So we finally got around to seeing Gladiator.
Pretty much only because Bill Mudron dummied up a fun little soundtrack for his forthcoming Pan, stringing together orchestral cues from a couple of big-budget extravaganzæ and apropos pop songs as a way of sketching out the structure of the thing, and Jenn and I were pretty sure the lion’s share came from Pirates of the Caribbean, only it turns out most of them came from Gladiator, and thereby might hang a fun little essay comparing the rigid adherence to genre conventions of big-budget soundtracks with that of, say, superhero comic books, but instead I’ll just remind you of the ad campaign for the movie—that tag line, remember? Floating in oh-so-Roman Trajan allcaps with dignified slow dissolves over shots of Russell Crowe almost getting mauled by a matted tiger? That got parodied for a few weeks by everybody and his brother for a couple of weeks there at the end of 2000? “The general… who became a slave… the slave… who became a gladiator… the gladiator… who defied an emperor…” —That tag line, right?
I had no idea the lazy ad-copy hacks were quoting the frickin’ script.
Oh, wait: one more comment, and then I’m outta here: it’s a profound mark of something-or-other that snarky comparisons of our 43rd president to Joaquin Phoenix’s truculent Caliguloid, Commodus, did not become common satirical currency. —What happened, you mooks?
Commenting is closed for this article.
I think the problem you have is that both films were scored by the same guy. Zimmer seems to be capable of scoring a lot of very different kinds of hollywood blockbuster, but when it comes to action, he is apparently constraining himself to going boom-bada-boom-bada-bah for the fast paced scenes and going whoom-whoom-whoooom for the slower ones, which has the effect of making every soundtrack he works on seem a bit familiar. It's a policy that matches Jerry Bruckheimer's style quite well, but it does have the flaw of making all the other films he applies it to sound like Jerry Bruckheimer movies.
Actually, Zimmer scored one; he produced the other. (I made an off-hand joke about this in the title tag footnotes to each link.) --And I'm more amused by how well the same brassy trumpets can score the homoerotically shirtless trumpery of pirate flicks and sword-n-sandals--especially as, though both are pastiches, one was somewhat less solemn about it than the other.
Ugh. I saw it the day after it won an Oscar. When it was over, I lost whatever respect I had for the Academy. It's not a horrible movie. But it's not above mediocre, either. Made Braveheart look like Shakespeare.
At least it hasn't kicked off a spate of remakes of those cheezy late 1950s Hollywood "Historical-Religious" epics.
Y'know, AMC weekday fodder like "Joe-Average-Centurian-Finds-Christ's-Cuticle-At-The-Crucifixion-Becomes-True-Believer-Gets-Fried-By-Nero- (Despite the pleas of Nero's sexxxxeee-yet-virginal niece, who chooses to leap upon the pyre with Joe Centurian in righteous Christianity. Or some junk.)
Of course, there's always next year... :p
Uh... you mean, like the forthcoming Alexander and Troy films, featuring the likes of Colin Farell, Tony Hopkins, Val Kilmer, Angelina Jolie, (Firth?), Bradley Pitt, Eric Bana, Sean Bean (as Odysseus!), and (natch) Peter O'Toole? Although, I admit, no cuticles of Lords or Saviors are likely to make cameos or become major plot points in either, so your point may stand. But they'll probably make Braveheart and even Gladiator look closer to Macbeth or Julis Caesar than Timon of Athens.
I just wonder why Peter Ustinov isn't in these flicks. Surely they need someone to play Socrates or Poirot or that old dude in Logan's Run or something....
Wait... aren't they also remaking Logan's Run?
gd
In the Logan's Run remake, Madonna flees for her life from a pack of cold-blooded killers played by Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore