Gladiator with Emma Southon

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeph and bast start changing
it with the Bechdel.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Cast from the studio that brought you Shrek. It's the
Gladiator episode of the Bechdel Cast. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
My name is Caitlin Durante.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, aunt, did I just learn something?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
I mean it's dream Works.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
It's dream Works.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, that's so wait.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, I don't want to introduce myself yet. That is
shocking information. Why would this be dreamed? I wow? So
they really they really like two roads diverged in a
wood for them, and they were like, we're going Shrek.
We're putting our money on Shrek. And honestly, I think
that that was the right decision for the culture ultimately.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we're just getting Gladiator too. Meanwhile,
Shrek five wrapped, it's wrapped. Yes, I don't know, I've
made that up. I know it's been announced. You don't
see Sutton Foster starring and Gladiator the Musical on Broadway?
Do we see her playing Princess Fiona on Broadway. We
sure do to your straight nominated for a Tony Whoa.

(01:22):
But enough about Shrek.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
I can't believe that Gladiator shocking, shocking, shocking, I would
say shocking, Caitlin and I did see Shrek in thirty
five millimeter, which should not be a sentence that's so ridiculous,
But we did.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
We invested for like, no DVD. We need to see
it in the raw.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, on the big screen.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
It was awesome. It was literally I think the audience
was split in two of like irony pilled, childless millennials
and normal families. And we were all having a great time.
Oh yeah, nine year olds and thirty nine year old
we're all rocking. It was great, ten out of ten.
And also Gladiator.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
And also Gladiator.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Now I can't believe that. Okay, a rich conversation already.
My name is Jamie Loftis. This is our show that
takes a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional
feminist lens, using the Bechdel test as a jumping off
point for discussion, which is hilarious for this movie specifically,
but just for the sake of argument. Caitlin, what is

(02:28):
the Bechdel test.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Uh, real quick here, because spoiler alert, the movie doesn't
pass even a little.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Bit, it will not come into play. There's not even
an argument for like, well, could it be like no.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Right, It's just a media metric that we use to
initiate larger conversations about representation. There are many versions of it.
Ours is do two characters of a marginalized gender have names?
Do they speak to each other? And is there conversation
about something other than a man? And we like it
when it's a you know, narratively significant conversation and not

(03:01):
just throw away dialogue. But again, it won't even come
close for this movie. But we will have a rich
discussion nonetheless with a wonderful guest that we're very excited about.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Gosh, yeah, she's incredible. And this movie is the most
fathers and sons coded movie I think I've ever seen.
There's so many gosh, so many fathers and so many sons,
so many sons. Enough already enough with the fathers and
the sons.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yes, which is why we brought on this guest who
frames Roman history a little bit differently.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
So.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Our guest is a historian and writer, author of many books.
One of which is entitled A rem of One's Own,
A History of the Roman Empire in twenty one women,
it's Emma Suthan. Hello, welcome, Hi, thank you, thanks for
being here.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited that we have you
on the show. Gosh, I mean, I have so many questions,
but especially because was it just last year, I flak
time is a flat circle. Was it an interesting time
for you when the Roman Empire meme was making the
rounds at nauseum?

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah it was. Yeah, as one of the few women
in the world that spend significantly more time talking and
thinking about the Roman Empire than her husband, it was
a fun time. And yeah, it came out was going
around just as my book was coming out, so it
felt like a marketing campaign specifically for me, which.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Was great, incredible.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
I could be like, look, it's not just like aqueducts
and people saying Marcus Aurelius and then.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Which this movie doesn't do that much to challenge.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
It doesn't know, this is why everybody thinks Marcus Aurelius
is the only guy that ever existed in the whole
of the Roman Empire.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
I was so curious how you originally fell into this
line of study. How yeah, how did you end up
as an authority on Roman Empire?

Speaker 1 (05:01):
I did my A levels in ancient history at the
exact time that this film came out, which I only
did so in the UK, you get to choose subjects
that you're going to do to study, like narrow down
to four subjects when you're sixteen. They just like choose
a career path. And I did ancient history because I
thought it sounded fun, and you got to go on

(05:22):
trips to Italy and Greece, and I just was immediately
captivated by the Romans and how optly, utterly horrible they are.
And I kept trying to leave, Like I tried to
do my undergraduate in something else, I tried to do
my master's degree in something else, and I just kept
quitting and going back and doing Romans. And then I
did my PhD and decided I didn't want to be

(05:43):
an academic. I just wanted to write books with jokes
in instead. And I've been getting away with that now
for a decade.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
So I love that it rocks.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
And specifically, I mean I will we'll talk about this
throughout the episode, but specifically, you have been it seems
like one of the few people who have centered women
in your histories of room. So when you're like coming
up in this space, was that a hard self for people?
Was there a demand for it?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Like?

Speaker 2 (06:11):
How did you sort of land on that specific focus?

Speaker 1 (06:15):
I think because I'm a woman, and I'm also a
working class woman, and so so much of what you
read about when you're reading about Romans is like five
of the most upper class guys you've ever heard of,
like Seneca and Cicero and emperors, who are all like
the most elite rich men that you can humanly imagine.
And I just do not empathize with those people at all,
Like I do not imagine myself as them, but so

(06:37):
many ancient historians and classicists totally do. They're like me, Cicero,
like that's who I would be if I was put
in the past, And I just don't at all. So
I wanted to find you know, whenever I was studying it,
I'd always be like, who would I be in this picture?
And I would be like some woman standing at the back,
being like this doesn't look like it's going very well. Yeah,

(07:00):
basically any given situation. So I'm you know, I like
telling those stories and expanding the idea of what the
Roman Empire is and what Roman history is, because we
have so much information about the ancient world, Like, we
have so much and it's all right there, but people
are not necessarily interested in looking for it themselves. So

(07:22):
I do it for them and then tell them about it,
because I'm basically just looking for myself in the past.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
A gossip about and make it fun.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I think that they're just inherently funny, so because
they take themselves very seriously, but they're not a serious people,
and so to me, it's very easy to make jokes
about them. And more people should. More people should make
fun of them, I think, And that's what we're going
to do here today.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, there is notes of you know, just notes of
a crumbling empire, Like, yeah, I get this, I get
this vibe. I see myself, I see myself in this
crumbling empire.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Here we are in one.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Bringing it into Gladiator. When did you first encounter with
this movie? What is your history with this movie specifically?

Speaker 1 (08:10):
So this movie came out exactly as I was just
starting to study the Romans. So nineteen ninety nine is
when I first started studying. In two thousand and when
this came out, and so I went with my A
level group to see it, and we were seventeen years
old and like the worst people that you can imagine,
because you know, you have people who have like one

(08:33):
small bit of knowledge and therefore they think they know everything.
We were those people in the back of the cinema.
And I saw it and I thought there was very,
very silly, and I remember being vaguely hysterical at all
of the Latin because I had done one whole year
of Latin, so obviously so.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
You're fluent, of course.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, but in fairness, I still find that very very funny.
And then I just thought it was a very very
silly film that was hilarious for astonishing too and half
hours and then kind of stopped thinking about it, and
since then, for the past like twenty five years, have
just been sort of making fun of it, like it's
just been it's consistently funny to do Russell Crow oppressions.

(09:12):
And went back and watched it again for this but
this is the first time I've actually seen it since
seeing it in the cinema. Wow, So it was amazing
how much I remembered. But I've just been gently feeling
bad about how annoying I must have been in two thousand.
In the cinema, it's okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, you're seventeen, that you know, if you're not annoying
when you're seventeen, you are the weird one exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
And I think it deserved the laughter.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
So it's okay, Wow, we're so polite, you go. I
had not seen this movie. Bravely, I just and not
because I've even disinterested in ancient rom I hopefull this
isn't a polarizing thing to say it, but like in

(10:02):
my like public school system, if you were like in
advanced classes, they made you take Latin instead of something
you could use and so, and I will always resent
because I, you know, like really wish I spoke even
vaguely conversational Spanish would be so much more useful in
my day to day life. But instead I took five

(10:24):
years of Latin, and for what I don't know, I
retained very little. I remember how to say stupid boy,
futuos puiri whoa, And that was all I would really
say in the class because all the boys in the
class were annoying.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Well, if you want to learn and in Spanish. It's
one way you could say it is please Chico is stupid,
so she could see and how much more useful would
so much.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
My life would just be easier. Anyways, I really did
enjoy Latin, and that's why I stayed in the program
for five years. And you know, there like historical elements
to it. We did these very I have you heard
of these, like these Latin education books. I don't know
if they were just in the US, but it's called
Eka Romani.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yes, I know it.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, Oh my gosh. There is still kind of like
a semi thriving tumbler culture around Eka Romani because it
was like a story, like I do think part of
the reason I didn't leave the Latin program is because
of the story. Because you're translating like a story about
a family who moves from Oh gosh, I wish I

(11:33):
remembered their last name, Aki Romani Hive don't kill me.
But they basically they're on this long journey to Rome.
They're like an upper middle class family on their journey
to Rome. And then for an entire academic year they
were stuck in a ditch. It was wild. It was
all of book two, all of eighth grade, they're stuck
in a ditch. It's so shocking. My cousin was two

