Revisit - Gladiator (2000)

[iamwhatiseem]

I remember watching the movie when it came out and thinking it was entertaining. I can't say I really have watched much of it since then. As others have said it wasn't historically that accurate, but movies usually aren't.

It isn't supposed to be accurate. Just a story set in that time, using the conditions of the time as a backdrop.
None of the characters lived in real life. It was meant to be totally fictional.

 

[Zavulon]

It isn't supposed to be accurate. Just a story set in that time, using the conditions of the time as a backdrop.
None of the characters lived in real life. It was meant to be totally fictional.

Actually, it's not about conditions of the time, either. It's hardly more "historical" than LOTR or Game of Thrones.

 

[there4eyeM]

It is a Hollywood movie; i.e., entertainment tangentially connected to fact and reality. As such, it was well made and acted. As a college course in Roman history, it fails.

 

[Zavulon]

It is a Hollywood movie; i.e., entertainment tangentially connected to fact and reality. As such, it was well made and acted. As a college course in Roman history, it fails.

That's just a matter of taste. As for me, pure fiction movie, without pretension to be historical or even realistic, is much better than a chimerical mix of pseudohistorical scenes, poorly understood political ideas and fight porn.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

That's just a matter of taste. As for me, pure fiction movie, without pretension to be historical or even realistic, is much better than a chimerical mix of pseudohistorical scenes, poorly understood political ideas and fight porn.

What part of "it isn't supposed to be real or accurate" do you not understand?
You are over-complicating a very uncomplicated concept - writing a fictional story derived from reality.
You realize probably 80% of every fictional story is just that?

 

[Zavulon]

What part of "it isn't supposed to be real or accurate" do you not understand?
You are over-complicating a very uncomplicated concept - writing a fictional story derived from reality.
You realize probably 80% of every fictional story is just that?

Actually, 100%. Documentary - is a fiction, that imitates reality, and fantasy - is the reality that imitates fiction. Or, both of them is a reality, observed through the filter of author's mind.
But the next moment is important - visions on a TV-screen are shaped as much by the viewer as they were by the creators' teams. Those gladiators and fighting can be a true vision, so say, imitation of actual fights of the past, or can be allegory, each aspect symbolic of something else. It is the skill of the viewer to sort one from another.

The problem is, that every viewer has its own experience. And many of viewers create their own settings and expectation patterns. Say, Sci-fi means starships&blasters, fantasy means castles&dragons, western means cowboys&indians and so on...
If movie is marked as, say, Western, I hardly will be satisfied after watching a drama about LGBT-dragons seeking their happiness in interstellar battles and ancient libraries.
Same way, if I want to see, say, just sword fighting - I watch movies about Conan. From a "history movie" (not an "alternative history movie" or "fantasy movie") I expect at least minimal following historical reality as it is written in schoolbooks. If you name your movie " Gladiator", you must, at least, explain your customers what is the difference between "Gladiator fight" (which was a religious rite) and, say, entertainment in our modern understanding.

It's my personal opinion, I just explain my taste for books and movies.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Actually, 100%. Documentary - is a fiction, that imitates reality, and fantasy - is the reality that imitates fiction. Or, both of them is a reality, observed through the filter of author's mind.
But the next moment is important - visions on a TV-screen are shaped as much by the viewer as they were by the creators' teams. Those gladiators and fighting can be a true vision, so say, imitation of actual fights of the past, or can be allegory, each aspect symbolic of something else. It is the skill of the viewer to sort one from another.

The problem is, that every viewer has its own experience. And many of viewers create their own settings and expectation patterns. Say, Sci-fi means starships&blasters, fantasy means castles&dragons, western means cowboys&indians and so on...
If movie is marked as, say, Western, I hardly will be satisfied after watching a drama about LGBT-dragons seeking their happiness in interstellar battles and ancient libraries.
Same way, if I want to see, say, just sword fighting - I watch movies about Conan. From a "history movie" (not an "alternative history movie" or "fantasy movie") I expect at least minimal following historical reality as it is written in schoolbooks. If you name your movie " Gladiator", you must, at least, explain your customers what is the difference between "Gladiator fight" (which was a religious rite) and, say, entertainment in our modern understanding.

It's my personal opinion, I just explain my taste for books and movies.

To each his own, to me - the world is complicated enough, brain candy like Gladiator is a nice escape from it.

 

[Zavulon]

To each his own, to me - the world is complicated enough, brain candy like Gladiator is a nice escape from it.

You can't escape the world. Every movie and every book is just a model of our reality. In the Gladiator movie gladiators are not the offerings to the dark gods and spirits, no, they are merely two bloody clowns fighting for the entertainment of the bored public and somehow it change political cource of the state. It's not Rome, it's America. And it's not a candy, it the same media's sh-t, just in a bit different wrapper.
Real things can be much more entertaining.
What's may be even more important, you must know, that brain, as well as heart never stops it's work. And when you don't train it it's not "resting" - someone else trains it.