Gladiator (2000 film)

Gladiator is a 2000 epic historical drama film directed by Ridley Scott and written by David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson from a story by Franzoni. It stars Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, and Richard Harris. Crowe portrays Maximus Decimus Meridius, a Roman general who is betrayed when Commodus, the ambitious son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, murders his father and seizes the throne. Reduced to slavery, Maximus becomes a gladiator and rises through the ranks of the arena, determined to avenge the murders of his family and the emperor.
The screenplay, initially written by Franzoni, was inspired by the 1958 Daniel P. Mannix novel Those About to Die. The script was acquired by DreamWorks Pictures, and Scott signed on to direct the film. Principal photography began in January 1999 and wrapped in May of that year. Production was complicated by the script being rewritten multiple times and by the death of Oliver Reed before production was finished.
Gladiator had its world premiere in Los Angeles, California, on May 1, 2000. The film was released in the United States on May 5, 2000, by DreamWorks and internationally on May 12, 2000, by Universal Pictures. The film grossed $465 million worldwide, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 2000, and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe. It received favorable reviews upon release, and is considered one of the best films of the 21st century. A sequel, Gladiator II, was released in November 2024.
In AD 180, the Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius intends to return home after he leads the Roman army to victory against Germanic tribes near Vindobona. Emperor Marcus Aurelius tells Maximus that his own son, Commodus, is unfit to rule and that he wishes Maximus to succeed him, as regent, to restore the Roman Republic. Angered by this decision, Commodus secretly assassinates his father.
Commodus proclaims himself the new emperor and requests loyalty from Maximus, who refuses. Maximus is arrested by Praetorian Guards led by Quintus, who tells him that he and his family will die. Maximus kills his captors and, wounded, rides for his home near Turgalium, where he finds his wife and son murdered. Maximus buries them and collapses from his injuries. He is found by slave traders, who take him to Zuccabar in the Roman province of Mauretania Caesariensis and sell him to the gladiator trainer Proximo.
Maximus reluctantly fights in local tournaments, his combat skills helping him win matches and gain popularity. He earns the nickname "the Spaniard" and befriends Juba, a gladiator from Carthage, and Hagen, a gladiator from Germania. In Rome, Commodus organizes 150 days of gladiatorial games to commemorate his father and win the approval of the Roman public. Upon hearing this, Proximo reveals to Maximus that he was once a gladiator who was freed by Marcus Aurelius, and advises him to "win the crowd" to gain his freedom.
Proximo takes his gladiators to fight in Rome's Colosseum. Disguised in a masked helmet, Maximus debuts in the arena as a Carthaginian in a re-enactment of the Battle of Zama. Unexpectedly, he leads his side to victory and wins the crowd's support. Commodus and his young nephew, Lucius, enter the Colosseum to offer their congratulations. Seeing Lucius, Maximus refrains from attacking Commodus, who orders him to reveal his identity. Maximus removes his helmet and declares his intent to seek vengeance. Commodus is compelled by the crowd to let Maximus live. That evening, Maximus is visited by Lucilla, his former lover and Commodus' sister. Distrusting her, Maximus refuses her help.
Commodus arranges a duel between Maximus and Tigris of Gaul, an undefeated gladiator. Several tigers are set upon Maximus, but he prevails. At the crowd's desire, Commodus orders Maximus to kill Tigris, but Maximus spares his life in defiance. In response, the crowd chants "Maximus the Merciful", angering Commodus. To provoke Maximus, Commodus taunts him about the murder of his family, but Maximus resists the urge to strike him. Increasingly paranoid, Commodus instructs his advisor, Falco, to have every senator followed, and refuses to have Maximus killed for fear he will become a martyr.
Maximus discovers from Cicero, his ex-orderly, that his former legions remain loyal to him. He secretly meets with Lucilla and Gracchus, an influential senator. They agree to help Maximus escape Rome to join his legions in Ostia, oust Commodus by force, and hand power back to the Roman Senate. The Praetorians arrest Gracchus. Lucilla meets Maximus at night to arrange his escape; they share a kiss. Commodus becomes suspicious when Lucius innocently hints at the conspiracy. Commodus threatens Lucilla and Lucius, and has the Praetorians attack the gladiators' barracks. Proximo and his men sacrifice themselves to enable Maximus to escape, but Maximus is captured at the rendezvous with Cicero, where the latter is killed.