(11:55):
years ahead of me, and she's like buckle in for
eighth grade because nothing happens in Latin in eighth grade.
They don't get to Rome until you're in high school.
It was like, so the year where they're in the
ditch is just ridiculous. Anyways, we learned about Roman history
when I was saying Latin, but I just never as
far as like Gladiator goes. This is just like I
see this poster and I'm like, this movie is not

(12:17):
for me. I don't know. Historical epics have never really
been my thing, you know, hyper mask movies, I've never
really been my thing, and so when I was watching
this for the first time, I felt like, yeah, this
is really not my thing. So not much changed. However, However,

(12:38):
while his you know, character, which I know is like
based in some historical truth, while Joaquin Phoenix's character is
absolutely diabolical, he is so cunty in this movie. He's
like awesome to watch. He's such a diva. I love him. Yeah,

(12:59):
so yeah, I if for nothing else other than the
Joaquin Phoenix performance, I you know, it was watching Waquin Phoenix.
I just didn't know there was a famous movie where
Joaquin Phoenix killed Dumbledore. So that was interesting.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
H the joke man kills Dumbledore.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Joker killed Dumbledore. And if that's not a hot topic sentence,
I don't know what is.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
It wasn't for me, but I am very excited to
talk about it because it feels like such straight guy porn.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Mmmmm yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yes, Kitlyn, was your history with Gladiator.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
I saw it in high school. I don't think I
saw in theaters, but when it like came out on DVD,
my friends and I got together for a little sleepover
and we watched it. And as far as like appealing
to my sensibilities, it does for me more than I
think it does for you, Jamie. But for some reason,
I never revisited it, and I like kind of remembered

(14:00):
nothing about it. And also I didn't learn like anything
about ancient Rome in any history class I ever took.
There was probably like three days where they're like, hey,
remember Julius Caesar, he did this thing. So I know
almost nothing to the extent where I thought that Caesar

(14:22):
was a last name and not like a title.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
It's both what I'm so glad you're here. But they
all say, like, you're a Caesar, so that's it. That's
her last name, but it's also their title.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
That's his name. Yeah, so his name is Guys Julius Caesar,
so is his last name. And then it becomes a
title after his air makes it into a title basically wow, okay,
yeah wow, and then you get to be a Caesar
and then it like loses all of its name meaning
and just becomes a title eventually.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
So it's both Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
So glad you're here. You're so glad you're here, because
they use.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Caesar as if it's a title in this movie. So
I was like, oh, I thought that Caesar was a
last name, but I guess it's been a title this
whole time. But okay, that makes more sense.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
They're also using it very incorrectly in this movie.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Was this movie historically inaccurate?

Speaker 2 (15:18):
The thing that stuck out to me right away and
watch may be dead wrong is Lucilla's clothes. They felt
very small coded to me.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, they wouldn't log that out of place in a
like two thousands, like nice boty women who are married
to accountants.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Like extraneous ribbons is like a lot of like kind
of unflattering fabric. You're just like, hmm, it's looking polyester.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. That's one of my things is when people use
like really fine, like diaphanous, floaty fabrics in Roman things.
You're like, how do you think they're making those? Right?
That is machine mate, but they love a diaphanous fabric
kind of like paying things on film. But yeah, it
looks also really did not look that expensive compared to

(16:10):
how much they spent on Joaquin's like fancy robes.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Oh yeah, I've clad you okay, because I was like
maybe I just don't know for it, but it was
like this, this is cruel with me to say, but
it was kind of reminding me of the costume design
and I Frankenstein. It felt very like I.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Party Yeah, Party City vibes.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
So anyway, I had only seen this movie once before,
although I did when I went to Rome in twenty nineteen.
I think it was.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Brag am I the only person here that hasn't been
a Rome.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Maybe, wow, shame shame on you, Jamie. Now I did
a tour like a walking tour around the city of
Rome that was called Feminist History of Rome. So it
was a tour that told events of ancient Rome through

(17:04):
a feminist lens. And I was the only person on
the tour. It was me and the tour guide, so
it was like a very I was just the only
person who signed up for it, so it was a
very personal It was a date.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
It was basically a date.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
And.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
The tour guide had some pretty like swarfy opinions about things,
and like was saying things that were like disparaging of
sex workers, and so I did complain about it. I
wrote my little review and I was like, get rid
of all this swarf rhetoric. But otherwise it's a fun tour.

(17:40):
So I learned a little bit at the time. Did
I retain any of that information? Sure didn't. So couldn't say.
But I enjoyed watching this movie. It's I think better
than I remember, not because it's not like, wow, this
is like so well written and well performed, but it
is entertaining. I feel like the movie does what you

(18:01):
as entertained. Russell Crowe's character is encouraged to do, which
is like get the crowd on your side, and I
feel like me the crowd was on the side of
the movie. I had a good time watching it, That's
what I'm saying. But there's lots to talk about. So
let's take a quick break and we'll come back for

(18:22):
the recap. And we're back, okay. So here's the recap
of Gladiator. I will place a content warning at the
top here for sexual violence and incest. Okay. So we

(18:45):
open on text on the screen reading that at the
height of its power, the Roman Empire was vast, stretching
from Africa to England. A quarter of the world's population
lived and died under the rules of the Caesars. Which
is a title and the last name I no.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
No, wait, I want to say EMM a fact check.
Is the stuff at the beginning?

Speaker 1 (19:10):
True? Yes, it is. This is the fight, which kind
of makes it funny that they're all very convinced that
this is also the end. But this is like what's
called the high Empire. This is like the best of
times for the Roman Empire. It's like size wise, it's
at its peak, and they're only fighting wars now that

(19:31):
they are deliberately getting themselves into in order to conquer
other people. So this is what is called the High Empire, gotcha.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Although the text frames it very differently, where it's like
Rome is awesome and they're just trying to kill these
barbarians so that they can finally have peace throughout the empire,
which is awesome.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
The values of the movie are very bizarre with regards
to that, where it's like they're not avoiding the issue
of slavery entirely, and the movie has like some empathy,
but then also they're like but ultimately, at the end
of the day, it's all about the Roman project, and
you're like, I don't know about that.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, So the rest of the text and I rewrote
it and reframed it to this, which is so it's
the year one eighty a d. Emperor Marcus Aurelius has
been fighting against the barbarian tribes in Germania for I
think twelve years now, but there's one final stronghold that
the Roman Empire is trying to conquer to uphold its imperialism.

(20:40):
So we cut to Germania. We meet Maximus. That's Russell Crowe.
He's the general of the Roman army that is readying
for battle with the Germanic army, overseeing all of this
is Emperor Marcus Aurelius played by Richard Harris of Dumbledore Fame.

(21:01):
The battle takes place and the Roman army is victorious
thanks to Maximus being so good at war, so good.
We then meet Marcus Aurelius's son and daughter, Commodists played
by Joaquin Phoenix and Lucilla played by Connie Nielsen. They

(21:24):
are on their way to meet their father after this battle.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
And Commodists and Lucilla are based on real people.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
They are, Yes, so they are real people. Commodist really
was the emperor Nisilla really was his sister, one of
a minimum of twelve siblings that he had. Wow, And
she really did hate him, and she did also really
try to kill him. Good for her, actually, because he
made her marry a man that she thought was beneath

(21:54):
her status and she took it as an insult.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Oh, so she's just lair elitist.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, well so your brothers shouldn't decide who you married,
for sure.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
No, but you know, I mean, everyone in these imperial families,
I'm sure was pretty trash.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah. And then I read that real life Commedists had Lucilla.
He ended up having her executed, right, He had her
like Maroons isld.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
And yeah, excels for an island. Very nice island, but
an island. And then he had her executed on the island. Yeah,
due to the murderer attempt.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, I'm excited to talk about the ending of this
movie because it seems just like made up.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Okay, So yeah, Commodists is very slimy, he's schemy. He
is expecting to be his father's successor.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Lucilla.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Meanwhile, the main thing we learned about her, at least
in the beginning, is that she's horny for Maximus, and
it's implied that they had a love affair. At one point.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
You're like, well, yeah, I guess what else will we
learn about a woman?

