The best Karl Urban movies and TV shows encompass a range of genres, including sci-fi, comic book releases, horror, and more. Born in New Zealand, Urban got his start in genre shows, with a role in the New Zealand TV series Xena: Warrior Princess. He impressed many people and soon made his way to America, landing his first Hollywood movie role in the Dark Castle horror, Ghost Ship. This helped launch a career that has reached great heights in both giant franchises and streaming shows.

While rarely mentioned among the rest of the cast, Urban was part of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy as Éomer, which made him a star. He moved on to video game movies (Doom), hard sci-fi films (The Chronicles of Riddick), big franchises (Star Trek), and comic book movies (Thor: Ragnarök​​​​​). Urban has also become a major TV star, playing Billy Butcher in Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys.

In 2026, Urban was back again as he helped revive Mortal Kombat, helping it earn its best critical and audience acclaim of any film in the franchise. In Mortal Kombat II, Urban stars as video game favorite Johnny Cage, and with the idea of the tournament back at the forefront once again, the movie has been a critical and commercial success. Through it all, he isn’t an award-winning actor, but has built a reputation as a genre favorite.

15

Pete’s Dragon (2016)

Pete’s Dragon is a family-friendly movie from 2016 based on the 1977 Disney movie of the same name. This remake ignores the musical aspects of the original and instead focuses on a boy’s relationship with the dragon, who is hiding for its own safety. Urban has a very important role as Gavin Magary, the villain hunting Elliott the dragon in the movie.

This was a tricky role, because Gavin was the antagonist, and he wanted to kill the dragon. However, in the end, he sees the error in his ways, and Urban was able to deliver a nuanced performance that made him likable despite being the villain for most of the film. It was a perfect example of Urban’s ability to portray someone living in the grey areas of morality, playing a character always available for redemption.

14

The Bluff (2026)

While Karl Urban received most of his praise for his role in Mortal Kombat II in 2026, he was also in another film that was released that year. The Bluff was a Prime Video release that saw Urban playing Captain Francisco Connor, a pirate looking for stolen treasure and going after the former pirate (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) he believes took it.

The movie is based on an island where the former pirate lives with her son, and that takes a lot of the swashbuckling fun away from pirate movie aficionados. However, the fight scenes between Chopra and Urban are all great, and Urban seems to be having a lot of fun as the evil pirate looking to regain his treasure. His villainy makes it easy to want to see him meet his end in this movie.

13

Priest (2011)

Priest was a critically panned fantasy movie with Paul Bettany starring as a hunter involved in a centuries-long war with vampires. Based on the Korean comic of the same name, the movie sees Priest come across a former priest now known as Black Hat, who is played by Karl Urban. Black Hat is the main antagonist and was transformed into a vampire-human hybrid, the first of his kind.

While the movie has a low 16% Rotten Tomatoes score and a negative audience score, at 46%, Urban’s character was one of the few things that received praise in the movie. He has superhuman strength and a bad attitude, and stole most scenes in which he appeared. Critics claimed that Urban was over-the-top, but admitted that it made his performance more entertaining than most of the movie.

12

Ghost Ship (2002)

In the early 2000s, Dark Castle was a production studio that specialized in low-budget horror movies. After a pair of remakes of classic horror movies (House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts), the studio found its footing. This led to its first original horror film, Ghost Ship, despite a 1952 film of the same name having a completely different plot. The movie featured one of horror cinema’s most gruesome moments when a metal cable snapped, cutting everyone on the ship in half at the start of the film.

The movie follows a haunted ocean liner that a salvage crew discovers in the Bering Sea. The cast was impressive, with Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies in the lead roles. However, this was also notable as Karl Urban’s first Hollywood movie role, in which he played Munder, part of the salvage crew that meets a gruesome fate in the film. While the film received poor critical reviews, it was still a solid low-budget horror movie with gory kills and a spooky atmosphere.

11

Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001)

Karl Urban appeared in the fantasy TV show Xena: Warrior Princess as Julius Caesar. He was a recurring cast member for 10 episodes, but Urban also had other Xena appearances in different episodes, playing various other roles. His first appearance came in a 1996 episode called “Altared States,” where he was a villain named Mael, whom Xena beat in battle. He also played Cupid and a character called Kor.

