Hang on....
Me, watching the trailer to Gladiator II:
- okay, so more or less fictional son of Lucilla is the hero this time, taking fictional Maximus as his role model, go figure
- at least no one wants Rome to be a Republic again this time around? Instead, the master plan is "make the Empire fall", and since Commodus since Gibbon often works as the start of the Decline and Fall, kinda works, except that the Empire still has a few centuries more to go, and even a millennium, if you count Byzantium, which you should, but aren't we doing Septimius Severus at all?
- hang on, who ware these two Joffrey Baratheon wannabes? Are they meant to be Caracalla and Geta? Where's Julia Domna then? And her sister and nieces? and also, why are they blond and white?
Now, Caracalla was just as much a psycho as Commodus, no argument about that, and Geta doesn't have very favourable press, either, though less so than Caracalla, possibly because he was murdered by his brother when still quite young and also in hs mother's arms. But here's the thing. Original Gladiator substituted Maximus for the people actually doing Commodus in and also changed the location of the death from a bath to the Collosseum for greater drama, but it did build Commodus' actual gladiatorial obsession. Somehow I can't see a script deciding to up the ante by introducing two psycho Caesarlings this time and then not let our hero kill at least one of them, on the one hand. On the other hand: Caracalla killing his brother in their mother's arms is too bloodily sensational not to use, either. So Geta probably bites the dust via fratricide as per history. Buuuuut while Caracalla did die via assassination as well (years and years later, he died far away from Rome. His obsession was the army, not gladiators. Will Lucius Verus Jr. be substituted for the soldiers doing Caracalla in? Probably. And what's supposed to the pay off for this whole Rome must fall theme when the falling will take a a much longer time? With the emphasis the trailer puts on the fictional Maximus' story summed up as "a slave challenging an Emperor" and inspiring Lucius, are we going for an ahistorical slave revolt this late in the game instead of an army coup? When the whole third century crisis is about the carousel of generals making themselves Emperors in ever faster rotation?
But fine. Fine. Gladiator the first was as ahistorical as they come and a smash hit too. I'm still chewing on the chalky blondness of Caracalla and Geta, though. Because: their father (Septimius Severus) was African. Their mother (Julia Domna) was Syrian. And before you use the "African Romans could be entirely descended from the whitest of white Italians" argument, we actually have a painting of Septimius Severus and his family (little Geta's face is scratched out because brother Caracalla did the thing he did and then declared damnatio memoriae):
So, Septimius Severus: not white. His sons: not chalky blond boys. Now, it's not that the trailer doesn't show a person of colour as well - but as far as I can tell, it's another fictional character played by Denzel Washington. Definitely not Septimius Severus, if he wants to bring the Empire down.)o Wait, hang on: googling tells me he's playing "Macrinus". What? THAT Macrinus? Okay, that one was from Mauretania. Okay, carry on. But still: why the Joffrey Baratheon look for the boys who definitely did not have it? At first I thought, the logic escapes me, and then I thought, maybe it's precisely because Caracalla and Geta aren't (either in history, nor, it seems, in this movie) meant to be sympathetic characters, so the production team didn't want to cast people of color for them?
Which might actually also explain why no one tackled the Severans yet in film or tv, full stop, despite them being Rome's first non-European Imperial dynasty. (Not non-Italian - the Spaniards via Trajan and Hadrian got there first.) . They can easily compete in sheer melodrama and twists with any other dynasty (and as Emma Southon has pointed out should be called the other Julians anyway, given that except for Septimiius Severus himself and Caracalla the psycho, it's three ladies called Julia who call the shots and build up and depose Emperors), there are assassinations galore, female power brokers, incest accusations, too, and one of them may or may not have been binary - but role models, they're not. The only nice one is the kid at the end of the dynasty, Severus Alexander, and he dies for prefering negotiations over battles, so where's the moral in that?
I'm not just mocking. After the success of I, Claudius, the BBC tried repeatedly to follow it up with another historical tv show focused on ruthless powerful families. Their take on the Borgias must have been so bad no one even bothered to bash it, and then they went for the Ptolemies in the tv show The Cleopatras, which going by reviews apart from suffering from bad 80s music also had a believability problem despite its outrages (all the royal incest combinations and familiy murders) all being authentic.... and without having seen either show, just based on reading about them, I think I know what the problem was. The writers didn't bother with sympathetic characters. I, Claudius has some of the best villains in tv history with its Livia and Caligula, and even the minor villains like Sejanus are highly memorable, but the whole thing wouldn't work if the show hadn't made its narrator Claudius a sympathetic character who gets an "eternally underestimated and abused underdog makes it to the top" story. (And there's a reason why once he's actually Emperor the story wanders into some difficulties.) And there are some other non-evil characters besides Claudius getting screentime, too. Flamboyant and clever villains are always a treat, but if there's no non-evil character having non-monstrous emotions in sight, you have a narrative problem.
Now, there's no reason why you couldn't still tell the story of the Severans; aside from the Hiistoria Augusta slandering her, Julia Domna has a good press as a patron of the arts and Septimus Severus' partner in power, and Julia Maesa who doesn't is admitted to have been highly effective, organizing an impossible comeback and creating not one but two Emperors, clearly seeing the first one she installed does not work out despite him being her grandson. It should be possible to write these ladies in a multi dimensional way. Or you could add a fictional character, maybe a friend of the Julias from Syria who comes to Rome when they do and gets increasingly appalled when they watch th "all power corrupts" principle at work. But there's no happy ending in store unless you go completely Quentin Tarantino in terms of historical endings, and maybe producers figure that "The first African-Syrian dynasty ruling Rome: just as messed up as all the others" isn't what people want to see?
