelma & Louise, The Last Samurai…the list goes on.

The film's score is alternately heroic and uplifting and mysterious and somber. The film's first sequence of songs, "Progeny," "The Wheat," and "The Battle" foreshadow both other songs in the film and the film's events as a whole.

"Progeny" kicks things off in eerie, mystical style. This piece moves swiftly into "The Wheat", which is similarly eerie but adds a woman's ethereal voice to the mix. Near the end of the sequence "The Battle" kicks in, which becomes Maximus' theme song.

In fact, we think this trio of tunes gives a good idea of the scope of Gladiator. The reason this epic stands out from the crowd is because its hero contains an aching pathos—and nothing combines pathos and heroism quite like a Hans Zimmer score.