So Ridley Scott is directing a Gladiator sequel...

[Chen G. 4,765]

19 minutes ago, The Train Station said:

You're describing a memorable shot.

 

Iconic = Visually memorable.

 

If you meet a person on the street and say "Remember the film where this and that happened?" - "Oh yeah, Gladiator!" then its iconic.

 

And, again, if you want to take "iconic" to be a measure of quality, than I also think Gladiator is up there, but maybe that's just me.

[The Train Station 9,068]

Just now, Chen G. said:

 

Iconic = Visually memorable.

 

If you meet a person on the street and say "Remember the film where this and that happened?" - "Oh yeah, Gladiator!" then its iconic.

 

It's not a religious symbol. It's a movie.

[Chen G. 4,765]

You know the concept of borrowing terms, right?

 

Like, how we would use the term "tectonic shift" in political studies on loan from geology?

 

Same here.

 

"Iconic" in cinema means "known visually to the masses." Gladiator sure is that.

[Davis 3,273]

11 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

And, again, if you want to take "iconic" to be a measure of quality, than I also think Gladiator is up there, but maybe that's just me.

I think GLADIATOR has several iconic shots, and an iconic character, but the film overall I think is not that iconic, especially compared to e.g. BRAVEHEART or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.

 

What I don't get is why Ridley Scott thought that Gladiator needed a sequel, especially without Russell Crowe, whose acting is what made GLADIATOR a classic. It's insane how out of touch Scott has become with reality at his old age, thinking that the audience wanted to see Prometheus, Blade Runner 2049 or Gladiator 2. He has destroyed the legacy of all his best films: Alien, Blade Runner, and now Gladiator. 

 

 

[The Train Station 9,068]

More like stolen terms and putting them where they don't belong. You already have a plethora of existing terms to describe a film's recognition and to evaluate its quality. "Iconic" in the context of pop culture is as bad as "in the wake of" when writers are struggling to think of a more purple-prosey way of saying "after" or "following".

[Davis 3,273]

I like the term "classic" more, but if I used the term "iconic", I would call the following movies iconic:

 

- The Godfather

- 2001: A Space Odyssey

- 12 Angry Men

- Lawrence of Arabia

- Star Wars

- Raiders of the Lost Ark

- Alien

- Superman: The Movie

- Batman (1989)

- Back to the Future

- Jaws

- Close Encounters of the Third Kind

- The Seventh Seal

- Braveheart

- Rocky

- The Matrix

- Predator 

- The Thing (1982)

- Casablanca

- The Terminator

- Chinatown

- Heat

- The Shawshank Redemption

- Taxi Driver

- Ghostbusters

- Pulp Fiction

- The Big Lebowski

- Breakfast at Tiffany's

- Scarface (1983)

- Ben-Hur

- The Wizard of Oz

- Planet of the Apes (1968)

 

... and a lot more.

[The Train Station 9,068]

The problem is everyone seems to have their own idea of what "iconic" is. On one hand, some nitwit on social media might say "omfg thats so iconic!" simply because it's a cool sounding word that they approximate as seeming close enough to describing something they like. And they've heard it a million times, so it must be right, huh.

 

While on the other hand a professional writer who should know better will chuck the word in because they're unaware of its actual meaning and they want something that's largely proven as an emotive adjective or intensifier in their copy or headline.

 

And all this overuse quickly dilutes its meaning away, when all along it had an objective meaning as religious symbolism, specifically within Christianity. Shame on the editors who let it past their filter, but I wouldn't expect the brains trust of modern so-called "journalists" in the Zoomer and Millennial age groups to catch this one out and spike it anyway.

[Thor 8,632]

"Iconic" isn't really a subjective term. It just denotes a thing's popularity, position in (popular) culture and general, instant recognizability. It can be factually observed.

 

Whatever you think of the film, makes no difference. It neither heightens nor lowers a film's iconic status. Plenty of iconic films I don't particularly care for, and even think are overrated, like THE WIZARD OF OZ, but that doesn't mean they're not iconic.

 

But I see this all the time. Someone doesn't like a a popular film or score, therefore that film or score isn't popular, in their eyes. A weird, cognitive disconnect.

