Product: Gladiator [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 2.0
Six Degrees of Historical Separation
When I first saw the battle scene and heard the battle cry of the Germania barbarians, I had to replay that scene a couple of times to make sure of what I was hearing. I thought that somehow a soundtrack from another movie made in 1964 had been accidentally included with this film. The 1964 movie I'm referring to is called "Zulu" and is based on an actual battle in January of 1879 between British troops and Zulu warriors in South Africa.So based upon this "historically inaccurate" event, what are we to deduce? That the Zulu nation of 1879 used the same war cry as the Germanic tribes of 180 A.D. because they were somehow descendents and migrated from North Central Europe to South Africa?I wonder if the same people responsible for this gaffe had worked on "Zulu", if they would have had the Zulu warriors yelling "Banzai"?"Gladiator" was OK. I probably had preferred that Commodius had been dispatched as he actually had been from the historical point of view, and that Maximus had escaped, been reunited with his army and returned to Rome to battle Quintus and then found out he had been cheated out of his revenge with Commodius.Another point between "Zulu" and "Gladiator" - in 1964 there were no computer enhancements done for "Zulu". What you saw was real, not digitally done to show the overwhelming force of Zulu warriors. Also the battle scenes were more "stable"....shot in real time....not done in 3 different speeds then spinning from here to there and back again.