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, the one that we ever learn about.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
So Maximus asks Marcus Aurelius if he can be released
so that he can return home to Spain to see
his wife and his son, who he hasn't seen in
nearly three years.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
It's so john Wick. It's so wife and flash. But
she's like mamas, hi you literally all you ever see
her to do is like wave and smile, smile and
be dead.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, and not have a name. I was no that
she does not have a name.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
She doesn't seed be bothered. She also has access to
a hair curler. Yeah, we learned at the end.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Yeah, she's got a crimper.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
And so Marcus Aurelius is like, yeah, yeah, you can
go home soon. But first I just want to say
that I feel like the Roman Empire has kind of
gotten out of ham and maybe I did too much war.
So Maximus, I want you to be the next emperor
and for you to give power back to the people

(24:09):
of Rome and to end all the corruption.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah. He's like, don't worry, I didn't write this down anywhere.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Don't Yeah, as a man who notoriously never wrote anything down,
it definitely doesn't have a still best selling book.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
And Maximus is like hard pass, no, thank you, And
Marcus Aurelius is like, exactly, that's why it needs to
be you and not my power hungry piece of shit
son Comedis, and Maximus is like, okay, I'll think about it.
Then Marcus Aurelius goes to Comedis and tells him that

(24:46):
Commodist is not going to be the emperor. Instead it'll
be Maximus. And Commonist does not like this, so he
suffocates his father to death.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
This scene is good. Sorry, it's like, I mean, this
is like fathers as well as sons. This is good,
it's both. Yeah, that scene is awesome. He's like Joaquin's
like crying his eyeliner off. It's awesome.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Commodists is like, hey, Maximus.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Bad news.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
My father died of natural causes. But Maximus can tell
that Marcus Aurelius has been murdered, and he tries to
alert a couple senators, but before he can, Commodist orders
Maximus to be taken away and executed. So a few
soldiers ride Maximus into the woods and are about to

(25:40):
murder him, but Maximus fights back and kills all of
his captors because again, he's so good at war. So
then Maximus takes a couple horses and returns to his
home in Spain, only to discover that it's been burned
and his wife and son were killed clearly at the
instruction of Comedis. Maximus is obviously devastated, and he is

(26:06):
then abducted by enslavers. He meets another person who had
been captured, Juba played by Jaman Hansu, and they are
taken to a market of some kind in the town
of Zukobar in a Roman province that is now located
in present day Algeria. There an enslaver named Proximo played

(26:30):
by Oliver Reed, who I believe passed away during the
production of the movie.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
I feel like the casting of Oliver Reed, Eilert says
everything you need to know about this movie's respect for women.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh, I don't know about this, so I'll have to
learn put.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
A pin in it. But yeah, I didn't know that
he died during the production of this movie. But once
I read that, I think it's the halfway mark of
the movie, because I just had the Wikipedia in front
of me, and once you know, it is very obvious
that he died mid production. There's a lot of like
they seg him in at some point. Yea, they use
body doubles, like he didn't really finish the shoot.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, a lot of it is like they had to
see gi him, spent a lot of their budget on
CGI and Oliver Reed into that they had written and
couldn't change.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah, very bleak, very bleak. But as we'll discuss later,
he was a terrible person. And I'll say it, I
don't think we're worse off without him.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
M okay. Anyways, this character Proximo purchases Maximus, Juba and
others to be gladiators who will fight and likely die
for the entertainment of others. The enslaved gladiators start to train,
but Maximus refuses to participate, so none of the people

(27:48):
know how good he isn't fighting yet, but then it's
time for the first gladiator battle in an arena. It's
like I don't know, ten versus ten people or something,
and Maximus and Juba, who are chained together, kick ass
and they're the last ones standing, plus this tall dude

(28:10):
named Hagen. Meanwhile, back in the city of Rome, Emperor
Commedas arrives. Although some people are like boo, you suck
and you surp haha get it anyway, Lucilla, no one
liked my joke, Lucilla, sorry, sorry, So then Commodis and

(28:35):
Lucilla arrive together. She greets her young son, Lucius, so
we meet him. Then a senator named Gracis played by
Derek Jacobi is like, hey, Commoedis, here's a bunch of
things you have to do to fix the city, and
Commitas is like oo, no, thank you, and he would

(28:56):
rather dissolve the Senate and have one hundred and fifty
days of games to honor his father.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Which is more days than they had when they opened
the Colosseum. So that's a lot of games, a.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Lot of games.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
And this is based in anything.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
No, this is entirely imagined. Okay, this is like a
fundamental misunderstanding of the Senate in quite a fun way.
The fact that they keep saying that the Senate are
like representatives of the people is hilarious, given that the
whole of Roman history is the Senate oppressing the people,
like explicitly saying we are not the people and you're
not allowed any saying anything for about a thousand years. Yeah,

(29:37):
so very very funny that they're like, as representatives of
the people, we should be ruling. And then yet no. Also,
the whole idea that Marcus Aurelius didn't like games and
like banned them and that's why Proximo is like off
in Algeria instead of in Rome is very funny. But
one hundred and fifty days of games is so many
days of games, that's six months.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah. God, anyway, so this is Commoedis's idea to just
have a big fun festival in Rome, and Lucilla Grachis
and a few other senators are like, oh no, Rome
is doomed now that comedist is in charge. So back
in Zuckerbar where Maximus is or I don't know if

(30:22):
they've traveled somewhere else anyways, it's not super clear, but
he is like gaining a reputation as this like powerful gladiator.
He is now known as the Spaniard. And he's in
another gladiator fight. It's him versus six men. I think

(30:43):
he kills all of them, of course.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Because he's so good at war.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
He's the best at war.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
That's the one where he cuts the guy's head off
with two swords at the same time. Like so good
at war?

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, oh good. I mean it's fun to watch him
be good at war.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
So then Proximo tells Maximus that the new emperor is
doing all these games in Rome and that Maximus could
compete there and be great, but he'll need to learn
how to like get the crowd to love him, because
that's how you really win. And Proximo reveals that he
used to be a gladiator and he was able to

(31:23):
win his freedom. So now Maximus is like, hmm, I'm
going to try to do that. Maximus, Juba, Proximo, and
other gladiators travel to Rome. They marvel at the city
and the Colosseum. Maximus has a brief encounter with Lucilla's
son Lucius, who has heard tell of this spaniard and

(31:43):
is rooting for him.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Such an overwritten gooky scene. He's like, yeah, hello, it's
am I, the young boy. You're looking for sure, they
just let you know, like the air apparent loose, like
I'm sure right.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
And so then it's time for the first gladiator battle
in the coliseum that Maximus will participate in. It's him
plus a dozen or so men on his side, and
he kind of assumes his role as army general again,
and he tells them to fight together so that they'll
have a better chance at survival. Then a bunch of

(32:22):
warriors on chariots come out, a couple of whom are
woa whoa whoa women wah. But they die along with
all of the other warriors because Maximus and his army
of gladiators defeat the other team, and the crowd is living, laughing,
loving it.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Emma, would women have been in the coliseum fighting.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yes, they would? Oh helly, they did, and they did
have women fighting on chariots as well. We have evidence
of that, so yes, that rocks. Nothing else about this
is reasonable. This is this is a like the battle
re enactment thing that they're doing that is a real
battle against Hannibal in the Second Punic War, there is

(33:06):
like one of the great victories of Roman history. Do
you feel like this is maybe where they could have
taken some of the budget from recreating other of Verreed's
face and put it into extras and put more than
like eight people in their battle re enactment because it.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Does look a bit like well sparse.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, it's a little bit sparse in there, but I
feel like they fixed this with the second one.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Right, we're right, yeah, Okay. So then after this big victory,
Commodist approaches this Spaniard wanting to meet him, obviously not
realizing who it actually is, and Maximus removes his helmet
and he says, my name is Anigo Montoya, Maximus Decimus Olidius,
you killed my wife, prepared to die, and it seems

(33:54):
like Commodist is about to have Maximus struck down and killed,
but the crowd starts cheering from maximis to live, so
Commdist lets Maximus live and he walks away, but commedist is.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Pick Comist's reaction. I'm so funny. He's such a baby.
He's like, no, this bringing looks like even dead.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Why is she still alive?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
They like a gladiat and more than me.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
I don't get it up. I also love that part
of his speech to his dad. I mean it's like
heartbreaking in subways. But he's such a baby where he's
like all the things you fail you in a person
is not like I'm brave, just not in the traditional
way you would associate being brave. I'm brave, and you're
just like, oh, he's such a little baby.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, yeah, well we'll discuss further.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
But uh.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
That night, Lucilla pays Maximus a visit. He doesn't trust her.
He thinks she's in kahoots with her brother, but she's like, no,
I hate my brother. I'm trying to help you, and
I want you to meet with Senator Gracchus, who's like
the Bernie Sanders of the Roman Senate.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
I don't know. I was really unclear on what his
whole deal was.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Not sure.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, so I think that he is supposed to just
be like a representative of So have you ever seen
I Claudius, the BBC TV show I Claudius There's No Reasonstein.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
And Tanya I Franknstein. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
So there is a very famous BBC adaptation of the
Robert Graves book I Claudius, which has Derek Jacoby in
it as Claudius, and he's like the one good man
in Rome, and it's huge. It's got like Brian Blessed
in it, It's got Patrick Stewart with hair in it.
It's like a real big like institution in British television

(35:51):
and film history. And really Scott obviously is British, so
he has specifically cast Derek Jacoby in this role because
he is like the face of like good Rome to
pretty much everyone in the entirety of Britain.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
So people who had seen that would know the context.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Of exactly and you would be like, this is Derek Jackby.
He's like the good guy. It doesn't really matter what
anything else about him, we just know that in this
context Derek Jackby is always the good guy. Okay. And
then he has this name which is also associated with
like fighting for people's rights, so he's like he's basically
like I've cast Derek Jacoby, I've given him the name Gracis.

