Gladiator won Best Picture at the Academy Awards once upon a time. Surely, that means there's nothing really wrong with the movie. Yeah, right. On the eve of Hollywood's newest sword and sandals epic comes everybody's favorite sword and sandals epic. Remember the early 2000's, if you must, and check out the Honest Trailer for Gladiator.
While Gladiator is a fairly good movie overall, putting the entire thing in the context of the early 2000's has a sobering effect on our view of the movie. We have to admit that we as a culture made some pretty terrible decisions as a culture around then. A Mission: _Impossible_ movie directed by John Woo? Did that really happen? As the Honest Trailer points out, it was all too real.
Gladiator won Best Picture, but if we're being honest, the competition wasn't as stiff as it often is that year. Also, we're not saying that Russell Crow didn't deserve to win Best Actor, but we might be saying that his role as Maximus is actually the weakest of the multiple roles he's been nominated for. He's a great actor who deserved an Oscar, we're not sure he deserved it for this one. If anything, this reminds us that Joaquin Phoenix plays an absolutely chilling character in Gladiator . If anybody deserved to win an acting Oscar for this movie, it was probably him. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost our to Benicio Del Toro for Traffic.
If there's one problem with this video, it's that it reminds us that Russell Crowe once tried to be a pop star. We survived that once, we really shouldn't have to do it again.
The best part of the Honest Trailer, however, has to be the comparison between the gladiator games and professional wrestling. There is certainly a similarity between the two. One can assume that pro wrestling certainly took inspiration from the gladiators of old. In both events, the live crowd is a key part of what makes the event successful. Of course, we also like the specific comparison between Maximus and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Although, the Screen Junkies aren't actually the first to make it. The WWE did it themselves not long after Gladiator was released.
What do you think of Gladiator. Is the movie actually as good as it was believed to be a decade and a half ago? Let us know what you think down in the comments.