- okay, so more or less fictional son of Lucilla is the hero this time, taking fictional Maximus as his role model, go figure
- at least no one wants Rome to be a Republic again this time around? Instead, the master plan is "make the Empire fall", and since Commodus since Gibbon often works as the start of the Decline and Fall, kinda works, except that the Empire still has a few centuries more to go, and even a millennium, if you count Byzantium, which you should, but aren't we doing Septimius Severus at all?
- hang on, who ware these two Joffrey Baratheon wannabes? Are they meant to be Caracalla and Geta? Where's Julia Domna then? And her sister and nieces? and also, why are they blond and white?
Now, Caracalla was just as much a psycho as Commodus, no argument about that, and Geta doesn't have very favourable press, either, though less so than Caracalla, possibly because he was murdered by his brother when still quite young and also in hs mother's arms. But here's the thing. Original Gladiator substituted Maximus for the people actually doing Commodus in and also changed the location of the death from a bath to the Collosseum for greater drama, but it did build Commodus' actual gladiatorial obsession. Somehow I can't see a script deciding to up the ante by introducing two psycho Caesarlings this time and then not let our hero kill at least one of them, on the one hand. On the other hand: Caracalla killing his brother in their mother's arms is too bloodily sensational not to use, either. So Geta probably bites the dust via fratricide as per history. Buuuuut while Caracalla did die via assassination as well (years and years later, he died far away from Rome. His obsession was the army, not gladiators. Will Lucius Verus Jr. be substituted for the soldiers doing Caracalla in? Probably. And what's supposed to the pay off for this whole Rome must fall theme when the falling will take a a much longer time? With the emphasis the trailer puts on the fictional Maximus' story summed up as "a slave challenging an Emperor" and inspiring Lucius, are we going for an ahistorical slave revolt this late in the game instead of an army coup? When the whole third century crisis is about the carousel of generals making themselves Emperors in ever faster rotation?
But fine. Fine. Gladiator the first was as ahistorical as they come and a smash hit too. I'm still chewing on the chalky blondness of Caracalla and Geta, though. Because: their father (Septimius Severus) was African. Their mother (Julia Domna) was Syrian. And before you use the "African Romans could be entirely descended from the whitest of white Italians" argument, we actually have a painting of Septimius Severus and his family (little Geta's face is scratched out because brother Caracalla did the thing he did and then declared damnatio memoriae):
So, Septimius Severus: not white. His sons: not chalky blond boys. Now, it's not that the trailer doesn't show a person of colour as well - but as far as I can tell, it's another fictional character played by Denzel Washington. Definitely not Septimius Severus, if he wants to bring the Empire down.)o Wait, hang on: googling tells me he's playing "Macrinus". What? THAT Macrinus? Okay, that one was from Mauretania. Okay, carry on. But still: why the Joffrey Baratheon look for the boys who definitely did not have it? At first I thought, the logic escapes me, and then I thought, maybe it's precisely because Caracalla and Geta aren't (either in history, nor, it seems, in this movie) meant to be sympathetic characters, so the production team didn't want to cast people of color for them?
Which might actually also explain why no one tackled the Severans yet in film or tv, full stop, despite them being Rome's first non-European Imperial dynasty. (Not non-Italian - the Spaniards via Trajan and Hadrian got there first.) . They can easily compete in sheer melodrama and twists with any other dynasty (and as Emma Southon has pointed out should be called the other Julians anyway, given that except for Septimiius Severus himself and Caracalla the psycho, it's three ladies called Julia who call the shots and build up and depose Emperors), there are assassinations galore, female power brokers, incest accusations, too, and one of them may or may not have been binary - but role models, they're not. The only nice one is the kid at the end of the dynasty, Severus Alexander, and he dies for prefering negotiations over battles, so where's the moral in that?
I'm not just mocking. After the success of I, Claudius, the BBC tried repeatedly to follow it up with another historical tv show focused on ruthless powerful families. Their take on the Borgias must have been so bad no one even bothered to bash it, and then they went for the Ptolemies in the tv show The Cleopatras, which going by reviews apart from suffering from bad 80s music also had a believability problem despite its outrages (all the royal incest combinations and familiy murders) all being authentic.... and without having seen either show, just based on reading about them, I think I know what the problem was. The writers didn't bother with sympathetic characters. I, Claudius has some of the best villains in tv history with its Livia and Caligula, and even the minor villains like Sejanus are highly memorable, but the whole thing wouldn't work if the show hadn't made its narrator Claudius a sympathetic character who gets an "eternally underestimated and abused underdog makes it to the top" story. (And there's a reason why once he's actually Emperor the story wanders into some difficulties.) And there are some other non-evil characters besides Claudius getting screentime, too. Flamboyant and clever villains are always a treat, but if there's no non-evil character having non-monstrous emotions in sight, you have a narrative problem.
Now, there's no reason why you couldn't still tell the story of the Severans; aside from the Hiistoria Augusta slandering her, Julia Domna has a good press as a patron of the arts and Septimus Severus' partner in power, and Julia Maesa who doesn't is admitted to have been highly effective, organizing an impossible comeback and creating not one but two Emperors, clearly seeing the first one she installed does not work out despite him being her grandson. It should be possible to write these ladies in a multi dimensional way. Or you could add a fictional character, maybe a friend of the Julias from Syria who comes to Rome when they do and gets increasingly appalled when they watch th "all power corrupts" principle at work. But there's no happy ending in store unless you go completely Quentin Tarantino in terms of historical endings, and maybe producers figure that "The first African-Syrian dynasty ruling Rome: just as messed up as all the others" isn't what people want to see?