Excellent film, but it's fiction, not history

Rating: 8/10 (27 May 2000)

Great battle scenes, fine cinematography, excellent musical score, first-rate acting. For these reasons, I enjoyed the film.
However, I really would have preferred it if they had made up the names of the characters and the world in which the action took place, rather than butcher Roman history. Examples: Marcus Aurelius groomed Commodus as his successor almost from the time of his birth (he was given the title Caesar when he was five years old, and became joint ruler with Marcus in 177, three years before Marcus' death); Commodus is reported to be blond and handsome, and saw himself as another Hercules; Lucilla did plot against him, but was found out and killed in 182, early in Commodus' 12-year reign; Commodus was lecherous -- having a harem of 300 concubines and an equal number of young boys for his sexual pleasure; he often appeared as a gladiator in the coliseum spectacles; he was smothered to death as a part of a plot led by Eclectus, his imperial chamberlain, Quintus Aemilius, commander of the praetorian guard, and Marcia, his favorite concubine, not killed by a General Maximus, who does not even appear in the biographies of Commodus that I have read.
I suspect that they could have made a movie just as exciting if they had made it historically accurate, and somehow I would have found that to be preferable. However, it would have been far more difficult to find a hero, which is probably why they decided to create characters and events and pass them off as history. Too bad.