Gladiator (2000 film)

This article is about the 2000 film. For the 1992 film, see Gladiator (1992 film).

Gladiator
File:Gladiator ver1.jpg
Directed by	Ridley Scott
Written by	David Franzoni John Logan William Nicholson
Produced by	Douglas Wick David Franzoni Branko Lustig
Starring	Russell Crowe Joaquin Phoenix Connie Nielsen Oliver Reed Ralf Moeller Richard Harris
Cinematography	John Mathieson
Edited by	Pietro Scalia
Distributed by	DreamWorks (USA) Universal Studios (non-USA)
Release dates	5 May, 2000
Running time	154 min.
Language	English
Budget	$103,000,000
Box office	Domestic: $187,705,427 Worldwide: $457,640,427

Gladiator is a 2000 historical action/drama film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. The film is set during the reign of the Emperor Commodus (Phoenix), when General Maximus Decimus Meridius is betrayed and rises through the ranks of the gladitorial arena to avenge his wife and son's murder.

It won five Academy Awards in the 73rd Academy Awards ceremony, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. While Gladiator was criticized by historians for its historical inaccuracies, its epic scope and gigantic battle scenes won praise. The film's success may have helped to revive the historical epic genre, with subsequent films such as Troy, Alexander and Kingdom of Heaven, which Scott also directed.

Plot

A man named Maximus Decimus Meridius is one of the leading generals in the Roman army. He leads his men to a victory against German barbarians, and earns the esteem of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Marcus is dying, and though he has a son, Commodus, the emperor wishes to appoint temporary leadership to Maximus, with a view to returning power to the Senate. When Commodus is told directly by his father that he will not be appointed heir, he murders Marcus and claims inheritance as emperor.

Maximus realizes the truth about Commodus' patricide, and he is betrayed by his trusted ally Quintus, who instructs his guards to "ride until dawn and then execute" Maximus. Soldiers are also sent to capture Maximus' wife and son. Maximus manages to escape his assassination, and races home only to find that he was too late to save his family, as his wife and son have been crucified. After burying his loved ones, Maximus is found unconscious by slave traders and taken to North Africa. There, he is bought by Proximo, and forced to fight for his life in arena tournaments. During this time, he meets the Numidian gladiator, Juba, and a barbarian from Germania named Hagen. Juba proves to be a great comfort to Maximus, speaking of the afterlife and encouraging him to believe that he will be reunited with his family when he dies.

In order to survive the brutal life of a gladiator, Maximus appeals to the Roman people under the name and title "Spaniard". His power and fame grow until he ultimately reaches the historic Roman Colosseum and comes into contact again with Commodus. Upon being introduced to Commodus after a gladiatorial contest, he reveals to the emperor that he is in fact Maximus. Maximus later survives an indirect attack on his life when he is forced into a match against "the only undefeated champion in Roman history," Tigris of Gaul. After an intense battle, in which Maximus must avoid being killed by tigers released into the arena, he defeats Tigris. Yet Maximus ultimately refuses to obey Commodus' command to strike the death blow, and he is pronounced "Maximus the Merciful" by the events Master of Ceremonies. This furthers Commodus' frustration in that he cannot kill or humiliate Maximus.

Following the fight, Maximus meets with Cicero, who informs him that his army is still loyal to him. Soon thereafter, Maximus forms a plot with Lucilla, Commodus' sister, and Gracchus, to rejoin with his army and topple Commodus by force. Commodus, however, learns of this plot and arrests Maximus on the eve of his coup. Cicero, Hagen and Proximo are killed.

File:Gladiator09.jpg

Maximus and Commodus before their final battle

Now desperate to have Maximus killed, Commodus arranges a duel with him in the arena. Commodus knows he is inferior in ability with a blade and stabs Maximus in the lower back with a stiletto just before they enter the arena. He then tells Quintus to "strap on his armour and conceal the wound". In the midst of the fight, Maximus forces Commodus' sword from his hands. When Commodus orders the surrounding guards to give him a sword, Quintus tells them to sheathe their weapons, forcing Commodus to face the fate which he has decided for himself. Commodus at this point produces the stiletto, concealed beneath clothing on his left forearm. Despite his handicap, Maximus is able to defeat Commodus, ultimately driving the stiletto into Commodus' throat. Before he can be helped, however, Maximus dies of his earlier wound. With his dying words he carries out Marcus Aurelius's own commands - calling for Gracchus to be reinstated, the slaves to be freed, and power in Rome to be transferred to the Senate. Aurelius's daughter Lucilla, an ally to both Maximus and Gracchus reiterates this and commands that a full military burial be bestowed upon Maximus. Juba, now free, looks happily into the sky and closes the film by repeating an earlier conversation held with Maximus - "We will meet again - but not yet".

