I seriously doubt anyone who stumbled upon this really needs me to tell them why they should watch "Gladiator". So instead I'll just use my 600 required characters to lament the state of current Hollywood and the death of films like this one.
Despite its incredible success, "Gladiator" sort of represents the end of an era. Soon after its release the age of the comic book film would take over Hollywood and epics like this one would be cast aside as originality and creativity were replaced by a cookie cutter assembly line filled with brands and I. P.'s.
There's also the matter of the cultural shift that has taken place over the last quarter century. Not with society at large necessarily, but certainly within Hollywood. Terms like "Toxic Masculinity" are often thrown around to describe anything that even remotely involves men behaving like, well, men. Therefore contemporary portrayals of men are often neutered, rendering them as either soft and weak or big and dumb.
But as super hero/comic book burnout combined with companies like Disney gnawing every scrap of meat off of the bones of their once mighty brands, I believe that audiences are quietly thirsting for the return of films like "Gladiator". Big. Epic. And yes, masculine.
Sometimes we don't know what we need until we find it, and I hope that some producer or director out there has the foresight, talent and drive to fill this vacuum before movies are shoved aside by video games for good.
Despite its incredible success, "Gladiator" sort of represents the end of an era. Soon after its release the age of the comic book film would take over Hollywood and epics like this one would be cast aside as originality and creativity were replaced by a cookie cutter assembly line filled with brands and I. P.'s.
There's also the matter of the cultural shift that has taken place over the last quarter century. Not with society at large necessarily, but certainly within Hollywood. Terms like "Toxic Masculinity" are often thrown around to describe anything that even remotely involves men behaving like, well, men. Therefore contemporary portrayals of men are often neutered, rendering them as either soft and weak or big and dumb.
But as super hero/comic book burnout combined with companies like Disney gnawing every scrap of meat off of the bones of their once mighty brands, I believe that audiences are quietly thirsting for the return of films like "Gladiator". Big. Epic. And yes, masculine.
Sometimes we don't know what we need until we find it, and I hope that some producer or director out there has the foresight, talent and drive to fill this vacuum before movies are shoved aside by video games for good.