Commodus demands that Lucilla provide him with an heir. He challenges Maximus to a duel in the Colosseum to win back public approval and stabs him before the match to gain an advantage. Despite his injury, Maximus disarms Commodus during the duel. After Quintus and the Praetorians refuse to help him, Commodus unsheathes a hidden knife; Maximus overpowers Commodus and drives the knife into his throat, killing him. Before Maximus succumbs to his wound, he asks for political reforms, the emancipation of his gladiator allies, and the reinstatement of Gracchus as a senator. As he dies, Maximus envisions reuniting with his wife and son in the afterlife. His friends and allies honor him as "a soldier of Rome" and carry his body out of the arena. That night, Juba visits the Colosseum and buries figurines of Maximus' wife and son at the spot where Maximus died.
David Franzoni, who wrote the first draft of the Gladiator screenplay, traveled across Eastern Europe and the Middle East by motorcycle in 1972. "Everywhere I went in Europe, there were arenas", Franzoni recalled. "Even as I went east, going through Turkey, I began to think to myself this must have been a hell of a franchise." During a stop in Baghdad, Iraq, he started reading the 1958 Daniel P. Mannix novel Those About to Die, which gave him the idea for Gladiator.
Twenty-five years later, Franzoni wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Amistad, which was Spielberg's first film for DreamWorks Pictures. Though Amistad was only a moderate commercial success, DreamWorks was impressed with Franzoni's screenplay and gave him a three-picture deal as writer and co-producer. Remembering his 1972 trip, Franzoni pitched his gladiator story idea to Spielberg, who immediately told him to write the script. After reading the ancient Roman text Historia Augusta, Franzoni chose to center the story on Commodus. The protagonist was Narcissus, a wrestler who, according to the ancient historians Herodian and Cassius Dio, strangled Commodus to death.
DreamWorks producers Walter F. Parkes and Douglas Wick felt that Ridley Scott would be the ideal director to bring Franzoni's story to life. They showed him a copy of Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1872 painting Pollice Verso, which Scott said portrays the Roman Empire "in all its glory and wickedness". He was so captivated by the image that he immediately agreed to direct the film. When Parkes pointed out that Scott did not know anything about the story, Scott replied, "I don’t care, I’ll do it".
Once Scott was on board, he and Franzoni discussed films that could influence Gladiator, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, La Dolce Vita, and The Conformist. However, Scott felt Franzoni's dialogue lacked subtlety, and he hired John Logan to rewrite the script. Logan rewrote much of the first act and made the decision to kill off Maximus' family to increase the character's desire for revenge. In November 1998, DreamWorks reached a deal with Universal Pictures to help finance the film: DreamWorks would distribute the film in North America, while Universal Pictures would distribute it internationally.
Before Russell Crowe was cast as Maximus, several other actors were considered for the role, including Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, and Tom Cruise. Gibson turned down the role as he was already committed to The Patriot (2000). However, producers had Crowe at the top of their list after his breakout performance in L.A. Confidential (1997). Jude Law auditioned for Commodus, but Joaquin Phoenix was offered the part after sending in a "knockout" audition tape. Jennifer Lopez reportedly auditioned for Lucilla, but the role went to Connie Nielsen.
The film was shot at three main locations between January and May 1999. The opening battle scene set in the forests of Germania was shot at Bourne Wood, near Farnham, Surrey, in England. When Scott learned that the Forestry Commission was planning to remove a section of the forest, he obtained permission to burn it down for the scene. The scenes of slavery, desert travel, and the gladiatorial training school were shot in Ouarzazate, Morocco. The scenes set in Rome were shot in Malta, where the crew built a replica of about one-third of the Colosseum to a height of 52 feet (16 meters). The other two-thirds and remaining height were added digitally. The scenes of Maximus' farm were filmed in Val d'Orcia, Italy.
When filming battle scenes, Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson used multiple cameras filming at various frame rates and used a 45-degree shutter, which resulted in stylized visuals similar to those found in Saving Private Ryan. For the fight sequence involving tigers, both real tigers and a dummy tiger were used. Some of the live animals were filmed on set with the actors, and some were filmed against a bluescreen and then digitally composited into the scene.
