Ridley Scott’s Gladiator premiered in 2000 and changed cinema, for better or worse. But why did it have such a massive impact on audiences and Hollywood studios in subsequent years? As we inch towards the release of Gladiator II later this year, we thought now was a good time to look back on the original film and its lasting legacy.

It’s always daunting writing editorials about older movies because everyone’s already written extensively about them. So what’s something new to be said about it? Not much, if I’m being honest, but bear with me. Before the release of Gladiator, the historical epic was effectively dead in the water. It was a genre that was extremely popular in the 1950s and 60s and would consist of films that boasted lavish sets, extended runtimes, thousands of extras, and, more often than not, massive budgets. Some of the most popular films of that time include the likes of Spartacus and Cleopatra and the genre would also marry with the biblical epic, with the likes of Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. But they kind of died in the late 60s. It’s not like they completely vanished off the radar, but studios were far more interested in westerns (and spaghetti westerns) and then cashing in on the New Hollywood style of films such as Easy Rider and Rosemary’s Baby. Braveheart came back in 1995 and was an instant hit, but it was really Ridley Scott’s 2000 megahit Gladiator which won audiences over to the historical epic once again.

Gladiator had it all. Lavish sets, groundbreaking visual effects, a compelling story, a legendary director, action, romance, iconic characters, a memorable score from Hans Zimmer, you name it. It would go on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, legitimizing the film as more than just a historical action film. It reinvigorated moviegoers to a genre that had basically been dormant for some thirty to forty years, bringing in almost half a billion dollars against a budget of around $103 million. Talk about hitting the jackpot. But it’s impressive that the movie ended up as good as it did, considering it was essentially written on the fly by three writers. Hell, when the movie was pitched to Steven Spielberg (whose DreamWorks Pictures would finance and distribute the film) and later, director Ridley Scott, there was only a rough outline and Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Pollice Verso to go on. One could even argue that Gladiator was a movie that was made by committee then, which usually doesn’t end well, but somehow everyone was able to get on board for the ultimate vision of the movie, as opposed to letting ego drive the narrative. But it was close, with Russell Crowe even initially refusing to say some of the lines, including the now famous “I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” line in the arena.

And it didn’t matter that Gladiator was historically inaccurate to an amusing degree. Much like Scott’s Napoleon adaptation, Gladiator was a far cry from being faithful to history. Commodus, for instance, never kills Marcus Aurelius and is not killed in a gladiator fight in the Roman Colosseum (he is killed by a gladiator, just in a bathhouse). Perhaps the ancient setting, where historical records are a bit harder to come by allowed the movie to get an overall pass, whereas Napoleon is based on a man and a period in history not so far removed from the modern era (relative to Gladiator) and as such, as much more complete and surviving first-hand records available.

But unlike Napoleon, which I criticized for having bad acting from Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role, the same can’t be said for Gladiator. Everyone, including Phoenix as Commodus, Russell Crowe as Maximus, Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Djimon Houson as Juba, Oliver Reed as Proximo, and Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius. Crowe got his Best Actor statue for this movie, even though one can argue that it was really Phoenix who should’ve walked away with one too (Benicio del Toro won best-supporting actor for Traffic). Adding to the troubled production was the untimely death of Oliver Reed, who passed away during production, forcing Scott and company to use a digital mask of Reed’s likeness, a big technical achievement in 2000, to finish the scenes. This also forced the script to be changed yet again. So again, it’s a wonder the movie ended up being as good as it is.

At first glance, one would naturally assume that the target audience for Gladiator would be men based on the marketing material. But the script called for Maximus to be something more than a killing machine out for revenge. So, in the tradition of Titanic, Gladiator was able to attract equal parts men and women (at least, so says co-writer William Nicholson, so he may be biased) to the cinemas, which would’ve contributed to the film’s appeal. Despite the big action set pieces, Gladiator is a surprisingly tender and tragic story and part of that is thanks to Crowe’s portrayal of Maximus. He could’ve easily been a revenge-driven brute, but he’s not. Sure, he’s driven by the need to kill Commodus, it’s part of his motivation, but he’s also driven to rejoin his family in the afterlife. This added a layer of compassion to the character that made him more likable and the idea that his end goal is to rejoin his family is an element that was added only during the extensive rewrites the movie had.

But Gladiator was certainly transportive. Using a combination of CGI wizardry and practical sets and physical extras, the film transported audiences back to Ancient Rome in a way that had not been seen before. I think that contributed to a sense of awe that hadn’t been seen before. At the very least, generations had passed since they got to see a movie set in the time of Antiquities on the big screen done in such an epic fashion.

Just like many Ridley Scott features, there is an extended cut of Gladiator, which adds around 17 minutes of added footage to the film, but unlike Kingdom of Heaven or Blade Runner, I don’t think this version is the one to watch. Not that it’s bad, but it doesn’t change the movie, it merely adds in a few contextual scenes, mainly concerning the plot to usurp Commodos from the throne from the point of view of the Senators conspiring against him. While it offers some neat insight into the politics, the scenes don’t per se add anything new to the movie, as we can figure out the finer details just fine in the theatrical cut. The extended cut also doesn’t remove or alter anything, it essentially just restores a few scenes. So if you have extra time, sure this cut works, but for a movie with better pacing, the theatrical cut works just as well if not better.

Naturally, after the success of Gladiator, historical epics were on the menu for quite some time. In the early 2000s, Hollywood saw the release of films like Kingdom of Heaven, Troy, King Arthur, 300, Clash of the Titans, and more. But they started to show diminishing signs of returns around 2010, ironically with the reunion of Scott and Crowe in Robin Hood. Scott would continue to drag the genre down with Exodus: Gods and Kings, while other films such as Gods of Egypt, The Eagle, and the 2016 remake of Ben-Hur, all of which were considered financial and critical disappointments. Hollywood began pivoting back into the war genre to substitute the epic, keeping those large scopes intact but moving to a more contemporary setting relative to the medieval or antiquity-based ones seen in the likes of Gladiator or Braveheart.

So will Gladiator II reinvigorate the audience’s interest in the historical epic? We see. There’s waning interest in the MCU, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this movie could do what the original did back in 2000. But Ridley Scott hasn’t been knocking it out of the park lately, both critically and/or financially, and the writer of Gladiator II, David Scarpa, is also the writer of Napoleon, so I’ll temper expectations as script was the key problem of that movie. But wouldn’t it be something if the film kickstarts another era of historical epics as Hollywood pivots directions? Stranger things have happened. One thing is for certain for the sequel and that’s the vision that Marcus Aurelius and Maximus had at the end of Gladiator didn’t come about, with authority returning to the Roman Senate, as Stranger Things‘ Joseph Quinn is playing co-Emperor Caracalla in the sequel, and if you know your history, you know where this one’s going.

Once upon a time, musicals and westerns ruled supreme but despite their dominance, they eventually fell out of favour. Superhero films won’t be popular forever, we’re seeing cracks in that popularity right now, so it’s possible that the cycle will shuffle and we’ll see more of these types of films throughout the decade. If so, hopefully, this time around, we get more films of a higher quality instead of the plethora of imitators that were released in the wake of the original Gladiator. Regardless of what’s coming, we can always fall back on this film, which ranks as one of Ridley Scott’s best and a sound example of how to perfectly blend the historical action epic with a nuanced drama with characters we care about.