|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
The promotional tag-lines succinctly sketch the plotline and its major movements: "the general who became a slave, the slave who became a gladiator, the gladiator who defied an emperor", "a hero will rise" and "in this life or the next, I will have my vengeance". The Quicktime trailer at the official Gladiator website promises a tougher, pacier and bloodier version of the classic sword-and-sandals epic movie - Quo Vadis with cutting-edge SFX. And these first impressions are not wrong; Gladiator does indeed employ many of the conventions of the Hollywood epic genre. ... Like other epics, Gladiator works through "a series of spectacular moments" that can be "traced back to the equestrian shows and circus spectacles which toured Europe and the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century" (Wyke, 1999: website). ... Gladiator does everything that Hollywood epics are supposed to do, only Gladiator does it much better. ...
Gladiator similarly projects something of the American present into the European past. Maximus, the gladiator, prays at a pagan shrine to a nameless god that is glossed with Christianity when he refers to it as "Blessed Father".
Approximate Word count = 848
Approximate Pages = 3.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|