(36:29):
I don't need to do anything more than that. You
can just.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Assume, yeah, and everyone will know. Everyone will know. Yeah, yeah, clearly.
I mean Caitlin and I knew immediately.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
We definitely knew.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
I feel like he might have been making some assumptions
about how many people outside of England had seen my Claudius.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
But.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
I think that maybe Ridley Scott makes a lot of assumptions.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
So it's just that, yeah, like how much people the
average person knows about the Roman Empire, which feeds directly
into the meme of last year where yeah, apparently it's
all on a lot of people's minds. Yeah, but I
just I'm not among them.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Yeah, Okay, So Lucilla has, you know, paid this visit
to Maximus, and he doesn't trust her, so he's like,
leave here, never come again, and forget I even exist,
So she leaves. The next day is another gladiator battle
where Maximus fights the only undefeated gladiator and all of

(37:27):
Rome Tigris of Gaul, and it's clear that commodists had
like rigged this battle because like tigers are released into
the arena to attack Maximus. But Maximus is so good
at war even with tigers, doesn't matter. Yeah, so he
defeats them because he's just that good. Comedists and Maximus

(37:49):
have another like face to face where Commedist tries to
get a rise out of Maximus and insults his wife
and son. But Maximus is like, I'm cool, baby, I'm
just biding my time until I get a good chance
to kill this motherfucker.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Cut to Commodists again being like stop.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
So meanwhile, Maximus is former servant when he was like
general of the army. Cicero comes to see him and
Maximus has Cicero tell Lucilla that he changed his mind
and wants to meet with Senator Gregis after all. So
they meet and Maximus wants Grachis to help him stage

(38:34):
a coup to overthrow Commedists via Maximus's army of like
five thousand men who are currently stationed in some nearby city,
and once Maximus has killed Commodis, he will leave and
give the power back to the people of Rome to
honor the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
And offer that people are famously good for take a
sword for it, I mean obviously, so much about this
movie is unbelievable, but like it made my stomach turn
because it's like, don't trust him, don't trust him.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
They don't mean it, Okay. So then Commonist has Grachus arrested,
and so Maximus has to fast track his plan to
leave and go get his army that night, and Lucilla
gives him a little goodbye kiss on the lips to
send him off, but Commedist suspects Lucilla is betraying him,

(39:27):
so he threatens to kill her son Lucius unless she
tells him everything, which she presumably does because then an
army comes after Maximus and captures him as he's trying
to leave the city. So then Commonist claims Lucius as
his own son. He tells Lucilla basically that he will

(39:49):
rape her so as to get an heir to the throne.
So the stakes are very high.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, we'll talk about that whole speed. It's so thoroughly
evil where he's like, if you think about taking your
own life, I'll kill your son, and you're just like,
ah ah.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
The stakes are high and he needs to die right now.
So then Commonists challenges Maximus to a fight to the
death in the coliseum in front of all of Rome,
but not before he stabs Maximus in the back, giving
him a big boo boo, so that Comedist has the

(40:24):
advantage in this battle. So the fight begins, and Commonists
is a better fighter than I expected, because it makes
it seem like, oh, I've never been on the battlefield,
so I'm like, he probably can't even wield a sword.
But he's kind of better than I thought. But he
still does lose when Maximus stabs him in the throat.

(40:45):
But Maximus is losing a lot of blood and so
he's like knocking on death's door. But he tells this
army dude named Quintus, who had betrayed Maximus earlier in
the movie, so I don't know why he's good again.
But he tells Quintus to free the enslaved gladiators to
reinstate Senator Gracis, who presumably will give the power back

(41:09):
to the people of Rome because he said so, which
again the senators famously did, And then Maximus collapses, dies
and reunites with his wife and son in the afterlife,
and the movie ends with Lucilla, Lucius, Juba, Gracis, and
others carrying Maximus's body out of the coliseum the end. Yeah,

(41:35):
I like it's so corny.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
But when Juba is like not yet, not yet, I
was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. It makes me think.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
So that's the movie. Let's take another quick break and
we'll come back to discuss.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
And we're back. And we're back, Emma, I want to
kick it to you to start. We like what stuck
out to you more than anything.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
More than anything one, the amount that they talk about
the idea of Rome just really sticks out to me.
They talk about it as a dream, as an idea,
as like a vision of something, and they're never specific
in any way about what this is, just so that
it is kind of non specifically good and involves the people,

(42:26):
and that what is happening now is non specifically bad.
But they just as constantly all of these very like
pompous lines about like once there was an idea of
Rome and it was just an idea. You had to
whisper it, and it has been blown away because people
have said it too loudly. And you're like, what, I've
genuinely no idea what you're talking about, Like, I don't

(42:50):
know that you know what you're talking about but that idea,
like they're constantly talking about like this dream of Rome
or idea of Rome, which I've just seen Megalopolis. Oh,
and they do the exact same thing, So that really.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Stuck at all. I still haven't seen it near enough.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
If you've seen Gladiator, you're not too far away from
the shea just wild ride that isless. But they do
the same thing when they just talk about the idea
of Rome constantly without ever saying what it is. And
also just how incredibly straight it was. It's just I

(43:29):
think I said to somebody, it's a movie about boys
and their relationship with other boys for boys, Like there's
no women, there's not even any, Like all of their
relationships are so straight, like there's not even anything. Like
how do you make men who are nearly topless in

(43:49):
skirts with their legs out, sweating and covered in blood
fighting not sexy at all? Like how have you made it?
They're seterosexual?

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Not gun made it sexy? But this movie, right, didn't
make it sexy?

Speaker 2 (44:03):
No, I don't. I mean, really's got correct me if
I'm wrong, I'm like, he does not make sexy movies.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
He really doesn't, not especially I.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Can't really think of what I think maybe he's tried to,
but I can't think of a really Scott movie that
I'm like, that movie was hot, it's not really his Like.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
No, he's unbelievably be good at taking sex out.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Of stuff, which is a shame because you're like you're saying,
I'm like this. I tried to look back on the
original marketing of this movie, and it is like being
pretty explicitly marketed to men, which feels like even if
you're going with the straight washing of the marketing campaign,
it feels like a big missed opportunity to not be
like marketing. Look at this movie full of sexy guys fighting,

(44:48):
Like yeah, this movie should have been marketed to everybody,
but it's so like caught up and it's like hyper
masculine agenda. And going back to your first point, I
was also sort of like, I don't know. The politics
of this movie to you were so confusing because it
like has a clear interest in showing you know, at

(45:08):
least some range of like oppression and privilege, but like
absolves Rome from that, where it's like, well, is Rome
not responsible for that? Like I just found the whole
Like it's like they vaguified the idea of Rome so
much because it's like, well, like if you talked about
it too much, wouldn't it make it seem like a

(45:28):
pretty evil imperial project. But we're not supposed to think that, Like,
I don't.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Know, Yeah, it is a big and bi evil imperial project.
So like the from the very beginning when they're like
fighting the German barbarians who were just hairy in order
to have peace, one mustn't one peace. They never won peace,
and to like, it's a war of expansion, that's a
war of aggression by.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
The Romans taking land, killing people needlessly.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, all my store there wars. The war was where
they turned up and just like murdered people until they
took all of their land. Right, So then being like, ah,
this is the glory of Rome, Like, yes, Marcus Aurelius,
this is the.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Glory of Rome.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
This is exactly No one has ever seen the column
of Marcus Aurelius, but he did make a big column
that depicted all of like his wars, and it's literally
just Marcus Aurelius and his empire and his imperial army
stamping on the faces of German people and they're pretty explicit,
and it has like if you can google it and

(46:29):
look and see how much they really love showing themselves
like fighting and stamping and oppressing people, and they really
like imagery of the people that they have conquered looking sad,
like really sad. So they can't be explicit about well,
the actual dream of Romans because it is conquering people
who aren't Roman and then killing them and then making

(46:51):
them fight for fun.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
It's like in this movie just seems like it's coasting
on vibes kind of and like coasting on like the
osmosis idea of what ancient culture was like versus any
interrogation of what it actually was like, because it's weird,
Like you still get the feeling based on how he's
framed that. Like Maximus at the end of the day
like liberated people, but he really just liberated like ten.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Guys, Like did ten guys he knew?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Right, He's like, wait, please release my friends and then
continue the imperial project goodbye, Like that is what he
does at the end, right, Like I don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Pretty much, yeah, yeah, for sure, everything else is fine
real quick. I didn't even make the connection when I
said top gun, but that's directed by Tony Scott, which
is Ridley Scott's brother. Oh my god, Tony Scott's making
the horny boy movies and then Ridley Scott's making this
sexless god that okay boy movies.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Well that's the thing about brothers and brothers. There's one
horny one and one not horny one, right, right, right, right, right, Yeah,
that's just the time honored trope. Right.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
I mean, this movie is basically a story about two men.
One who is evil because he's power hungry and has
a fragile male ego. So at least the movie does
like villainize those characteristics. But then it's like, but the
other guy is good because he's so good at war

(48:20):
and helping the Roman army to expand their empire by
murdering and stealing land. But the movie frames it is like, no,
he's good because he has honor and he actually rejects
imperial rule and he wants to give power back to
the people. And it's like, first of all, that wasn't
even his idea, you.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Know, he just glombs onto that because someone off is
it to him?