[The Train Station 9,068]

So it's popular. Not iconic.

[Thor 8,632]

Iconic is something with immense popularity.

[Jamie Dutton 7,637]

Movies are less popular than ever. I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years no one except old farts will be watching movies, everyone else will be on social media video zones.

[Chen G. 4,765]

1 hour ago, Davis said:

I think GLADIATOR has several iconic shots, and an iconic character, but the film overall I think is not that iconic, especially compared to e.g. BRAVEHEART or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.

 

What I don't get is why Ridley Scott thought that Gladiator needed a sequel

 

Okay, this is going to turn into a short disquisition about Gladiator - a propos the remarks about purple prose - but if you'll indulge me... Well, to begin with, I also worry that whomever thought Gladiator was in need of a sequel is the kind of person who fails to understand what Gladiator was all about. I think the trailer for the film looks rapturous and I'm willing to hear Scott out, but yeah, I'm...concerned.

 

Now, as for the comparisons drawn here, I don't think there's much ground to compare Lawrence of Arabia with Gladiator. Lawrence is a tragedy in the greek sense: Lawrence is a kind of character who falls through his hubris, wanton thrill-seeking and sado-masochistic leanings. Maximus is anything but that kind of hero: he isn't a tragic figure - he's a martyr.

 

I point this out because I think that, in 2024, there's a tendency in some circles to put films like Gladiator down a little bit, precisely because its a more "simplistic" kind of "hero lays down his life for the greater cause" type of story. The percieved simplicity - as compared to the moral and psychological complexities of Lawrence or of a New American Wave movie from the 70s - is pitted against it.

 

Still more objections to the films come on the grounds of the burliness of the whole affair, with its action setpieces: by contrast, Omar Sharif once said that Lawrence doesn't really have any action setpieces: it has crowd scenes. Heck, Lean himself outlined a very similar state of mind to the one that's being insinuated here: while drafting the script, he put down any attempt to insert battle scenes with "do we really want to make a western?"

 

I don't subscribe to this kind of thinking. I don't think that having action setpiece somehow makes the drama of the film less rarified: on the contrary, I very much enjoy that the film is a full-course meal. Those scenes are germane to the story, and are nothing if not expertly crafted. On the contrary, had Scott been the kind of the director to go "hrrump, my film is too good to have anything as lowly as fight scenes in it!" I'm sure the film would have become strangled in its own "high brow" straitjacket.

 

The comparison to Braveheart is much more apposite: it was made in the wake of the Gibson piece, shares cast members with it and exhibits a similar plot outline, character archetypes and basic aesthetic. Having said that, I feel like the script and Scott's directorial imprimatur give the proceedings a very different sensibility. Essentially, it takes the same basic story but handles it completely differently. Intellectually, I can compare them until I'm blue in the face, but in the experience of watching Gladiator the comparisons vanish from mind and I just become absorbed into Scott's film.

 

Yes, the Gibson film is, I would say, the greater of the two by some margin, but Gladiator is still absolutely brilliant. When Maximus dies, its a moment of tremendous, sublime pathos. And when I say "sublime" it's not purple prose: it really does feel transcendant. At least, it does to this viewer.

[Nick1Ø66 6,075]

“Iconic” and “classic”, like “genius”, are way overused, and almost always incorrectly. 

[Doo_liss 6,962]

1 minute ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

“Iconic” and “classic”, like “genius”, are way overused, and almost always incorrectly. 

This is genius!

[Nick1Ø66 6,075]

Just now, Doo_liss said:

This is genius!

Classic response! 
 

You sir, are an icon of JWFAN.

[The Train Station 9,068]

8 minutes ago, Thor said:

Iconic is something with immense popularity.

 

So it's immensely popular. No need for the "iconic" redundancy.

[Doo_liss 6,962]

"Iconic" is more economic than "immensely popular".

 

 

 

[Thor 8,632]

Quote

So it's immensely popular. No need for the "iconic" redundancy.

 

Very much need. It's a more powerful term than 'popular', with extra layers of meaning, that is fitting for certain things.

