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Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

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Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#11

Post by kergonath »

dmurray wrote: post #9

I'm a big fan of Bret Deveraux and a long term subscriber, but this is mostly nit-picking. The Roman armies didn't dress as uniformly as this? They did in contemporary depictions (Trajan's column) so this is only as much artistic license as real Roman artists would take, and for the same reason - it's more visually impressive. A Roman army wouldn't have this mix of units, or at least, it would have them in different…

> They did in contemporary depictions (Trajan's column) so this is only as much artistic license as real Roman artists would take, and for the same reason - it's more visually impressive.

The point is that Trajan’s column was propaganda. So this depiction is second-hand fiction (rehashing ancient propaganda with modern values).

The whole point of the series is that the scene is completely wrong from a historical point of view.

> Well, this wasn't typical, but you fight with the army you have

He makes the point that this was way outside the normal composition of a Roman army, not slightly off. And that as a result it would be terrible for Roman tactics and would have no hope to survive such a battle. Also, medieval siege engines in a pitch battle is just silly, there is no defending that.

I enjoyed the movie but I think that we can completely drop the assumption that it has any grounding in historical reality. It’s fiction, just slightly more realistic than Games of Thrones. Then we can appreciate the movie for the silly entertainment it is (and he does not dispute that).

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#12

Post by dmurray »

dmurray wrote: post #9

I'm a big fan of Bret Deveraux and a long term subscriber, but this is mostly nit-picking. The Roman armies didn't dress as uniformly as this? They did in contemporary depictions (Trajan's column) so this is only as much artistic license as real Roman artists would take, and for the same reason - it's more visually impressive. A Roman army wouldn't have this mix of units, or at least, it would have them in different…

> but not in 180 AD, because that specific period happens to be well-documented?

As for "why pick 180 AD then?" it's clear that this was chosen in order to have Commodus as a villain. Commodus is shown mostly historically accurately: he really was with his aging father Marcus Aurelius in Germania, he really was a teenage emperor who was seen as immature, vain and capricious (if the historical record doesn't explicitly support "downright evil") and he really did love staging ever-greater gladiator games.

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#13

Post by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 »

ggm wrote: post #2

I am led to believe Ridley Scott is over being told he isn't historically accurate. He knows. He also does care about some things, and doesn't like being nitpicked about others. He really cares about a visually beautiful, historically "acceptable" framing, colour matched and evoking a mood. "But the Germanic people didn't wear braes at this time and wolfskin wasn't worn with laminar armour" makes his temper show. Bre…

Devereaux's objection is that Scott is to some extent trading off a reputation for making "historically accurate" movies. As TFA points out, on a "historical accuracy scale" Gladiator gets about a 2/10. So in that sense it's false advertising.

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#15

Post by red_admiral »

ggm wrote: post #2

I am led to believe Ridley Scott is over being told he isn't historically accurate. He knows. He also does care about some things, and doesn't like being nitpicked about others. He really cares about a visually beautiful, historically "acceptable" framing, colour matched and evoking a mood. "But the Germanic people didn't wear braes at this time and wolfskin wasn't worn with laminar armour" makes his temper show. Bre…

Brett has said in his past reviews of the battles of Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep that the important part of a film is that it works _on screen_. So he points out differences between the book and the film, but says this is not meant to be criticism of the film. Except the bit where they get the logistics wrong.

He absolutely tore into Rings of Power, but that only makes me like him more.

He does get a bit worked up, understandably, when the Romans attack with an M777 howitzer firing napalm shells. Rome wiped everything that stood in their way for a long while, but not like that.

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#16

Post by robin_reala »

The biggest nitpick for me is that it was filmed in Bourne Woods which was my local mountain biking haunt. Leaving aside me recognising singletrack all over the place, it took me a good twenty minutes of the film to understand that it was meant to be Germania and not Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_Wood#Location_for_filmi...

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#18

Post by unwind »

red_admiral wrote: post #15
ggm wrote: post #2

I am led to believe Ridley Scott is over being told he isn't historically accurate. He knows. He also does care about some things, and doesn't like being nitpicked about others. He really cares about a visually beautiful, historically "acceptable" framing, colour matched and evoking a mood. "But the Germanic people didn't wear braes at this time and wolfskin wasn't worn with laminar armour" makes his temper show. Bre…

Brett has said in his past reviews of the battles of Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep that the important part of a film is that it works _on screen_. So he points out differences between the book and the film, but says this is not meant to be criticism of the film. Except the bit where they get the logistics wrong. He absolutely tore into Rings of Power, but that only makes me like him more. He does get a bit worked up,…

Yeah, since the M777 doesn't have a napalm shell [1] that would be totally absurd! :D

In fact, since I got curious, it seems nobody fires napalm out of howitzers, it's non-trivial to combine the thin easy-to-break shell skin needed by napalm with something tough enough to be fired from artillery [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer#Ammunition

[2]: https://www.quora.com/Was-napalm-ever-used-in-artillery-roun...

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#19

Post by Notatheist »

I would have preferred if the author reasoned through why a filmmaker might make these decisions and/or offer feasible solutions. "This is wrong" does not seem helpful to an audience. That proper roman battle looks an order of magnitude more expensive to shoot, Decimus Meridius Maximus doesn't flow off the tongue as well, and there are plenty of composition arguments to be made for why the fortifications and formations look like they do.

Re: Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

#20

Post by t_mann »

Notatheist wrote: post #19

I would have preferred if the author reasoned through why a filmmaker might make these decisions and/or offer feasible solutions. "This is wrong" does not seem helpful to an audience. That proper roman battle looks an order of magnitude more expensive to shoot, Decimus Meridius Maximus doesn't flow off the tongue as well, and there are plenty of composition arguments to be made for why the fortifications and formatio…

"This is wrong" is very helpful to people who have been fooled by any of the numerous historical inaccuracies described in the OP.
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