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Really?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Also, he's the only person that does any murdering in
this film. Like the amount of innocent gladiators who are
also in slaves. Yeah, who was just doing that job
that he murders brutally and then shouts to everybody he's
the only guy that does any actual, like real nasty killing.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
He does crimes, and.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
He's framed as like an organizer, but I like not
really seeing the not really seeing the vision for what
he's up to do. It kind of remight be the
Waquin Phoenix character, which he was like based on a guy,
but is a character remight be of It's not quite
but like how we used to talk a lot about,
like the patriarchy the guy kind of trope where it's

(49:24):
like there's one character who's so super evil that you
kind of don't notice or seriously consider what the other
characters are doing because this is the most evil guy
of all time. He is like not just an imperial
piece of shit, he also is oppressing his sister, who
were supposed to like. He's also like he killed his father,

(49:46):
who were supposed to like. But because he's like oppressing
these people, we're supposed to like, we're not thinking about
what the other people are doing and what their goals
are because Waquin Phoenix is so like he literally in
a few scenes was like reminding me of Molif, Like
he's going for it. He's like diva villain and he's
great at it. But I feel like it almost sort

(50:07):
of like makes it easy to like, YadA YadA away
what everyone else is doing, because we have to kill
the worst guy.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Yeah, and the best guy is Maximus.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Because he's the other guy.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
Yeah, the other guy that's in it, and he's nice
and simple and the like Waku Phoenix has got too
many fancy quothes on.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Right, and all all Maximus wants is just to go
back home and see his wife unnamed, unnamed wife.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
She could be anybody. She has no characteristics other than
being married Maximus.

Speaker 5 (50:45):
On once soever, this is something that comes up with
I mean, we need to talk about Juba as like
a whole other discussion, but the friendship that is established
between Maximus.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
And Juba, I'm on board on paper, but the way
that they bond is so vague, where Like Juba's like,
my family is alive and Maximus is like, whereas mine
is dead. That's all they talk about. There's no even
like from a writing standpoint, how many opportunities are there
in the space of that scene to give a specific
example of like something about my family that I miss

(51:20):
that Juba could connect with, or like whatever it is.
But they're just like me, wife alive, me wife dead.
No names, no descriptions, no reason as to why. I mean,
they seem like they both buried for love. But we
don't even know. We can't be sure.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
No, the most we get is Maximus saying, my son
likes to ride ponies.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
The end. Really good, really good, really good stuff, best
original screenplay.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
Well, let me take a little detour and provide some
kind of development context which informs why this story is
like historically inaccurate gobbledy good, called gobbledygook, but so. Writer
David Franzoni traveled across Europe and the Middle East by
motorcycle in the early seventies. He says, quote, everywhere I

(52:12):
went in Europe there were arenas. Even as I went east,
going through Turkey, I began to think to myself, this
must have been a hell of a franchise. And then
he read a novel called Those About to Die, which
I think is about the Roman Empire question mark. I'm
not even sure, but it gave him the idea for

(52:34):
the movie Gladiator, and then he also read Historia Augusta
and from that he chose Comedis. Okay, am, I saw
you recoil in Horror, so yeah, please please inform.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
The story or Augusta is like a notorious source. It
is probably a novel as far as we are, like,
we think that it's probably historical and like slightly trashy
historical fiction, like not Hilary Mantel levels of historical reaction.
But yeah, it's basically pretends to be biographies, but it
has loads of stuff. It's definitely not true in it,

(53:12):
but it also has lots of stuff that we don't
know whether it's true or not. So read in the
History of Augusta is Yeah, it's like picking up I
don't know Philip A. Gregory novel, being like, well, obviously
I know about Judas now, so it's.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Like, so it's it's like an ancient airport book.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
Yeah, it's exactly what got it. Well that's what this writer,
David Franzoni.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Used, So I'm glad that he's got all the good stuff.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
From that, he was like, oh, comedist sounds like a
good character to like center and make my villain and
so he, you know, presented this idea to dream Works
of Shrek Fame, of course, and they brought Ridley Scott
on board to direct, and he signed on because he

(53:58):
was shown an image of a painting called and I'm
probably gonna pronounce this wrong, but it's an eighteen seventy
two painting called Police Verso where it's just like a
gladiator fighting in a I don't know if it's the
coliseum or some kind of battle arena, but it's supposed

(54:19):
to portray the Roman Empire in all its glory and wickedness.
And Ridley Scott was so captivated by this painting that
he was just like, yeah, of course I'll direct the movie.
And they're like, well, you don't even know what the
story is or anything, and he says, I don't care,
I'll do it. So he agrees to direct a movie
based on a painting that looks like it could be

(54:41):
a frame of the movie Gladiator. So he's on board.
Then another writer, John Logan, is brought on to do
some rewrites, and we can talk about a change that
he made later on, but basically, Franzonian Logan completed a
second draft the screenplay in late ninety eight. They started

(55:03):
shooting shortly thereafter, but Russell Crowe kept being like, oh,
this script is so undercooked, and there were all these
like complaints about the script was always changing. During the
shooting of the movie. Ridley Scott kept being like, okay, actors,
writers and producers, what do you think what should happen?

(55:24):
Like that, he was there just like constantly changing the story,
like a lot of lines of dialogue were ad libbed
by the actors.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
I'm always blown away like hearing stories about gigantic budget
movies like this where they're like it's like day one
of a one hundred million dollar movie and they're like, so,
what should happen we do?

Speaker 1 (55:42):
You're like, what my favorite thing is that their strength
and honor thing that Russell Kirk keeps saying is him
misremembering his own school motar.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Wait really yeah, Yeah, that's so funny.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
He just felt like they should have something that they say,
So he was I'm going to do my st and
that's not what his school watched.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Yeah, his school motto. I think it translated to like
truth and virtue or something, but in Latin. Yeah, and
then it's like strengthsen on or close enough. So and
then Okay, more hilarity ensues from this point on because
another writer, William Nicholson, was brought on to do another
rewrite of the script, and he made the Maximist character

(56:24):
like more sensitive. I guess he was the one who
kind of reworked the friendship between Maximus and Juba. He
developed the like afterlife through line that they often refer to.
But Russell Crowe didn't like a lot of this writer's dialogue.
He called it garbage. And then he was like, I'm
the greatest actor in the world, but even I can

(56:46):
make garbage sound good. So he's over here being like,
I'm the greatest actor of all time.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
I mean, does he know what his performance in ley
Miz is gonna be like? Because they may be a
little too close to the there, rus.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
And then apparently the line where he says like in
this life or the next, I will have my vengeance,
he like refused to say that line at first because
he thought it was so corny. So you know, it's uh,
it's basically Russell Crowe behaving the way that Joaquin Phoenix's
character behaves throughout the entire movie, just being like so bitchy, like.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Evil men are such divas.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Apparently it's just been revealed as well in the press
tour for Gladiator too, that Waking Phoenix nearly walked off
set on like day one. He was like, I don't
want to do this, Like I'm just like any of you.
I don't want to be here. And really Scott had
to like beg him to stay and persuade and stay.
So it's just like men's egos smashing into each other

(57:49):
for however long it took to shoot this.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Oh lord, I mean, and if you look, I just
I had to keep reminding myself as I was watching
this movie, I'm like, this is the director of film
and Louise how it likesn't? How does that? I mean
it's Callie Corey's script that's out because otherwise you're like
clearly left to his own devices. He doesn't know what
the fuck he's doing with, Like there's too many men

(58:12):
I don't see. I want we looked down this top line.
I'm saying that there was a co composer who is
a woman. That is the only woman I'm seeing in
this like top creative line. It is fellas all the
way down. Also, just a quick side note, Caitlin. I
know you're a Hans zimmer Stan. However, this man loves

(58:33):
to self plagiarize himself. Oh my god, it's the score
of Pirates the Caribbean.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Yes, you're like, think.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Of another riff, you hack, like unbelievable, right, So I
guess it was him plagiarizing himself when he wrote the Pirates.
Pirates He's like, oh, probably these, And it's true. I
didn't see glad. I didn't know. I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Hmm, well now we know hack fraud.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Isn't he like one of those composers that like kind
of does it in a factory way too? I think?

Speaker 1 (59:02):
So.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
I can't really speak to it, just because I don't know.
The main thing is that I did see him in
concert one time, and it wasn't even him. It was
like his orchestra, so he wasn't even there, but it
was his music, sir.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Any Anyways, yeah, he was self plagiarizing hard in Pirates.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Didn't even know.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Yeah, I had the same thought.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
And dun, dun, Dunnah, you're like, what.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
What that's right? So well, let's talk about the women
that are on screen. All take two of them. So
Maximus is his wife, who never gets a name. As
we've mentioned, she is majorly fridged. For any listener who
is unfamiliar with that term, it's come up on the

(59:48):
show from time to time, but if this is your
first episode, for example, fridging is a term that was
coined by Gael Simone in the late nineties. It refers
to a trope where characters who are women face disproportionate harm, violence, assault,
death to serve as plot devices, generally to motivate characters

(01:00:10):
who are men. And this is like happening to a
tee in the case of the wife of Maximus. And
I foreshadowed this earlier, but one of the credited writers,
John Logan, who made some changes to the script. One
of the changes he made was that Maximus' family would

(01:00:31):
be killed off to motivate Maximus' desire for revenge, So
that was his choice. But yeah, as we said, we
only see his wife in a few flashbacks. She has
no lines of dialogue, we don't know her name.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
She looks like she's about to go to prom nineteen
ninety eight. Like, it's like so bizarre.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Why wouldn't we have a flashback where like she and
Maximus are interacting and speaking to each other, and like
doing anything to characterize her.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Weirdly, we only have flashbacks to a scene where he's
not there. They repeatedly flashback to the scene where they're killed,
right if it's consistently, he's remembering a time when he
wasn't there, So he doesn't even remember meeting her, the
birth of their child, like their wedding day, any of
the wonderful experiences that they must have had together because