Crowe was injured multiple times during principal photography. Describing the impact filming had on his body, Crowe said, "I've still got a lot of little scar[s]". He added, "I've had Achilles tendons go out, knees go out, both shoulders, this shoulder's actually had an operation on it ... I've got a lower back thing that just won't go away, and that's from a couple, sort of, fall impacts during fight sequences". Oliver Reed died of a heart attack on May 2, before all his scenes had been filmed. His character, Proximo, was meant to survive, but after Reed's death the script was revised to include his death at the hands of the Praetorian Guard. To make it appear that Reed had performed the entirety of Proximo's scenes, a body double was used, and Reed's face was digitally attached to the body of the double in post-production. The film is dedicated to Reed.
Although Franzoni and Logan completed a second draft of the screenplay in October 1998, Crowe has claimed that the script was "substantially underdone" when filming began three months later. In an interview with Inside the Actors Studio, Crowe said the crew "started shooting with about 32 pages and went through them in the first couple of weeks." The script was constantly changing throughout principal photography, with Scott soliciting input from writers, producers and actors. Some dialogue was created on the spot, such as Commodus' line "Am I not merciful?", which was ad-libbed by Phoenix. Crowe invented the phrase "Strength and Honor", which is a modified version of the Latin motto of his high school, "Veritate et Virtute", which translates as "Truth and Virtue". Crowe also improvised part of the scene in which Maximus describes his home to Marcus Aurelius. Instead of recounting the details of a fictional place, Crowe actually described his own home in Australia.
At one point, William Nicholson was hired to rewrite the script to make Maximus a more sensitive character. He reworked Maximus' friendship with Juba and developed the afterlife plot thread. He said he "did not want to see a film about a man who wanted to kill somebody". Crowe, however, was unhappy with some of Nicholson's dialogue. He allegedly called it "garbage", but is said to have claimed he is "the greatest actor in the world" and can "make even garbage sound good." According to a DreamWorks executive, Crowe "tried to rewrite the entire script on the spot. You know the big line in the trailer, 'In this life or the next, I will have my vengeance'? At first he absolutely refused to say it."
The musical score for Gladiator was composed by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard, and conducted by Gavin Greenaway. The original soundtrack for the film was produced by Decca Records and released on April 25, 2000. Decca later released three follow-up albums: Gladiator: More Music From the Motion Picture (2001), Gladiator: Special Anniversary Edition (2005), and Gladiator: 20th Anniversary Edition (2020).
In 2006, the Holst Foundation accused Hans Zimmer of copying the work of the late Gustav Holst in the Gladiator score. The organization sued Zimmer for copyright infringement and the case was settled out of court.
Gladiator had its world premiere in Los Angeles, California, on May 1, 2000. The film was released in the United States and Canada on May 5, 2000. It earned $34.8 million during its opening weekend, making it the number one film of the weekend, and it remained number one in its second weekend, earning $24.6 million. During its third weekend, Gladiator fell to second place with $19.7 million, behind Dinosaur ($38.9 million). The film spent a total of ten weeks in the top ten at the box office, and was in theaters for over a year, finishing its theatrical run on May 10, 2001. Its total gross in the United States and Canada was $187.7 million. Gladiator opened on May 12, 2000, in the United Kingdom, and grossed £3.5 million in its opening weekend. It spent seven weeks at number one, and its total gross surpassed $43 million. The film was also number one for seven weeks in Italy, and for five weeks in France. Outside of the United States and Canada, Gladiator grossed $277.8 million, for a total worldwide gross of $465.5 million against a budget of $110 million. It was the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 2000, behind Mission: Impossible 2 ($546.3 million).
In 2020, Gladiator was re-released in Australia and the Netherlands to commemorate its 20th anniversary. This limited release grossed $4.8 million. The following year, it was re-released in the United Kingdom, earning a gross of $16,257.
Gladiator was first released on DVD and VHS on November 21, 2000, and generated $60 million in sales within the first week. In September 2009, the film was released by Paramount Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, re-released in August 2010 in a higher quality transfer, and in May 2018 it was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray. An extended version of the film, with 16 extra minutes of footage, is also available on all three formats.
Gladiator was called "magnificent", "compelling", and "richly enjoyable" by some critics. Crowe's performance in particular received praise. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgensten said that Crowe "doesn't use tricks in this role to court our approval. He earns it the old-fashioned way, by daring to be quiet, if not silent, and intensely, implacably strong." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Crowe brings an "essential physical and psychological reality to the role", while Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said that Crowe uses "his burly frame and expressive face to give dimension to what might otherwise have been comic book heroics." Variety called Crowe's performance "simply splendid".