 

But it's OK. You're free to not use the word for films. Meanwhile, I will continue to use it for films that qualify for it. Like GLADIATOR.

[The Train Station 9,068]

4 minutes ago, Thor said:

 

Very much need. It's a more powerful term than 'popular', with extra layers of meaning, that is fitting for certain things.

 

But it's OK. You're free to not use the word for films. Meanwhile, I will continue to use it for films that qualify for it. Like GLADIATOR.

 

Yeah I'd edit the shit out of your copy if you were filing it with me. You'd never recognise the re-write as your own.

 

 

[Chen G. 4,765]

Just to continue the paean a little bit...

 

Cinema has a lot of great confrontations in dialogue, but I don't think in any film does the hero - though clearly in a point of physical disadvantage - ever "disarm" the antagonist with a line better than Maximus does Commodus here. A moment of tremendous pathos:

 

 

Maximus' martyric death is handled brilliantly. The real masterstroke is that we never - in all the film - see Maximus and his wife and son in the same shot...until this sequence, which itself holds that shot back so that it becomes a kind of visual climax to the sequence. Has a kind of "soldier comes home from the front" feeling. Totally devestating:

 

 

I find the notion that Crowe carries the entire film on his shoulders frankly ludicrous. As Crowe himself recently said, I don't think there's one performance in this film that's short of beautiful. The shots of Nielsen's Lucila in the final scene are a good example: the way she, sitting by Maximus' body, finds her composure again when she realises everyone crowded up behind her and wait to see what she has to say:

 

 

The two shots below - the long take of the camera, down low and looking up while spinning around the characters, and the shot panning from the shephard to the seemingly unending expanse of the Morrocan desert - are as awe-inspiring in their scale as anything in the recent Dune films. David Lean would have been happy to call these shots his own. The chanting of the crowds at the end of the first Coloseum sequence is so overpowering that it threatens to make the audience swoon:

 

 

These examples don't constitute a thimble out of the greatness of this work of art. Scott had been more immaculate in other films - Alien comes to mind - but he's never exerted a greater pathos upon his audience. Sublime from end to end.

[The Train Station 9,068]

"Never ever"

 

Oh god please spare me

[Doo_liss 6,962]

A whole 'nother level.

[Davis 3,273]

1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

Okay, this is going to turn into a short disquisition about Gladiator

As I wrote in my earlier comment, GLADIATOR is one of my favorite films, I have seen it at least ten times. But I still don’t think it’s as iconic as e.g. BRAVEHEART or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. 
Gladiator is a professionally made popcorn historic action drama with a superb performance by Crowe and Phoenix and a great supporting cast. It’s shot and scored very well. But it’s nonetheless a popcorn flick. 

[Chen G. 4,765]

11 minutes ago, Davis said:

But it’s nonetheless a popcorn flick.

 

I don't think it is. It's much too downbeat to be considered a "popcorn flick."

 

The film is more about pathos than about fun.

 

55 minutes ago, The Train Station said:

"Never ever"

 

Yeah, nitpick the hebrew man's choice of words in English instead of engaging with their actual arguments for this great film. 

[Romão 2,339]

The political angle is handled in an incredibly simplistic way, though

[Edmilson 9,391]

Gladiator is a great movie but (unpopular opinion alert)... I prefer The Last Samurai.

 

*runs*

[A24 4,650]

Gladiator II was filmed on Malta, which subsidized the movie for 46 million Euro. The reason for that is that they want to attract more movie productions to their island. 

[Thor 8,632]

Morocco too.

[Knight of Ren 1,107]

41 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Gladiator is a great movie but (unpopular opinion alert)... I prefer The Last Samurai.

 

*runs*

Agree! Gladiator is a really solid film but The Last Samurai resonates with me a lot more. The way it tells the story, the beautiful landscapes of Japan's countryside, Tom Cruise's presence and charisma... And I think Zimmer did a much better score for The Last Samurai, definitely in my top 5 form him!

[Chen G. 4,765]

58 minutes ago, Romão said:

The political angle is handled in an incredibly simplistic way, though

The whole construct of the unseen “mob”? Yeah, it is. But it’s so in the background of the actual drama that I don’t pay it much heed.