(01:01:25):
he loves her so much. Yeah, he just imagines her
being killed basically and looking happy in the moments before that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Yeah, the wind is blowing through her hair and she's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
In addition to like the I mean severe under characterization
and the fridging of his wife, I also was noticing
like so much of even with Lucilla, like all of
the relationships to women, it's almost, without exception, told and
not shown, Like we learn when Lucilla is talking to
Caesar at the beginning. She's like, we have a complicated relationship,

(01:02:01):
but we love each other, and You're like, I guess
I'll just have to take your word for it. I guess,
like I not really seeing it. He has minutes to live,
but sure, I guess we're just gonna have to take
your word for it. The relationship between Maximus and Lucilla,
they're like we used to date and it was complicated.
I'm like, I guess I'll just have to take your
word for it, because this is all I'm getting for this.
The only like relationship we are shown is the most

(01:02:23):
predatory relationship between a man and a woman, because we
are explicitly shown Commidis's behavior towards Lucilla, the elements of incest,
the oppression, the threats of violence, all of that were shown.
But any like affectionate relationship with a woman is You're
just like told it happened at some point off screen
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Except for the bit where Marcus Aurelia says, I wish
you were a boy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, okay, yes, that's the only affection that he boy,
this would be much better. Oh my gosh, I agree.
So yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
This is a line that happens pretty early in the
movie where Marcuslius approaches Lucilla and says, if you had
only been born a man, what a Caesar you would
have made. You would have been strong, but would you
have been just? And I feel like that is what
the movie is trying to do with her character for
the rest of the movie, because there's like different moments

(01:03:18):
where we're not sure if she can be trusted, if
she is on her brother's side, or if she's going
to do the right thing and like try to get
him out of power, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
I will say that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
There are a few moments where she takes action that
does impact this story to some degree, where you know,
she sets up a meeting between two men, and she
does some other stuff probably, But for the most part, yeah,
we only ever know her in contexts that are often

(01:03:54):
traumatizing to her, or we see her in the context
of being the his mother to a son who I
believe that's who the sequel will center around. Is it Lucius?

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Is that Paul mescal It is? So yeah, whoa, that's fun. Yeah,
I'm gonna see it. I'm going to see it. I
want to see everyone's legs. I hope really Scott learned
that we want to see the legs linger on the legs.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Linger one legs just a bit. Take the tops off.
No one even takes the top off in this, Like
he gets stabbed and they don't take his top off.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Not enough nipples for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Yeah, take a page from your brother's books, really and
show us the legs.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
The people want the legs. Yes, so yeah, the women
in the movie are I would say, not characterized well shocking.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Or only characterized on the basis of their relationship and
oppression with and by men, which, like, its always hard
to talk about, especially at a historical piece, because it's
like you can't shy away from the reality of that.
It's not you should rewrite history to be like women were,
you know, included in equal measure. But there's no like
respect for her personhood, Like we just don't know anything

(01:05:10):
about her. So I was curious. I don't mean to
put you on the spot, but like in this era,
in a story like this, what are historically accurate ways
that women could have been more meaningfully included in a
story like this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Well, even if you just had Lucilla, you could have
had her have some agency, and like she basically just
reacts to the people around her. She reacts to Comma,
she reacts to Maximus, apart from the bit where she's
like Gracus, come over here, and she just as quite
reacting to people around her. But there's like various points
where you see her with female attendants, and then the

(01:05:47):
two lines that she says to somebody who are not
a man are just men's names. At one point she
says Maximus and the other time she says commedist is
over there. But like you could have had some scenes
with her talking to these women, like she surrounded by
these women and you see her with them, like just
put into or three scenes where she is discussing something

(01:06:07):
with any of her sisters. There's like five of them,
or like we're not paying historically accurate, we could have
had several of them alive. Or you could just have
her talking to her intendants or her friends and just
have her be like, you know, engaged in an intellectual
manner and plotting or having a reaction that is her
own reaction and isn't just like in the context of

(01:06:30):
her talking to her brother, or have her talking to
somebody who isn't Maximus about what she wants to do,
Like why does she want to get rid of her brother?
Does she just want to get rid of him because
he is threatening to rape her and murder her son,
or does she actually have some feelings about like what
her father plans for the empire are, Like I have
no idea what is her motivation?

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
You could just get outside of her own oppression. Yeah, yeah,
because again really we're told it feels like very like meant.
And also I mean I've only seen it like half
asleep at a motel eight, so I would say I
haven't really seen the movie. The Last Duel. I do
think that like Ridley Scott later in his career at
least attempted to address women's role in history a little

(01:07:14):
more thoughtfully than in this movie. So like this is
not but it feels very of the time to we're
just told, oh, you're really smart, like Dumbledore says, you're
really smart, but we don't really get to see her
act on that at any point.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
But she genuinely did, like in history plot against her brother,
she did try to kill him. She was exiled for it.
Like show her doing this stuff rather than her just
being like a conduit for men doing this stuff. Right,
it feels so simple. But I do feel like this period,
this film to me feels like it really fits in
to that like One Man is Going to Save the

(01:07:49):
World period of films that you've got in like nineteen
ninety nine two thousands, like Matrix and like Fight Club,
and like all of those films were like one guy
is going to come and overthrow of the things.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
The chosen one exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
But there's just like no shred of satire to this
movie at all. It's so earnest.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
When you said Shred, I thought you were gonna say Shrek.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
And this brings me back to my main problem Shrek.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Okay, wait, in Shrek one, remember when he like goes
into basically a colosseum and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Oh, yeah, they do a gladiator's boof, don't they. They
kind of do a wouldn't have been too early because
it came out the next.

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
Year probably, so I don't know if they were pulling
from it. But Farquad is like kill the ogre and
then he is like the gladiator that defeats all of
the soldiers and then he has to go rescue Fiona.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Comedists and Farquad should be in the same conversation, and
it is a cultural failing that they're.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Not yes, yes, being right right here right now.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
But yeah, I totally agree with you, Like this is
very of the era to have this sort of like
one great man narrative and to do it to like
justify some like historically fucked up imperialism. I'm curious. I mean,
I know we have other stuff to talk about too,
but in terms of like the legacy of Gladiator, how

(01:09:17):
big of an influence does it have on like how
we think about the Roman Empire, you know, a quarter
century later?

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Huge, I would say huge. It comes up constantly, which
is why even though I hadn't only seen it that
one time, I could have quoted quite a lot of it,
like the entirety of the like I'm the husband of
a murdered wife and the father of a murdered son,
and I will have my vengeance in this life or
the next, like and all of the like hand running

(01:09:45):
through the through the wheat that goes on for ages,
and like big chance that I could have quoted without
like if if havn't seen it, because people talk about
it a lot, like people love it. Yeah, it reignited
a lot of that kind of big historical epic stuff.
And the HBO's Rome comes like not long after this,

(01:10:07):
and largely because Gladiator says that we can do big,
big Rome films again after the sixties. And yeah, so
it has this huge impact and people talk about it constantly.
And when you tell people that you're a Roman historian,
they'll be like Gladiator.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Yes, so this is we're hunting you right now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
I mean, yeah, it's it's good though, because I like
it is something that is constantly around, but now it
is because it's coming back to cinema and he's doing
it again and with the Scout. Now doesn't have any
rains on him at all, Like he has been allowed

(01:10:51):
to do whatever he likes, and he has more computer
technology and more money and more men, and so it's
kind of great because you who knows what stuff he's
going to be able to talk about he's going to have.
There's like a whole industries in academia that are just
talking about all the things that are wrong, and Gladiator.
They've got another like thirty years worth that coming ahead.
So he's so it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Really, faur Redly, Yes, the Roman historians will never be
out of work because of how wrong you are.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Yeah, exactly, how little he cares about historical accuracy. It's great.
He's done it for the Napoleonic guys now and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Oh great, yeah, because he did the boon less.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
I humiliatingly saw Napoleon in theaters, and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
The only person I know who's seen it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
I don't know why I saw.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
It, and and I laughed so hard. It's so boring.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
It's so boring.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
Yeah. Something I lament is that the movie Caligula did
not have the same cultural impact as Theadiator. Have you
seen Colligular?