As Caesar, he started as someone who was flirtatious with Xena before double-crossing her in “Destiny” and then crucifying her later. This played all the way until he was killed by Brutus in “The Ides of March.” This was the franchise that helped Urban move from working as a New Zealand-based actor to moving on to Hollywood, where he started to get major movie roles.

10

The Chronicles Of Riddick (2004)

In 2004, David Twohy and Vin Diesel brought the world their sequel to the cult classic sci-fi horror film Pitch Black​​​. However, with the sequel, the two moved the genre away from pure horror to science fiction. In Pitch Black, Diesel’s Riddick had a surgical shine job on his eyes that allowed him to see in the dark, which helped him fight creatures that emerged during the pitch-black nights. In Chronicles of Riddick, the fugitive remains on the run from bounty hunters, while he heads to a planet to protect it from religious terrorists.

Karl Urban plays Commander Vaako, a loyal commander working with the religious fanatics who are hired to hunt down and kill Riddick. He remains a follower of Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), and is a fanatic who will stop at nothing to follow orders and kill Riddick. However, Urban plays a more significant role thanks to his wife, played by Thandiwe Newton, who does not share Marshal’s beliefs and seeks to have her husband help Riddick eliminate the threat to the universe. The film received poor reviews thanks to its dense mythology, but it is a solid sci-fi effort.

9

Almost Human (2013-2014)

Before taking on the role of Billy Butcher in The Boys​​​, Karl Urban proved himself as a television leading man in the 2013 Fox science fiction series Almost Human. This Bad Robot series stars Urban as a police detective named John Kennex who is reluctantly partnered with an android detective known as Dorian (Michael Ealy). The pairing is uneasy as John distrusts “Synthetics” since one left him behind, believing there was little hope of saving him. However, Dorian thinks too much like a human, differing from other “Synthetics.”

The series only lasted one season, with 13 episodes. Most of the season consists of case-of-the-week episodes. However, there is also an overarching storyline about Dorian and his programming, as well as the theme of how society treats both “Synthetics” and humans genetically engineered to be more. The cancellation was due to low viewership numbers, and thanks to the higher budget, which made it impossible to continue. However, reviews were positive, and it picked up an Emmy Award nomination.

8

Red (2010)

Karl Urban took on the role of a reluctant antagonist in the spy movie Red​​​​​. This film was unique as it cast older actors as the main heroes, with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren as old-school black ops agents who the U.S. government has targeted for elimination to cover up past war crimes by the country. Urban is William Cooper, a new-era CIA black ops agent sent in to take the lead on the mission to kill Willis’s Frank Moses by a corrupt CIA supervisor.

Urban is great in his role as a man who knows he has to follow orders, since that is his job while working for the U.S. government. However, he also slowly realizes, as the film progresses, that his orders might not be entirely legitimate, and he might one day find himself in the same situation as Frank, who wanted to remain retired and left alone. Red picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and also had a sequel, although Urban didn’t return.

7

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Karl Urban had a role in one of the most successful spy movie franchises of this century when he joined the cast of The Bourne Supremacy. Directed by Paul Greengrass, this was the second film in the series, in which Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, still suffering from amnesia, tries to live off the grid in India. In this film, Bourne is framed for murders, and the CIA sends out black ops agents to find Bourne. Karl Urban plays Kirill, a Russian Federal Security Service Agent who committed the murders and framed Bourne.

This film sees Kirill as the main villain, the assassin who goes head-to-head with Jason Bourne. When he kills Franka Potente’s Marie, the love interest from the first movie, it makes him one of Bourne’s most despicable villains. This was Greengrass’s first film in the franchise, and he took the Bourne series to another level, with the follow-up being an even bigger and better action film. However, Urban didn’t return for The Bourne Ultimatum​​​​.

6

Mortal Kombat II (2026)

One of the biggest complaints about the past Mortal Kombat movies was that there wasn’t a tournament in them, and that is the entire purpose of the games and storyline. In Mortal Kombat II, the franchise fixed that, and it resulted in one of the highest-rated movies in the series based on Rotten Tomatoes scores. A lot of the praise also went to Karl Urban, playing one of the most popular game characters, Johnny Cage.

This wasn’t Urban’s first time playing a popular character. He also starred in the MCU and Star Trek franchises, but this time, he delivered a performance that honored the character and helped elevate the release to new heights. While the critical score is only at 65%, it has a 90% audience score, showing the divide between critics and the audience, and Urban is a big reason for its success.