Tell about Gladiator ?

Livy's account skirts the funereal, sacrificial function of early Roman gladiator combats and reflects the later theatrical ethos of the Roman gladiator show: splendidly, exotically armed and armoured barbarians, treacherous and degenerate, are dominated by Roman iron and native courage.

His plain Romans virtuously dedicate the magnificent spoils of war to the Gods. Their Campanian allies stage a dinner entertainment using gladiators who may not be Samnites, but play the Samnite role. Other groups and tribes would join the cast list as Roman territories expanded. Most gladiators were armed and armoured in the manner of the enemies of Rome.

The munus became a morally instructive form of historic enactment in which the only honourable option for the gladiator was to fight well, or else die well.

The film was greenlit after screenwriter David Franzoni answered three simple questions from Dreamworks exec Steven Spielberg. 1) It’s about ancient Roman Gladiators? Yes. 2) It takes place in the ancient Coliseum? Yes. 3) They fight with swords to the death and such? Yes.

Ridley Scott was convinced to do the movie after producers showed him a copy of Jean Leon Gerome’s 1872 painting Pollice Verso, which depicted a gladiator awaiting a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down from the coliseum crowd. “That image spoke to me of the Roman Empire in all its glory and wickedness,” said Scott. “I knew right then and there I was hooked.”

Commodus and Lucilla were real people. In 182 AD, Commodus survived an assassination attempt by Lucilla. Those family dinners must have been intense.

In reality, emperor Marcus Aurelius died of the plague and Commodus ascended to the throne. He was loved by the army and the lower classes until his megalomaniacal behavior forced his advisors to hire a champion wrestler named Narcissus to strangle him to death.

As a matter of fact, in the first draft of the script, dated April 4th, 1998, the protagonist was named Narcissus.

The real Commodus was known as the “Gladiator Emperor” because he would often make appearances in the arena to take down wild animals and other challengers. But he also cruelly brought cripples or amputees into the arena and clubbed them to death, turning the populace against him. Additionally, he charged Rome an exorbitant fee for these appearances, which devalued Roman currency and precipitated the fall of Rome. An egomaniacal ruler, who insists on making everything about himself, causing the decline of a republic? Sounds familiar.

The forest near Farnham, England that doubled as Germania during the battle between the Roman Legions and the German hordes had been scheduled for “deforestation” by the Royal Forestry Commission. To get the shots he needed, Scott helpfully arranged to burn it down for them.

As part of the production, they built a 52-foot high portion of the first tier of the Colosseum measuring about one-third the circumference of the original. The rest of the arena was a digital recreation.

The wounds on Russell Crowe’s face after the opening battle scene were real. He received them when his horse was startled and backed him into some tree branches.

Crowe suffered multiple injuries on set including an aggravated Achilles tendon, a broken foot, a cracked hip bone, popped bicep tendons, and losing all feeling in his right forefinger for two years following a sword fight.

Only 32 pages of the script had been completed when shooting began. To be fair, they were 32 awesome pages. Double spaced and everything.

Crowe reportedly didn’t love the now-famous line, “And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” He tried to come up with something better on set, but in the end, decided to stick with it. Maximus’ vengeance speech became a fan favorite and one of the most quoted scenes in the entire film.

Joaquin Phoenix improvised the line where he screamed, “Am I not merciful?!” which scared the bejeesus out of Connie Nielsen, who was not expecting it at all.

Maximus’ pet wolf is the same dog that played Wellard for seven years on “Eastenders.” This likely means very little to anyone outside of the UK. Or inside the UK, for that matter.

Much like today’s celebrity athletes, Roman gladiators also did product endorsements. However, the producers purposely left that out thinking that audiences wouldn’t believe it, which is a shame because it would have been great to see a scene in which Maximus screams, “At my command, unleash Bud Light!”

Although best known as a musician, Nick Cave was commissioned by Crowe and Scott to write a sequel. His solution to Maximus’ death was to have Maximus reincarnated by Roman Gods, transported to World War II, then the Vietnam War, before finally becoming a modern-day General at the Pentagon. The studio rejected it, suggesting that Cave stick to making his music.

Two weeks into production, Joaquin Phoenix had an epiphany that it would make sense for Commodus to gain weight, growing physically larger as his belief in his own power as Emperor grew. He did not mention what caused the epiphany, but there’s a strong likelihood that Cheetos were involved.

Five tigers were brought in for the sequence where Maximus fights Tigris the Gaul. For safety, there was a vet on hand armed with a tranquilizer gun.

There was a sequence in the original script that called for a fight between Maximus and a rhino. The rhino, however, turned out to be too difficult to train and the CGI rhino wasn’t realistic enough, so they scrapped the idea.

Maximus’ family wasn’t originally planned to be killed off, but the subplot was added during the rewrite by John Logan in order to give Maximus’ character more reason to fight.

The movie makes it seem like almost every gladiatorial match was a fight to the death. In Ancient Rome, that wasn’t the case: most gladiatorial fights didn’t end in a fatality, but that’s not to say it wasn’t a risky profession.

All the film’s props, sets, and costumes were manufactured specifically for the film as the items they needed were either too costly or unavailable. One hundred suits of armor were made of steel, and another five hundred and fifty were made out of polyurethane.