"FOTRE" vs. "Gladiator" smackdown: Your

[FlaviusCrispus]

I think you can't compare Gladiator with FOTRE alone, since the screen play for Gladiator was basically a cut and paste job from FOTRE, and the "The Robe" sequel "Demetrius and the Gladiators." (with a little Spartacus thrown in) It would only be fair to make Gladiator compete with both at once- and lose

I disagree-- about not being able to compare them, not about the cut-and-paste job. David Franzoni has insisted he had never seen FOTRE before he wrote the script to Gladiator. I think he's either lying or has somehow suppressed his memory of having seen FOTRE in his youth, since the similarities are just too great to be coincidental.

But you can certainly compare them. Just because a movie may be a remake of an earlier film doesn't mean they can't be compared. The 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was in many ways as good or superior to the 1956 original; but the 2007 version ("Invasion") was just awful. There, I just compared them.

Anyway, to some extent, it seems all modern movies are "cut and paste jobs" from other movies. We're in the postmodern, decadent era after all. That doesn't mean all modern movies are bad and all of their predecessors are great.

If FOTRE was some kind of wonderful classic of cinema, you might have more of a point. But it's not-- it's a worthwhile, but flawed film, IMHO. The main problems, pointed out above, are the script and the central character. The script of "Gladiator" may be partly based on FOTRE, but it in many ways its better, and there is simply no question of Russell Crowe's Maximus being a superior protagonist to Stephen Boyd's Livius.

You make an interesting point about Demetrius and the Gladiators (which is not a bad film in it's own right, and can be bought on DVD now pretty cheaply!). In both films you have a deranged emperor and a heroic gladiator, but the similarities end there. Maybe a bigger influence was Spartacus, a more famous and recent film with a gladiator protagonist. Then there was Barrabas, which also had a lot of gladiator sequences which were in many ways superior to the other two. But it's also interesting how Gladiator steered clear of many of the "gladiator movie" cliches-- no long training sequences, for example, and no "poor, conflicted gladiators being made to slaughter innocent Christian" scenes.