gladiator

Word-of-mouth has been going wild recently on Gladiator, the new Roman epic from Ridley Scott, a director who more or less created the modern movie age with Blade Runner and the original Alien. Even Harry Knowles and his unpredictable ‘Ain’tItCool’ website has been won over. “This is the Ridley Scott that we fanboys and girls drool over,” he enthused. “Gladiator is a great, cool film.” Knowles’ website is not the only enthusiastic advance word-of-mouth to have preceded the unveiling of Scott’s film. Previews showed universally high exit polls, and even a publication as upmarket as the (London) Sunday Times recently devoted a two-page spread to the movie, complete with a standfirst that hailed it as a “triumphant return” of a forgotten genre and a concluding paragraph stating that Gladiator was, quite simply, “going to kick some ass”. DreamWorks and Universal, who co-financed the big-budget movie, must have thought life couldn’t get much better. But it probably will. A couple of years ago, however (first word on the new project began to emerge in the late autumn of 1998), the idea of any studio doing a film about ancient Rome - a ‘sword-and-sandal’ picture, as the entertainment press loves to dub them - would have seemed as fanciful as the return of the Hollywood musical (now that would be an idea). In April 2000, with Gladiator about to open, even Oscar-nominees like Michael Mann and Tom Hanks were talking about taking a trip back to the heyday of the Eternal City. So it may not just be Gladiator that turns out to be cool: it could be the whole of the Roman Empire.

Connie Nielsen as Lucilla and Joaquin Phoenix as the new Emperor, Commodus