[Nick1Ø66 6,075]

1 hour ago, Romão said:

The political angle is handled in an incredibly simplistic way, though

 

So? How do you think it should have been handled?

 

Would a more complicated plot, better reflecting the incredibly complex politics of the Roman Empire really have made Gladiator a better movie? I think not. Probably the opposite, and in any event, it would have been a different movie, and certainly one not as powerful. There's a reason that film still resonates with audiences today. It's had incredible cultural staying power and is so, well...iconic.

 

 

[Edmilson 9,391]

35 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

Would a more complicated plot, better reflecting the incredibly complex politics of the Roman Empire really have made Gladiator a better movie?

See, this is what Game of Thrones has done with people 

[GerateWohl 5,295]

What differs Gladiator from movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Braveheart is the extreme middle finger in direction of historic accuracy of events. Maximus never existed and Comodus didn't die in the Collosseum fighting against a Gladiator. 

[Chen G. 4,765]

7 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

What differs Gladiator from movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Braveheart is the extreme middle finger in direction of historic accuracy of events.

 

Gladiator is essentially a madeup story using some historical names and tableauex.

 

99% of audiences, who do not know late Roman history, wouldn't know better to care. I, the big mean historian, also don't really care. It need be judged as a work of art, not as a historical document.

[GerateWohl 5,295]

3 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Gladiator is essentially a madeup story using some historical names and tableauex.

 

99% of audiences, who doesn't know late Roman history, wouldn't know better to care. I, the big mean historian, also doesn't really care. It need be judged as a work of art, not as a historical document.

I didn't say that this is a bad thing. I just said, that separates it from movies like Braveheart and Lawrence of Arabia. Gladiator is more like Inglorious Basterds.

[Davis 3,273]

 

2 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Gladiator is a great movie but (unpopular opinion alert)... I prefer The Last Samurai.

 

*runs*

I agree, The Last Samurai is definitely a more profound film than Gladiator. 

[Jamie Dutton 7,637]

I only recently watched Gladiator for the first time. I think I'd seen bits of it on a TV at a bus depot in Tennessee years ago. I liked it but I feel like it fizzled out in the ending. I know Oliver Reed died during production but you could tell he was hastily written out. 

[thestat 448]

There is very little iconic about anything HGW has composed. He is a functional, often very under-whelming composer, who minimises the drama for whatever reason - he is a film (ie. theatrical) composer, so the reason he does this remains elusive. He is not a minimalist and never would have survived in RCP in the 1990s by being that.

 

Gladiator 2 seems okay. Not convinced. He just has very light orchestrations that sound small, probably for a reason.

 

At the same time, he can do some very very good stuff that totally breaks new ground and becomes iconic in its own way

 

This track from 2001 Spy Game is where HGW's talents lie - minor key melodies and unexpected combinations of sound worlds (boy soprano, strings, brass, synths etc.)

 

[Nick1Ø66 6,075]

I think Braveheart has much more in common with Gladiator than it does Lawrence of Arabia. And overall, I actually think Gladiator is probably more historically accurate than Braveheart,. At least in terms of the setting and era it's trying to represent. 

 

While it's true Gladiator is essentially historical fiction, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus were real historical figures. Maximus wasn't a real person, but was probably inspired by Spartacus and some other Roman generals. The tableaux, to use Chen's word, is at least inspired by real history.  

 

The same is basically true for Braveheart.  Sure, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Edward Longshanks were real historical figures, but a huge amount of Braveheart is essentially historical fiction. And I'm fine with that. The fact is we know very little about Wallace and his life outside of legend.

 

So both films are largely historical fiction and really good historical epics.

Lawrence, on the other hand, while certainly no paragon of historical accuracy, at least is more or less based on real historical events as they actually occurred. Mainly because, unlike ancient Rome and medieval Scotland, we actually have contemporaneous records of all the events in Lawrence, not the least of which is Lawrence's own memoir. 

 

The historical epic is my favourite genre (I love all three of these films unabashedly), but speaking for myself, I give a much bigger pass to historical epics set, for example, during the Middle Ages and Roman Empire than I would something set in the last 300 years. But either way, what I look for first is to be entertained. My major at Uni was history, and if I want historical accuracy, I'll read a book.