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
I am obsessed with the movie Colligular. I have seen
the movie Currigular about fifty times. You know you're my
real friend. When I make you watch Cligula and then
I make you choose which cut because I currently own five,
I was like, didn't it that they just like re
released one of the cuts in theater? This is a
new cut, Yes, the ultimate cut, which is cut to
the original Gorvadale film with what they Gorvidale script. Wait

(01:12:17):
whoa and Yeah, Cligula unfortunately did not have the same impact,
and you do have to remind people that exists, which
is a shame because it's just wild in every cut.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
Could you describe for our listeners in a couple of
sentences exactly what Cligular the movie is.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
So Coligo of the Movie is a nineteen seventy nine
film financed and produced by Bob Guccioni, who owned Playboy
and not Playboy, who owned Penthouse magazine and was made
with a huge budget in Italy, with these huge sets,
with an art house director and a Gorveradal script, and

(01:12:55):
has quite an a list like Theatrical Car. So it's
got Peter tool Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell in it, all
of these kind of big names. And then there were
some quite intense arguments about the production because it is
supposed to be a pornographic film, high class pornography. Bob
Gocci only felt that it wasn't pornographic enough, so he

(01:13:16):
filmed his own pawn on the sets and edited it
in and everybody tried to have their name taken off
of it, and what it ended up with being a
very very expensive mashup of quite low quality pornography and
Peter Retchel and Malcolm McDowell doing acting. And as a result,
it is a truly bizarre watch and endlessly fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Wait come back and cover it with us.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
I was like, let's do, yeah, please do cligular.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
We owe you a caligular episode for making you do
the Gladiator episode. You were you were old. Oh I
almost saw the new cut in theaters, been like, I
think I need to see the original first. And then
I just I haven't seen any of it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
I don't know which cut I've seen.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
I would watch the Imperial Cup. None of them really
make any sense. No, I will talk about this. If
you don't, don't me, So.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
Please do come back, like next year to do Kligig
because we've we've never covered like a pornographic. We've never
covered porn.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
Yeah, and that's a huge oversight on our part.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Yeah, yes, short, short sighted. And getting back to Gladiator.
Gladiator is so unsexy. It's like a proto Marvel movie
with the amount of like set. It's like aggressively hetero
but completely sexless and has everything to do with fathers
and sons.

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
Very fathers and sons.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
I don't really have anything to even say about the
I mean, I guess the only interesting father and son
relationship I or the one I was interested in was
between Caesar and Commonists. Like that was juicy to me. Yeah,
and that like you know, like Caesar's like nipping at
something interesting by being like, well, you know, he acknowledges that, like, well,

(01:15:01):
part of the reason you're fucked up is because I
was not a good parent to you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Yeah, which you're like, Yeah, the commonist is like, you
never hugged me, and that's why I suck.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
That's why I'm a Nazi now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
So you're like, it's a little it's a little overly simplistic,
but I did at least like that there was. But again,
it just felt so like disjointed in the way because
it's like Caesar has talked about so uncritically by everyone else,
but it's like, but he did, you know, fail in
this way where he was like unable to show his

(01:15:32):
children meaningful affection. He sort of like hints at that
in that one conversation we get with him, and Lucilla'd
be like, hey, pretend that I'm like an awesome dat
and she's like, haha, how funny would that be if
you were. So it's like he has failed as a parent,
and it's like that is an interesting sort of back
and forth to explore of like someone who is like
succeeded professionally but failed personally. But it's just like even

(01:15:56):
though we know that about him, it really kind of
never comes up again. It's more just like we need
to honor his legacy and not that like Commodist's brutality
needs to be further contextualized. I like that they included
that though, like that there is at least in this
story some context as to like why he is so
desperate for affection from fucking anybody, and that if he

(01:16:20):
doesn't receive that affection, he will respond with violence and entitlement.
Like I felt like, you know, his character, even though
he's so over the top, was contextualized well. But then
it just they don't really do very much with it.
You just see him being brutal and then he dies
the end.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
Yeah, I tend to agree that that was I mean,
that was the most like fully realized narratively as far
as the father son dynamics, there are at least three
others that I clocked. Because there's the Maximus and his
father figure Marcus Aurelius, because you know, Marcus is like, hey, Maximus,
you're the son I never had, and Maximus loves him

(01:17:01):
as a father, and he spends the whole rest of
the movie like trying to carry out Marcus Aurelis's wishes
for Rome. So there's that, There's Maximus and his son
who is killed, and I guess going very briefly back
to his wife. Of it all, at least it's not

(01:17:22):
just like the woman who is not characterized or not given.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
A name, because women and children are uncarrieds. Yeah, women
and children last, said Ridley Scott.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
Yeah, Ridley Scott watched Titanic and he said no, no, no,
no no, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Going to do this up the office. Children last.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
So there's there's that dynamic, which is just another thing
that's motivating Maximus to get his revenge, the fact that
his son was brutally murdered. And then there's Maximus and Lucius, who, Okay,
tell me if I'm way off here, but I feel
like the movie was like vaguely kind of implying that
maybe Lucius was Maximus's by iological son from the affair

(01:18:02):
that he may or may not have. I couldn't tell
if that's what the movie was trying to like hint
at or not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
But I was like, I think though, Okay, kept having
them be in like they had so much of their relationship,
and then right when they had the meat, it was
very much a moment of connection between the two of them.
He was like, I'll be rooting for you, Spaniard, and
then now it's revealed obviously that he is his biological son.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Oh and glad hear too.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Yeah, that is confirmed. Yes, it is confirmed. Okay, well
that Lucius.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
It is the biological child and is going to come
back and be given Maximus the sword and go on
my damn face.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
I was like, weird that these two are connecting. That
makes totals.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
Well, that means that Maximus cheated on his wife.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
Then no, but he loved her so much. You don't
understand because of the same age.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
They are the same age, so how does that work.

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
He had sex with Lucilla and his wife basically at
the same time, So he cheated on his beloved wife.

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
So Maximus is a dog.

Speaker 3 (01:19:04):
Yeah, he's a freaking dog. Although maybe I don't know monogamy.
Was there polyamory in ancient Reme?

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
No, not with free people, no, I see, I see yeah,
and slave people is a different matter, but free people no, right,
So he's a dog and definitely no empresses.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
That's gondsing. That gets you excelled, right exactly because women
are property exactly. Yeah, So lots of father son dynamics.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
And then there's also I would argue Maximus and Proximo.
Oh sure, there's kind of like a another like at
least mentorship energy between the two of them that is
ultimately resolved. Here's where I'll just insert I feel bad
by saying I'm glad Oliver Reid's dead. That's a little harsh.
He did struggle with alcoholism his entire life, and I

(01:19:56):
don't want to minimize that. However, he said some of
the most vile things of women throughout his life that
I've ever heard, Like, was just a lifelong mask off misogynist.
Loved to go on TV and talk about how poorly
he thought of women.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
How you know, he.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Just was like, I don't know. His politics were awful.
He was like a mask off misogynist going back to
the seventies. If you were casting him, it's something you
would have known about him already. So just for for
what it's worth, I don't mean to minimize his struggle
with addiction, but he was an asshole and I didn't

(01:20:30):
even know that that was something that, like my boyfriend
knew off the top of his head. He was like, oh,
look at Proximo over here. I was like, why did
men know so much about glad Eater? But they do?

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
Do they really do they do?

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
I would also say that you have Commodists and Lucius
as well, and he's trying to very much take Lucius
under his wing, true, reading to him and teaching him
this history. And then when he says he's going to
adopt Lucius and have him, he's taking him away. So
he wants to be his father.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
Yeah, there are six many others some possibly, Yeah, they're
all right.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
It's very they're sharing daddies like and then and then
there's like the relationships between men that are not father son.
There's obviously the tension between Maximus and Commitists. There's the
friendship between Maximus and Jubba. Like, there's just so many
pairings of men, it's infinite.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
To go to Juba real quick. It feels like a
classic example of a black character who exists solely to
serve the story of the white protagonist. Yeah, that's really
all we kind of get with that character.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
Yeah, And then to return to Proximo really quickly. So
he's this like he's an enslaver. He is exploiting and
profiting off of being this like gladiator guy coach. I
don't know, but so he's a bad person, yeah, but
then he has this like redemption basically he's killed, but
it is framed to me at least as this like heroic, like, oh,

(01:22:03):
he did the right thing because he let one of
his enslaved gladiators go and he kind of sacrifices himself
for the greater good. And it's just like, well, why
does this like enslaver capitalist get a redemption? Didn't see
why that was necessary at all. So yeah, the men,
the men in the movie, they're they're kind of bad.

(01:22:27):
It's just so underthought.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
This is like revealing what a brain dead child I was.
Because Jaimon Hansu, I've seen him in a ton of
movies over the years. He's been in a shitload of things.
The thing I primarily associate him with, though, is the
fact that he used to be married to Kimoraly Simmons
but occasionally appear in her reality show Komoralley Simmons Life

(01:22:52):
in the fab waan whoa, I don't know. And that
was where I was like, I've seen this guy. I've
seen this guy, and the answer could be so many things.
He's in Marvel movie, he's the New Shazam. He's been
in so much shit. But I was like, oh, he's
to be married Komorley Simmons and that's my brain rot
jumping out. Love it Life in the Fab Lane.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
I don't know what that is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
You never will.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
He's in beauty shop never Forget.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
And as I was looking, I felt like such a loser.
As I was looking through as IMDb, I was like,
I hate that. I connected it to probably his randomst credit.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
But not even an acting credit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
Nope, he was just being a husband sometimes on that show.
I loved come Life in the Fab Lane.

