Did Ridley Scott Peak With Gladiator?

Gladiator. Image courtesy of Dreamworks.

After failing to achieve runaway commercial or critical success with G.I. Jane, Ridley Scott decided in his next film to return to the warrior theme but this time with a male lead and a two millenia time shift. The result was 2000’s Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe. It made over $450 million and won a shitload of awards including Best Picture. But is it really a great film, or even the best film of Ridley Scott’s career?

Alright, let’s cut to the chase. It’s a very entertaining film. It reflects some of Ridley Scott’s favorite themes: sweeping historical epics, the violent impulses of society, immersive world-building. The gladiatorial combat scenes in the Coliseum are amazing to watch, and the care with which they built the world of ancient Rome is of course immaculate. As a historical epic, an updated take on the sword and sandal blockbusters of Cecil B. DeMille, Gladiator delivers. It uses all the then-cutting edge cinematic tools at its disposal to wow the audience and transport them to a faraway time and place.

Gladiator is so far the biggest box office success of Ridley Scott’s career. It also got the most Oscar nominations. It would lead him down a dark hole over the next 20 years chasing similarly out-sized historical epics set during the Crusades and Biblical times, but he was not able to replicate the results. I think Gladiator is best conceived of as a successor, with more bells and whistles, of Alien. The reason Alien was so good, and so revolutionary is because of its world building. It was so immersive and consuming, and hinted at this thick and compelling mythology that seemed to fill in the background of every scene.

Well, that’s what Gladiator does only with a bigger story and a bigger budget, so it can build out its world more fully. You see this kind of natural distinction in the work of Ridley Scott. Some of his films are technical masterworks, telling a story through beautiful visuals and perfectly executed production design that sucks you into the world and the story. These are films like Alien and Gladiator. Other times, he tries to capture some huge and unspeakable truth about the human condition, the tragedy and the glory of it all. In his best films, like Blade Runner, the world-building and the inexpressible themes come together to make a masterpiece.

But often, his films seem content to just serve as totems to brilliantly executed filmmaking that build fully textured worlds and Gladiator is such a film. I don’t think the movie has any particularly deep message or themes, and the acting while good is mostly in service to its ambitions as a sweeping historical epic. This movie, as Maximus shouts in our faces, is meant to entertain, to delight, and to awe us with the power of its effects and production values, its ability to take us back to ancient Rome in all of its savage glory. It doesn’t really aspire to be anything more than that.

So although Gladiator was Ridley Scott’s biggest commercial success, and is still his film with the most Oscar nominations, it’s neither his best film nor the peak of his career. It’s not even, I would argue, his best film about war and the violence that men to do one another. That film would come out the following year.