[thestat 448]

My point is about HGW who is, as ever, okay with what he does.  Dude, I booked tickets to hear Cronenberg and Shore talk, I don't give a shit about HGW. He is too small time?

 

Man. this is music@

 

[The Train Station 9,068]

7 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Yeah, nitpick the hebrew man's choice of words in English instead of engaging with their actual arguments for this great film. 

 

You're a bunch of words on a telephone screen as far as I'm concerned. How am I meant to know you're Hebrew?

[Chen G. 4,765]

'twas a jest! 

 

You get the point though, surely?

[The Train Station 9,068]

No.

[Doo_liss 6,962]

6 hours ago, The Train Station said:

 

You're a bunch of words on a telephone screen as far as I'm concerned. How am I meant to know you're Hebrew?

I mean, have you seen his batsignal? @Nick1Ø66

[Jurassic Shark 13,641]

What kind of brew is that?

[Richard P 4,359]

14 hours ago, Knight of Ren said:

Agree! Gladiator is a really solid film but The Last Samurai resonates with me a lot more. The way it tells the story, the beautiful landscapes of Japan's countryside, Tom Cruise's presence and charisma... And I think Zimmer did a much better score for The Last Samurai, definitely in my top 5 form him!

 

Last Samurai has some really beautiful eastern material but I found some of the action material too heavy - moreso than Gladiator - and the album too long in general. Gladiator wins head over heels, score-wise for me - that may also be partly because I culturally find the italian/roman material more attractive than the Japanese material. I never saw LS so don't really have an opinion on it.

[Pawel P. 746]

Watched the movie yesterday.

 

Pros:
This is a great spectacle. The siege of Numidia is thrilling, but the most spectacular are the fights in the Colosseum.

Denzel Washington steals the film.

There is no boredom here, a lot is happening.

You don't get the impression that you are watching a completely different film that feeds on the legend of its predecessor. From the beginning we feel that we are in the same world we were in 24 years ago.

 

Cons:
Strange monkeys (Someone watched the ending of " The Mummy Returns" too much? And definitely  saved up for CGI), plus sharks swim in the Colosseum and for a moment it becomes "Sharknado" mixed with "Meg".
I'm not entirely convinced by the main character - or rather the way his character is being developed - but I can't reveal more because I would spoil it.
A few script shallows.
The film's finale itself, a bit chaotic, and not without too much pathos, but that was to be expected

 

The score is very good, but there's no way it will gain such pop-cultural appeal as its predecessor. A lot of ethnic music and choirs, let's say a mix of Harry Gregson-Williams from the great "Kingdom of Heaven", a very good "Prince of Persia" and a mediocre "The Last Duel". It should hold up on separate listen, especially if they make a cool, thoughtful album out of it, which HGW is capable of.

 

To sum up, I liked the movie, despite some issues.

[Davis 3,273]

4 minutes ago, Pawel P. said:

Denzel Washington steals the film.

Does he say “muh man”?

 

 

4 minutes ago, Pawel P. said:

a mix of Howard from the great "Kingdom of Heaven"

Kingdom of Heaven is by Harry Gregson-Williams.

[Pawel P. 746]

21 minutes ago, Davis said:

 

Kingdom of Heaven is by Harry Gregson-Williams.

 

Yeah, a mistake made in a hurry, of course I corrected it, but not before you noticed it.

[Thor 8,632]

29 minutes ago, Pawel P. said:

Strange monkeys (Someone watched the ending of " The Mummy Returns" too much? And definitely  saved up for CGI), plus sharks swim in the Colosseum and for a moment it becomes "Sharknado" mixed with "Meg".

 

As I said over on FSM:

 

I knew this would cause a ruckus the moment I saw it in the film, but it's all based on historical fact. There were all kinds of exotic, imported features and animals in the gladiator arena, including monkeys and sharks. Naval battles like this were also staged. True, while the display of sharks as something to behold is recorded, there are no records of them being in a battle scene, however. But a neat way to combine the two for dramatic effect. It's not a documentary.