Swords and sandals. Swords and sandals EVERYWHERE!!!

Jul 26, 2013 13:44


I've been on a work- and life-induced hiatus.  If you want to know how my life's been going, you can watch episodes of Chad Vader and switch out all of the groceries for all of the Six Flags/Looney Tunes/DC Comics merchandise you can think of. 
Anyway, my sister and I have recently gotten hooked on Sword and Sandal movies.  I'm always up for Ancient Greek or Ancient Roman anything, and I guess she's getting into that phase, too.  So earlier in the year, we put a bunch of manly movies in our Netflix cue, stuff like Gladiator and Spartacus.  Then our mother pushed those all down to the bottom of the cue in favor of feel-good movies.  Then at some point, Mom slipped Ben-Hur in there, too, so I guess she also succumbed to the allure of swords and sandals.

I'll save Ben-Hur and Spartacus for later because we're here to talk about one thing only:  GLADIATOR.

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Gladiator is a beautifully historically inaccurate mush that I just love to pieces.  Let's just talk about this trailer for a few seconds: instead of making liberal use of the Inception horn or or building up lots of brooding backstory, it cuts right to the chase and tells us quickly what will unfold: A general will become a slave will become a gladiator will defy an empire.  And that sounds pretty darn awesome, doesn't it?

Of course, part of the real draw is what the trailer doesn't tell us.  How does the general (Maximus) become a slave?  Or a gladiator, for that matter?  And who exactly is this evil emperor (Commodus)?  What's his beef with Maximus?  And who's that worried-looking woman (Lucilla)?  Today, trailers for films like Prometheus or Star Trek: Into Darkness just throw images at us and expect us to follow along and just assume "...Something will happen!  I should go watch that!"    But Gladiator's trailer gets you pumped by directly telling you part of what will happen and letting you wonder about the rest.

Now for thoughts about the film proper:

- The beginning is quite slow.  Maybe it's just me, but the opening battle felt like a slog.  I guess it seemed that way because it starts all the way up in Germania and everyone knows we have to end up in Rome.  Also, would the Emperor have traveled all that way to watch a battle?  He did have important business to discuss with Maximus, but couldn't he have visited after they reached a safer location?  Maybe no location was that safe.  Ugh, plot holes.
- The movie is really damn vague about how Maximus knows the Emperor and his family.  The film makes it clear that Maximus is a Spaniard and that he's not very familiar with the city of Rome, so how did he have time to romance Lucilla and become the Emperor's surrogate son years before?
- The beginning just look weirdly medieval to me, especially the costumes.  Wikipedia's list of the movie's historical inaccuracies doesn't comment on the costumes, unfortunately.  I know Rome wasn't static, but those just don't look quite right to me.  This looks like a job for Hello, Tailor!
- Once we're out of the beginning, things pick up considerably.  My sister pointed out that the beginning is purposely slow to set the stage for the rest of the story, and while I agree, it's still pretty meh to me.  Once Maximus starts training as a gladiator, the "FUCK YEAH!" factor climbs by 1000.
- The soundtrack for this movie is HILARIOUS.  Why?  Because three years later, Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt took every single musical lick and motif and for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, so I kept expecting Johnny Depp to swing in and help Maximus out.
- ...Maximus and Captain Jack's Excellent Adventure would be the best movie ever.
- Okay, the track "The Battle" is pretty cool on its own, but in context, I still have Depp-visions.  Heck even my mother pointed out the similarity from the kitchen, and she wasn't even watching.
- I love Maximus's mentor/owner, Proximo, and I wondered why there wasn't a bit more of him.  It turns out his actor, Oliver Reed, died in the middle of production.  *headdesk*
- Commodus can duke it out with Joffrey Baratheon for worst ruler ever.  He sucks that much.  "AM I NOT MERCIFUL?"  No.  Go home, Commodus.  You're drunk.
- Why isn't Lucilla in charge?  She totally should be.  This version of her has sense and stuff.  And an adorable 8-year-old son, Lucius, so that takes care of an heir.
- I want a sequel about Juba, Djimon Honsou's character.  He was all sorts of awesome and I want him to get home to his wife and daughters and then have NOTHING BAD ever happen to him again.  EVER.
- He's 13 years past his prime now, but I'll admit that my sister and I spent all of the 2 hours and 35 minutes of this movie swooning over Russell Crowe because he's goddamn gorgeous in this.  It makes me feel less weird for perving in the middle of Les Miserables.  But then my dad would come in and tell us to figure out what the heck that thing in between Russell's eyes is, and my sister and I are just like, "Stop it, Dad!"  We just want our gladiator beefcake.  We'll think about that stuff later.
- It's really awesome to watch a 16-year-old girl squee and rage over gladiators.  People should show this movie everytime a teenage girl expresses an interest in Twilight.
- Maximus is the ideal Gryffindor, Commodus is the ideal Slytherin, and Dumbledore I is the late emperor, Marcus Aurelius.  Because everything comes back to Harry Potter.  EVERYTHING.

I love this movie. It's much more morally black-and-white than later works in the genre, like Rome or Spartacus: Blood and Sand, but since Gladiator kicked off the current Sword-and-Sandal rebirth, it makes sense that it's simpler.  It gave those works a solid baseline to build on and made epic movies awesome again.  I'd theorize that we might not have movies like The Dark Knight if it weren't for this, too, because it was the first really recent example of how to make a cheesy genre dramatic without too much camp (Commodus aside).

Wow, I didn't know I had that many thoughts about Gladiator. Now I must link you to its TV Tropes page and leave you to meditate on how you can Win The Crowd in your own life because I must go prepare for the night shift.

fangirling, video, my little sister is awesome, my geek is showing, movies

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