Critics also praised Scott's directing and the visual style of the film. Manohla Dargis of LA Weekly commended Scott's state of the art filmmaking and expressed admiration for the film's "breathtaking, brutal lyricism". Entertainment Weekly called the opening battle sequence "extraordinary", and described Scott as a "visual artist at his most deluxe." Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune called Gladiator "visually electrifying". In addition to Crowe's acting and Scott's directing, reviewers also applauded John Mathieson's cinematography, Arthur Max's production design, and the musical score composed by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard.
Although critics lauded many aspects of Gladiator, some derided the screenplay. Ian Nathan of Empire magazine called the dialogue "pompous", "overwritten", and "prone to plain silliness". Roger Ebert said the script "employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are." Manohla Dargis called the story predictable and formulaic.
In his 2004 book The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the political scientist Michael Parenti described Gladiator as "unencumbered by any trace of artistic merit". He also criticized the film's depiction of Roman citizens, claiming that it portrays them as bloodthirsty savages. Brandon Zachary of the entertainment website ScreenRant has claimed that the plot of Gladiator borrows heavily from the 1964 film The Fall of the Roman Empire, which is also about the transition from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus and the latter's downfall.
Audiences polled on Gladiator's opening day by the market research firm CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 257 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "While not everyone will be entertained by Gladiator's glum revenge story, Russell Crowe thunderously wins the crowd with a star-making turn that provides Ridley Scott's opulent resurrection of Rome its bruised heart." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Gladiator won five awards at the 73rd Academy Awards, and was nominated for an additional seven.
At the 58th Golden Globe Awards, Gladiator won two awards and was nominated for an additional three.
Gladiator also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film. In 2021, Empire magazine ranked Gladiator 39th on its "100 Best Movies Of All Time" list, and declared it the 22nd best film of the 21st century. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes included the film on its list of "140 Essential 2000s Movies". The character Maximus placed 95th on Empire's list of 100 Greatest Movie Characters.
Gladiator is loosely based on real events that occurred within the Roman Empire in the latter half of the 2nd century AD. Scott intended to portray Roman culture more accurately than previous films, so he hired several historians as advisors. Nevertheless, multiple deviations from historical accuracy were made to increase interest, maintain narrative continuity, and for practical or safety reasons. Scott later stated that public perception of ancient Rome, due to the influence of previous films, made some historical facts "too unbelievable" to include. For instance, in an early version of the script, gladiators endorsed products in the arena; while this would have been historically accurate, there was concern that audiences would think it anachronistic.
At least one historical advisor resigned due to these changes. Another asked not to be mentioned in the credits. Allen Ward, a historian at the University of Connecticut, believed that a higher level of historical accuracy would not have made Gladiator less interesting or exciting. He asserted that filmmakers must be granted some artistic license when adapting historical events, but this license should not be employed to completely disregard facts.
Although Gladiator takes place in the 2nd century AD, the Imperial Gallic armor and the helmets worn by the legionaries are from AD 75, a century earlier. The centurions, cavalry, standard bearers, and auxiliaries would have worn scale armor, known as lorica squamata. The Praetorian Guards wear purple uniforms in the film, but this wardrobe is not corroborated by historical evidence. On campaign, they usually wore standard legionary equipment with some unique decorative elements. Gladiator depicts Germanic tribes inaccurately wearing clothing from the Stone Age.
The film shows the Roman cavalry using stirrups. In reality, the cavalry used a two-horned saddle without stirrups. The stirrups were employed during filming because riding with a Roman saddle requires additional training and skill. According to the classical scholar Martin Winkler, catapults and ballistae would not have been used in a forest, as they were reserved primarily for sieges and were rarely used in open battles. There is no documentation of the use of flaming arrows or flaming catapult canisters in ancient history.
A sequel to Gladiator, titled Gladiator II, was released in November 2024.
The film is directed by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa. It stars Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, and Derek Jacobi, the last two reprising their roles from Gladiator. It is produced by Scott Free Productions for Paramount Pictures. In addition to directing the film, Scott serves as a producer alongside Michael Pruss, Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher. Costume designer Janty Yates and production designer Arthur Max—both of whom worked on Gladiator—returned for the sequel.
The story centers on Lucilla's son, Lucius, who is revealed to be the son of Maximus and not Lucius Verus as stated in Gladiator. In Gladiator, Lucius is a young boy; in Gladiator II he is a grown man.
A third film is in the works.