Andy Whitfield in Spartacus: Blood and Sand
2024 looks set to be the year of Ancient Rome. The most anticipated film is undoubtedly Ridley Scott's long-awaited sequel to his Oscar-winning 2000 epic Gladiator. And Gladiator 2 – as it's figuratively called – promises to make its star Paul Mescal a superstar, just as the original turned Russell Crowe into an Oscar-winning A-lister. Mescal has already said he would be “deeply depressed” and “in a bad place” if the mega-budget film turned him into one of the most famous actors in the world. The film's tagline has just been announced, and it is, oddly enough, a reference to one of the most famous quotes from the original: “What we do in life resonates in eternity.”
However, while we await his arrival, we are interested in other epics with Roman themes. Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating project Metropolis may have – as always with Coppola – experienced a turbulent production, but it was completed. Preliminary opinion of the picture, which is said to be, in Coppola's words, “a Roman epic with the story of an architect who wants to rebuild a utopian New York after a devastating catastrophe”, is wildly mixed, alternately being compared to Picasso's Guernica and described as ” completely baffling” and “the work of a madman.”
No such high expectations surround Roland Emmerich's new Peacock series Those Who Die, which stars Anthony Hopkins as Roman Emperor Vespasian and is set in the world of gladiatorial combat. The show, which is scheduled to launch in July, will thus act as a spoiler of sorts for the film Gladiator 2, which will not be released until the end of November. Emmerich commented: “I have always been fascinated by the history of the Roman Empire. Today, many things seem relevant to our society – from the intertwining of politics and sports to the disciplines of competition, which also have not changed much over the past 2000 years.”
(Those with long memories may remember Emmerich's previous forays into period drama with such critically panned films as Stonewall, Midway and – perhaps worst of all – his Shakespearean drama Anonymous, and so may want to temper your hopes before they get too excited about the prospect of what the director is up to here.)
The original Gladiator was, of course, a huge box office success and briefly led to a revival of the swords and sandals genre , until such unremarkable paintings as Troy and Alexander destroyed it again. Such films were once extremely popular in the fifties and sixties, with films such as Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis and, of course, the legendary Spartacus attracting huge audiences and winning awards.
But the combination of the enormous cost of recreating the ancient world and an increasingly sophisticated public mocking the camp qualities of muscular men grunting and fighting each other in short loincloths meant that the images soon went out of fashion. When Peter Graves' lecherous airplane captain asks the boy, “Joey, do you like gladiator movies?” in the skit “Airplane!” the decline of the genre seemed complete. Even Gladiator was only able to revive him for a short time. It will be interesting to see if the sequel and Emmerich's series can bring him back into the public eye (thumbs up!)
Jai Courtney and Andy Whitfield in the film “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” Photo: Alamy
However, this ignores the four-season series Spartacus, which aired on Starz between 2010 and 2013. Created by Steven DeKnight, Joss Whedon's former co-creator who worked on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the series followed a similar pattern. the main narrative trajectory, like in Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film. Although, admittedly, neither paid more attention to the accepted historical facts surrounding the life and times of the eponymous Thracian slave leader, who rebelled against the Roman Empire in the Third Servile War before being defeated by massive slave armies. plutocrat and commander Marcus Licinius Crassus.
However, there were huge differences between the Oscar-winning epic and the television series. Although Kubrick's film was surprisingly violent for its time (the full, uncut version was only restored in the early nineties), it was still tame by modern standards. DeKnight's show set new standards for on-screen sex and violence, leading to calls for it to be banned or at least heavily censored, all of which he and Starz ignored.
The results speak for themselves. Coming just a few years after the hugely expensive Rome series, which prioritized politics and intrigue over battles and bloodshed (even with the inevitable copious amounts of sex), DeKnight and Starz were determined not to fall into the same trap as the creators. Rome”. were faced with the fact that, having been forced to abandon the planned third and fourth series for budgetary reasons, they had lost a huge amount of intriguing material. This includes the story of the rise of Jesus, told entirely from the Roman point of view: a fascinating and provocative idea that, alas, was never realized.
