Minuteman wrote:So, probably a wasted opportunity. And certainly, not a film that I think I will be going to see. Such a shame.
Bessiere wrote:Such a tragic missed opportunity this film was. Many will find it infuriatingly inaccurate as formations don't exist and battles like Waterloo are fought from trenches. ... Ridley Scott is no longer the man of vision he once was and his attitude towards historians deplorable.
I totally agree!
Initially, I wasn’t sure if I would want to see this movie, but meanwhile, after I’ve read so many reviews, I have made up my mind: Definitely not!
And since I know only too well how Ridley Scott transformed Roman history into a big heap of garbage, I wasn’t surprised the least that he now did the same with Napoleonic history.
I know, “Gladiator” has a lot of fans, but for me it was an utter disappointment, even though I had not very high expectations before I watched it.
The opening scene, the battle, is full of absurdities, and from there on, it only gets worse.
The political framing of the transition from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus and of Commodus’ reign is completely wrong. They even weren’t able to invent a proper Roman name for the main character – “Maximus Decimus Meridius” is just garbled Latin of the “Romanes eunt domus” brand. It is the same strange desire to distort history that is obviously at work in Scott’s “Napoleon”.
Well, Gladiator is not about the intricacies of Roman politics, one might say, it is mainly about gladiators. Right, but here the movie is a total failure, too: One has the feeling that they put an enormous amount of effort into getting EVERY aspect of gladiatorial combat wrong. They even had hired Kathleen Coleman, a classical scholar, only to completely ignore any of her advice – in the end, she insisted on having her name removed from the movie credits. I would be not surprised at all when the same kind of historical expertise had been requested and then neglected for Napoleon, too.
k.b. wrote: What a huge disappointment Ridley Scott has become in his old age. To think that one and the same person was able to begin his career with the brilliant film the Duellists to perhaps his swan song on the life of no less a man than Napoleon Bonaparte.
And to make things worse, “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant” aren’t good either and make no sense at all as prequels (or sequels or whatever) of Scott’s fantastic original Alien movie… Sad.