Cast

Actor	Role	Other notes
Russell Crowe	Maximus	Maximus describes himself as "Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."
Joaquin Phoenix	Commodus	Commodus murders his father and also desires his own sister, Lucilla.
Connie Nielsen	Lucilla
Richard Harris	Marcus Aurelius
Oliver Reed	Proximo	The old gruff trader who buys Maximus in North Africa. He was once a gladiator, freed by Marcus Aurelius, and gives Maximus his own armour.
Djimon Hounsou	Juba
Derek Jacobi	Senator Gracchus
John Shrapnel	Gaius
Tomas Arana	General Quintus
Spencer Treat Clark	Lucius Verus	fictional son of the factual Lucius Verus and Lucilla
Ralf Moeller	Hagan
Sven-Ole Thorsen	Tigris of Gaul
Tommy Flanagan	Cicero

Production

Gladiator was based on an original pitch by David Franzoni who went on to write all of the early drafts. Franzoni was given a three-picture deal with DreamWorks as writer and co-producer on the strength of his previous work, Steven Spielberg's Amistad, which helped establish the reputation of DreamWorks SKG. Franzoni was not a classical scholar but had been inspired by Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 novel Those About to Die and decided to choose Commodus as his historical focus after reading the Augustan History. In Franzoni's first draft, dated April 4 1998, he named his protagonist Narcissus, after the praenomen of the wrestler who strangled Emperor Commodus to death, whose name is not contained in the biography of Commodus by Aelius Lampridius in the Augustan History. The name Narcissus is only provided by Herodian and Cassius Dio, so a variety of ancient sources were used in developing the first draft.

The 17th century painting that inspired Ridley Scott to tackle the project

Ridley Scott was approached by producers Walter Parkes and David Wick. They showed him a copy of Jean-Leon Gerome's painting entitled "Thumbs down". Scott was enticed by filming the world of Ancient Rome. However, Scott felt Franzoni's dialogue was too "on the nose" and hired John Logan to rewrite the script to his liking. Logan rewrote much of the first act, and made the decision to kill off Maximus' family to increase the character's motivation.

With two weeks to go before filming, the actors still complained of problems with the script. William Nicholson was brought to Shepperton Studios to make Maximus a more sensitive character, reworking his friendship with Juba and developed the afterlife thread in the film, saying "he did not want to see a film about a man who wanted to kill somebody." David Franzoni was later brought back to revise the rewrites of Logan and Nicholson, and in the process gained a producer's credit. When Nicholson was brought in, he started going back to Franzoni's original scripts and putting certain scenes back in. Franzoni helped creatively-manage the rewrites and in the role of producer he defended his original script, and nagged to stay true to the original vision. Franzoni later shared the Best Picture Oscar with producers Douglas Wick and Branko Lustig.

The screenplay faced the brunt of many rewrites and revisions due to Russell Crowe's script suggestions. Crowe questioned every aspect of the evolving script and strode off the set when he did not get answers. According to a DreamWorks executive, "(Russell Crowe) tried to rewrite the entire script on the spot. You know the big line in the trailer, 'In this life or the next, I will have my vengeance'? At first he absolutely refused to say it." Nicholson, the 3rd and final screenwriter, says Crowe told him, “Your lines are garbage but I’m the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even garbage sound good.” Nicholson goes on to say that "probably my lines were garbage, so he was just talking straight."

File:Cityrome.jpg

One of the much-praised CGI shots of Rome.

Overall, Gladiator cost $145.7 million to film and promote, with much of the production cost spent on computer special effects. However, the movie grossed over $187 million in American theaters and more than $269 million overseas.

The film was shot in three major locations. The opening battle scenes in the forests of Germania were shot over three weeks in Bourne Woods, near Farnham, Surrey in England. Subsequently, the scenes of slavery, desert travel, and gladiatorial training school were shot in Ouarzazate, Morocco just south of the Atlas Mountains for a total of three weeks. Finally, the scenes of Ancient Rome were shot over a period of nineteen weeks in Malta using a multicultural workforce whose talents were stretched to the limits.

A full-scale replica of about one-third of Rome's Colosseum was built in Malta to a height of 52 ft, (with the other two-thirds and remaining height added digitally) mostly from plaster and plywood. The reverse side of the complex supplied a rich assortment of Ancient Roman street furniture, colonnades, gates, statuary, and marketplaces for other filming requirements. The complex was serviced by tented 'costume villages' that had changing rooms, storage, armourers and other facilities. The rest of the Colosseum was created in CG using set-design blueprints, textures referenced from live action, and rendered in three layers to provide lighting flexibility for compositing in Flame and Inferno.