Speaker 3 (01:23:39):
I love it when a guy is like, I'm the
husband you see sometimes that's sort of my favorite way
to see a man on screen. I mean, he seemed
fine with it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
I don't think he was in the show very much,
which I would avoid as well. Who wants to be
on an ereality show when they're already a successful actor?
Seems like a lateral move. But anyways, that's my embarrassing admission.
But yes, like he's yet another character who I mean,
I feel like half the time he enters the scene Juba,
that he's just there to ask like, hey, how about

(01:24:11):
that dead wife Maximus? Like that's like.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Kind of round by Maximus and be his like little
sidekick that does' he's told and yeah, right, also the
only character that we see, like we see much more
of his body than we do anybody else, Like you
see basically his entire naked butt. True, he is the
only man that you see any like flesh of which

(01:24:36):
felt really objectifying in a way that was I would
hope he wouldn't get away with now, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
But yeah, right for your only black character that you
get to know, Yeah, m hm. Yeah. And again, it
just feels like there is so many, like at a
lot of points in this movie, so many opportunities to
give more insight into history with the inclusion of his character,
give more in into this character if you don't feel

(01:25:02):
like including history, but they just opt to do like nothing,
just vague man platitudes that are only really supporting Maximus's story.
I don't know. I also think that there is something
too I didn't I meant to look into if there
was sort of like academic writing to this extent, But

(01:25:23):
just how it seems like, especially like in Western cultures,
people are way more comfortable interacting with stories about slavery
and slave uprisings when the protagonists are white.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Yeah, and this feels like it's very much in conversation
with that, and so are a lot of I mean,
I feel like a lot of these. You know, if
you go back older historical epics will very frequently like center, like,
if it's a story about slavery, the protagonist is white,
and I think like the implication is so they'll be
easier for you to root for instead of, you know,

(01:25:57):
engaging with the West's own hist with slavery in any
meaningful way.

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
Very true. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to
say about Gladiator?

Speaker 1 (01:26:09):
The last thing I'm going to say is that the
Nazi imagery when Commodace is entering Rome and there are
straight up direct recreations of shots from Triumph of the Will.

Speaker 3 (01:26:23):
Oh wow, I did not pick up on that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
God yeah, which is a very specific thing to be
saying about commodis making him explicitly a Nazi and explicitly
Hitler at that point in his return to Rome. And
if you go back and look, you can like everything
is regimented, everything is blue, everything looks like Berlin, And
there are specific recreations of Triumph of the Will shots,

(01:26:47):
which was.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
A statement really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
Is not a subtle man as a general rule.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
No, I know how many times am I going to
give really Scott past because he did ultimately direct Filma
and Louis. We just have to give that to the screenwriter. Anyways,
this movie doesn't pass the Bechtels, has no and of discussion,
even have to name too women. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
Yeah. But our nipple scale, though, is still way better.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
I love very low.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
It's where we rate the movie on a scale of
zero to five nipples. Examining the movie through an intersectional
feminist lens, I will give it half a nipple for
the pretty clear indictment of male fragility in the commedist character.

(01:27:46):
Like that is something that's very clearly displayed, that he
has a very fragile male ego and that he's power hungry,
and those qualities are vilified. So that's pretty much all
all I can say for the movie. It's, as we've said,
all of these historical epics almost always center men. Women

(01:28:11):
are ancillary characters. Their stories and lives and accomplishments are
very rarely the focus. This movie is no exception. But
that's why people should read your book, Emma, which we'd
love to hear more about in a moment. But yeah,
I'm going to give the movie one half nipple, and
I will give it to the part where Proximo is

(01:28:34):
like talking to some merchant who had sold him giraffes,
and he's like, the drafts got me, he said, the
drafts you sold me won't mate. They just walk around
and eat you sold me queer giraffes. So I'm giving
my half nipple to the queer drafts.

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
Yeah, queer icons as close as we get to queer representation,
and Gladiator is the giraffes. Yeah, Caitlyn, I'm gonna meet
you at half a nipple, and I'm I'm gonna even
like more give it to the one Quen Phoenix performance,
even more than a script, because I think that like

(01:29:12):
he I mean, he's great, and like it's just I
like that he really leaned into the weepy baby element
of like because I feel like you could have also
played those same words with a lot of like how
could this be? You know kind of thing, but he's
just like playing it as the like display of kind

(01:29:32):
of pathetic emotion that it is. And I really enjoyed
his performance in this movie. And other than that, like
sorry to fans of this movie, I found it quite boring.
I was not enjoying myself. I was playing Neopets for

(01:29:53):
part of it. For some of the action scenes, I
was like, I'm gonna feed my Neopet because that's like
the lowesome depression I'm at. Right now, I'm back on Neopets.

Speaker 3 (01:30:02):
I was just gonna say, I'm rather shook that you're
playing Neopets at this juncture in time.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
I at this late stage, I am playing Neops. Neopets.
We could talk about another time. But Neopez literally taught
me capitalism, and now I'm back, like Neops is capital
I had a mortgage when I was twelve on Yos. Yeah,
this is exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Why I won't play any of those games.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
Yeah, not that like I'm like, we should have more
games about capitalism for children. But I think that I
learned more about like how money works on Neopets that
I learned at school or from my family. I had
a bank account, I had a mortgage, and the way
that you make money is by playing games. And that's

(01:30:48):
kind of how Gladiator. No it's not, I uh know,
this is food. I don't know. I feel like what
it is an interesting example of and I'm so glad
that you were with us. I'm about to you know,
give us accurate historical insight into what this time may
have actually been. Like, is how influential, Like when movies
like Gladiator are wildly influential, it can take decades and

(01:31:11):
decades to roll back the kind of lazy hollywoodification of
actual history, and that I know, like it is a
tendency to be like, oh well, like the you know,
impact of movies is overstated. It reflects the culture. That's
all true, But also especially with something this specific, it's like,
I mean, it sounds like you've been gladiatoring against gladiator

(01:31:34):
for your entire career. Yeah, it's just wild.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
As soon as you start writing about gladiators, you have
to say first things, first, gladiator games are nothing like gladiators.
Gladiator is the worst a fiction of gladiatorial games. And
then you just have to dismountle that for ages.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
But god, and yeah, then you can never actually start
making the point you're going today.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
Also, I really like the part where it's I think,
like second glad Eater battle in the movie, and he
like has just killed a bunch of people and the
crowd is kind of like lukewarm, and then he goes
are you not entertained, and it's like me after every
stand up show.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
I was just like to say, that was very like
stand up coded to me was I was like, Oh,
someone's doing bad at the store.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:32:22):
He basically turned on the crowd be like, Oh, I
guess you guys are too. You don't get my references?

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
Okay, you freaking snowflakes.

Speaker 3 (01:32:30):
You're like, yes anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:32:34):
Yeah, So half nipple and I'm gonna give it to
I'm going to give it to Joaquin Fhoenix's tears.

Speaker 3 (01:32:40):
Oh beautiful Emma, how about you?

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
Yeah, I think half nipple is very fair, and I'm
also going to give it half a nipple. But I'm
going to give it also to Waqi Phoenixy's performance, but
for a different reason, because I feel like there would
have been a real strong temptation to play that role
feminized and with a lot, especially with Roman emperors, you
find that they are played as very feminine and a Femineit.

Speaker 3 (01:33:05):
Almost like a queer coding kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
Thing exactly, and that is very much what they've done
with the second one from what I can see you
at the trailer. But Waquing Phoenix did not make that
decision he made this decision to play it very masculine
and to not make this a queer character or an
effeminate character as they have so often, and for that
I appreciate him. And I'm specifically going to give it

(01:33:29):
to his cute little white outfit that he wears in
his death scene where he looks like a statue like.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
His little Yeah, his little Jesus Christ superstar.

Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
Exactly a plus little outfit.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
Amazing e.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):
But thank you so much for a joint Like I
just I can't imagine, like how we would have done
this episode without you.

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
We would have been like, must be pretty historically accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):
It's a documentary and we'll just go with that. There
was one woman in all of Rome, kind of oh.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
That's the only one that ever existed. Yeah, it's amazing
how they managed to survive.

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
A smurf like society. Could you tell us a little
bit more about your work and where we can find it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
Yeah, So I have a book out right now which
is called a Rome of One Zone, which tells the
story of the whole Roman Empire from foundation to the
fall of the West, through the lives of twenty one random,
semi random women. Very few empresses, so mostly just women
who lived in the Roman Empire at different times and
how their lives are affected by war and politics. It's

(01:34:30):
got no battles in it and very few senators, so
it's only fun stuff and no like boring stuff. Yeah,
and you can buy that in any good bookshop. I
also have one about which has gladiatorial games in it,
called A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
which is about Roman murder and has a whole chapter
about gladiatorial games if you want to know how they

(01:34:52):
really worked, in which I take the pace out of
Russell Crowe. And I also have my own podcast which
is called History Is Sexy. We answer questions that are
sent to us by listeners who would like us to
research a question they have about history that they don't
have the time or inclination to research themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Amazing oers, thank you so much for joining us, and like,
please come back for Caligula, Please have me back. Oh
my heart is now set on it. It's done, so
it's happening.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
You can follow us on Instagram at Bechdelcast. You can
subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon, where you can get
access to two bonus episodes every single month, plus the
entire back catalog of over one hundred and fifty bonus episodes,
all on hilarious, amazing, brilliant, genius themes that Jamie and

(01:35:44):
I concoct in our little laboratory.

Speaker 2 (01:35:48):
Oh and you're wondering are they going to cover Hot
Frosty on the Matreon in December? Well, I'm really pushing
for it. I'm really pushing for it. The more I
learn about Hot Frosty, the more it begging for discourse.
And you can get our merch over at teapublic dot com.
Slash the Bechtel Cast for all of your holiday And

(01:36:10):
on that note, we saved Rome. Were you not entertained?

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):
This note what you came for?

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
Bye Bye.

Speaker 3 (01:36:24):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Volskrosenski. Our logo in merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:36:47):
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