Gladiator Analysis

There were many things that captured my eyes when watching the movie Gladiator. Back in the day people did not like to watch the actually killing that occurred. Instead they were entertained by the beauty of the battle. This was depicted well in the movie in a sense that the crowd loved to watch the battle take place. However, the gruesome murdered often turned heads in the arena. During Gladiator times, after the fight, the emperor would give a thumbs up or a thumbs down after the gladiator fought. This would determine if they got to live or not. And the decision was usually based on how the crowd responded to the fight. In the movie, Commodus shows this action. Another historically correct depiction that the movie resembled was the praise that gladiators received. Famous gladiators can be compared to professional athletes. In one scene, Lucius is pretending to fight and says how he wants to be like Maximus when he gets older. Maximus was the alpha gladiator in the movie and resembled a “Michael Jordan” type role model for the Romans.

The life of gladiators were shown to be quite rough, and they really were quite rough. Being a gladiator was pretty much living the life of a slave. As most gladiators were often slaves and then sold off to be gladiators. Another thing that the movie did well was show the comradery between the gladiators. The gladiators can be resembled to a team in sports that works together with different leaders to take down an opponent.

Hollywood captures a wide variety of genres that attract different people of many cultures to specific movies. A reason “sword and sandal” movies have been so popular is because they can include many factors into their movies. Action, romance, history, and other genres can bring so many people to watch the same movie. Another reason I think they’ve been so popular is because they depict history that