When actor Oliver Reed died in Malta of a heart attack during the filming of Gladiator, it was a European post-production company called The Mill that managed to create a digital body double for the remaining scenes. The visual effects house photographed the body double in the shadows and then mapped a 3D CGI mask of Oliver Reed's face to the remaining scenes during production at an estimated cost of $3 million. The film is dedicated to his memory.

The Mill was also responsible for post-tricks such as compositing real tigers filmed on bluescreen into the fight sequences, and adding smoke trails and extending the flight paths of the opening scene's salvo of flaming arrows to get around regulations on how far they could be fired. They also had to populate a CG crowd with 35,000 actors that looked believable and reacted to fight-scenes using only 2,000 live actors. The Mill accomplished this feat by shooting live actors at different angles giving various performances, and then mapping them onto cards, with motion-capture tools used to track their movements for 3D compositing.

Influences

Historical

File:Rharris.jpg

Marcus Aurelius as played by Richard Harris.

File:Commodusj.jpg

Commodus as portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix

The Roman emperors portrayed in the movie are Marcus Aurelius (played by Richard Harris), who ruled AD 161–180, and his son, the deranged Commodus, who ruled between 180–192, and scandalized Roman society by appearing in the Colosseum as a gladiator, and spent most, if not all, of his time as Emperor in staging gladiatorial combats, seemingly obsessed with the sport. The film's characterization attempts to reflect Marcus Aurelius's reputation for wisdom but does so by placing a modern democratic slant to his actions and beliefs. The representation of Commodus is extremely watered down, as the senatorial sources such as the Augustan History present Commodus as far more insane and bloodthirsty than he appears in the film. Commodus' murder of his father in the movie is fiction, and while Commodus was the only Roman Emperor to fight as a gladiator (discounting reports of Caligula having done the same, as there is no record outside of Suetonius that he ever did so), he was killed by a gladiator, but not in the arena, as the film depicts.

Lucilla was Commodus’s sister and was married to Lucius Verus (mentioned in the film as the dead father of her son Lucius Verus, but not mentioned as co-emperor or seen), her father’s co-emperor until his death in 169. The incest, or attempted incest, between Commodus and Lucilla in the movie is not historically recorded, though Commodus is said to have committed incest with other sisters. Lucilla was in fact implicated in plots with members of the senate to kill her brother. In 182, following an assassination attempt on Commodus, Lucilla was exiled to Capri and subsequently executed on her brother’s orders.

The opening battle most likely is intended to depict the last fight of the Marcomannic wars. The film says they are fighting in "Germania," however the war was really against Germanic tribes in the area of the province of Pannonia. Of course Germania is more familiar to viewers and works better geographically with Maximus' home in Spain. Nearing the end of the battle, Maximus raises the cry 'Roma Victor,' meaning 'Rome, the Conqueror.' (Greco-Roman culture often anthropomorphized aspects of civilization and nature in order to depict them as gods/goddesses to be recognized.) The sequence of the battle's unfurling is not historically accurate, as legionaries abandon formation in favor of a more Hollywood-friendly action scene in which they combat the Germanic Marcomannii in one-on-one battles, in which the barbarians would have excelled. In reality the Romans favored close-knit formations and would not break formation unless being ordered to retreat (hastily) or if the legionaries broke under the strain in which case, unless able to reform or reach friendly lines, would almost certainly be wiped out.

Further information on Historical Imperial Roman Legionary tactics - Roman Legion

The city of Rome is seen and the Colosseum (then actually called the Flavian Amphitheatre) is accurately seen as the stadium for the Roman people, though the topography, views and ground plan of ancient city-centre Rome around it are entirely fictionalised.

The character of Maximus is entirely fictional, though he is similar in some respects to the historical figures of Narcissus (the character's name in the first draft of the screenplay and the real killer of Commodus), Spartacus (who led a significant slave revolt), and Cincinnatus (the saviour of Rome who wished nothing more than to return to his farm).

A character in the film asserts that "Rome was founded as a Republic". Rome was not founded as a republic but as a kingdom, becoming a republic after the last King of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was deposed in 510BC.

After his death Commodus was replaced as emperor by the general Pertinax, who is never mentioned in the film.

Sources: earlier films

The film's plot is influenced by two 1960s films of Hollywood's sword and sandal genre, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Spartacus.

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) tells the story of Livius, who, like Maximus in Gladiator, is Marcus Aurelius's heir. Both films tell the story of Commodus' murder of Marcus Aurelius and his seizure of power when he learns that the old emperor is planning to appoint Livius/Maximus as his successor. Livius/Maximus are exiled and seek to avenge Marcus Aurelius by killing Commodus.