But in the case of Spartacus, which began with the 2010 series Blood and Sand, the intentions were clear from the start. As DeKnight said, “When we started… the first season, it started out not so quietly.” Welsh actor Andy Whitfield was cast as the rebellious slave and was part of a cast that included none other than the great John Hannah as Batiatus, the treacherous owner of a gladiator school, and Xena: Warrior Princess icon Lucy Lawless as his wife. Lucretia. Lawless became a gay icon after her stellar performance as Xena, and it was partly an acknowledgment of this – as well as perhaps an appeal to the series' coveted audience of hormonal teenagers and young men – that she starred in various lesbian scenes sex and nudity as required by the role.
Lucy Lawless in Spartacus
The show was also innovative from a technical standpoint. Following Frank Miller's adaptation of Zack Snyder's 300, which used extensive special effects and green screen work to bring the Battle of Thermopylae to life, all four seasons of Spartacus were filmed entirely in an Oakland studio, without any location shooting. Not only did this mean that the production team had complete control over the environment, but it also served as a precursor to shows like The Mandalorian, which allow for the creation of fantasy universes in deliberately artificial settings.
As DeKnight said, the challenge was significant: “Can you take the visual concepts and aesthetics that (Snyder) came up with so brilliantly in 300 and apply them to a TV show where the time and money constraints are enormous?” The answer was a resounding “yes,” but that’s how it had to be. As DeKnight noted, “Every thing was a challenge, from the costumes, where everything had to be built for the show, to the sets and visual effects, especially on this show, where literally every thing you see on screen was built.” specially for the show, weapons, furniture, everything.”
All of Spartacus was filmed on a sound stage in Oakland. Photo: Album/Alamy Stock Photo
This bore fruit, and now such stylization is considered commonplace, but when the first episode of Spartacus was released, reviewers reacted with surprise, even shock. The Hollywood Reporter snorted: “The painted sky, which appears bright at first glance, soon appears as artificial as the ceilings of shopping malls adjacent to Las Vegas casinos.”
However, the first season was a great success – albeit with viewers rather than critics – and the second part was quickly put into production. Unfortunately, by this point Whitfield had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and had to be written out of the prequel Gods of the Arena, in which he only had a vocal cameo in the final episode “The Bitter End”. Although he was initially thought to have responded well to treatment, it soon became clear that his illness was terminal and so the role was changed with Liam McIntyre for a second series, imaginatively titled Spartacus: The Vengeance. Whitfield eventually died in September 2011.
While the loss was undoubtedly a blow to the cast and crew, the show had by now acquired a joyful baroque rhythm in which the most brutal scenes had a crazy scale. Perhaps in recognition of the essential, jaw-dropping absurdity of the bloodshed, there was even a moment where a man's jaw literally hits the ground. Not surprisingly, DeKnight commented, “Spartacus is not a documentary. You should not write a term paper based on this series. First and foremost, it's fun.”
The show eventually ended in 2013 and inevitably had the same grim ending as Kubrick's film and the real-life Spartacus, as he and his army were defeated by Crassus's more powerful and better-equipped forces. Although it had a loyal and appreciative audience, it was somewhat overshadowed by Game of Thrones, which began airing shortly after Spartacus premiered and soon captured the interests and imagination of the public—and the jury—in a way that the Roman epic had not.
This is unfair and does not do justice to DeKnight's vibrant and creative series. It may not be historically accurate, but it's also a powerful epic that gleefully flouts any notion of restraint or good taste and creates something intoxicating in the process. As one Telegraph correspondent enthused at the time, the series offers “Great Guignol bloodshed, built on heartbreaking twists and high melodrama.”
John Hannah and Dustin Clare in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena Posted by Alami
Without the duality and moral dilemmas of Thrones, he was a straight mix of noble heroes and sneering villains. It's just a shame that the villains are victorious, albeit with an ending that's much more triumphant than the previous film, as Spartacus dies, declaring himself a free man.
It remains to be seen whether 2024 will truly be the year of the Roman Renaissance. Or if Gladiator 2, Metropolis and, yes, Those Who Die turn out to be big-budget disappointments. Even so, DeKnight's inventively violent and dangerously exciting series deserves another chance.
After all, how can you not feel sympathy for a series in which a character rudely declares: “I’ve already had enough of words and tearful farewells. I wish for the blood and screams of our enemy.” Prestige, award-winning television be damned: this is a true legend.
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