Spartacus (1960) provides the film's gladiatorial motif, as well as the character of Senator Gracchus, a fictitious senator (bearing the name of a pair of revolutionary Tribunes from the 2nd century BC) who in both films is an elder statesman of ancient Rome attempting to preserve the ancient rights of the Roman senate in the face of an ambitious autocrat — Marcus Licinius Crassus in Spartacus and Commodus in Gladiator. Interestingly, both actors who played Grachus (in Spartacus and Gladiator), played Claudius in previous films — Charles Laughton of Spartacus played Claudius in the 1937 film I, Claudius and Sir Derek Jacobi of Gladiator, played Claudius in the 1975 BBC adaptation.

The story of Maximus bears similarity to Judah Ben-Hur. Both are accused of treason to the Roman Empire, becoming a slave and rising through the ranks, desiring vengeance and finding new life, be it Christian or pagan.

Additionally, Maximus, Quintus and other characters, as well as the opening sequence of the film (set in Germany), appear to be based on a work of historical fiction by Wallace Breem, Eagle in the Snow (set some 200 years later).

The film's depiction of Commodus's entry into Rome borrows imagery from Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (1934), although Ridley Scott has pointed out that the iconography of Nazi rallies was of course inspired by the Roman Empire.

The opening battle scene features war chants taken from the film Zulu (1964), one of director Scott's favorite films.

Soundtrack

Main article: Gladiator soundtrack

The Oscar-nominated score was composed by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard, and conducted by Gavin Greenaway. Lisa Gerrard's vocals are similar to her own work on The Insider score. The opening battle scene sounds almost identical to 'Mars, the Bringer of War.', so in June 2006, the Holst Foundation sued Hans Zimmer for allegedly copying the late Gustav Holst's work.

Critical and public reaction

Gladiator received mostly positive reviews (78% of the critics polled by Rotten Tomatoes gave it favorable reviews), but it was not without its share of detractors. In particular Roger Ebert was harshly critical of the film attacking the look of the film as "muddy, fuzzy, and indistinct." He also derided the writing claiming it "employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are."

The film was very popular upon its release and remains so today, with almost 60% of its $457,640,427 worldwide gross coming from foreign markets.

Awards

Gladiator was nominated in 36 individual ceremonies, including the 73rd Academy Awards, the BAFTA Awards and the Golden Globe Awards. Of 119 award nominations, the film won 48 prizes.

The film won five Academy Awards and was nominated for an additional seven, including Best Supporting Actor for Joaquin Phoenix and Best Director for Ridley Scott. There is controversy over the film's nomination for Best Original Music Score. The award was officially nominated only to Hans Zimmer, and not to Lisa Gerrard due to Academy rules. However, the pair did win the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score as co-composers.

• 73rd Academy Awards
  • Best Picture
  • Best Actor (Russell Crowe)
  • Best Visual Effects
  • Best Costume Design
  • Best Sound
• BAFTA Awards
  • Best Cinematography
  • Best Editing
  • Best Film
  • Best Production Design
• Golden Globe Awards
  • Best Motion Picture - Drama
  • Best Original Score - Motion Picture

Historical deviations

• Stirrups can be seen used on some of the Roman cavalry, but while they were invented during the Roman Empire period (by either the Chinese or Asian tribes), the Romans never adopted them. They are used in the movie for obvious safety reasons, a proper Roman saddle being very difficult to ride.

• In the opening battle scene of the movie, the Germanic leader says to the Romans "Ihr seid verfluchte Hunde." This is actually modern standard German (which the Marcomanni of AD 180 would not have spoken), and translates as "You [all] are cursed dogs". However, the Romans would not have spoken modern day english, which for obvious reasons was used.

• While Commodus was indeed killed by a professional fighter, it was by a wrestler, not a gladiator.

• The film portrays the gladiatorial fights as having been temporarily banned by Marcus Aurelius during his reign. Historically however Aurelius allowed them to continue and even supported legislation to guarantee the survival of the gladiatorial games in hard economic times.

References

• Ward, Allen, The Movie "Gladiator" in Historical Perspective, Classics Technology Center, 2001, Retrieved 2007-1-26
• Mike Reynolds (2000). "Ridley Scott: From Blade Runner to Blade Stunner". DGA Monthly Magazine. Retrieved 2007-01-31. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

• Gladiator at IMDb
• Gladiator at Rotten Tomatoes
• Gladiator at Metacritic
• Gladiator at Box Office Mojo
• David Franzoni (1998-04-04). "GLADIATOR: FIRST DRAFT REVISED". Retrieved 2007-01-01.
• David Franzoni and John Logan (1998-10-22). "GLADIATOR: SECOND DRAFT REVISED". Retrieved 2007-01-01.
• 4 Speeches from Movie in Text and Audio from AmericanRhetoric.com
• Gladiator's script.
• Project to translate Gladiator into Latin