Whether you love history or not, it is hard to argue the emotion and intensity this movie brings to the screen, allowing history and story to coexist. The beauty of this movie is that it gives the viewer an interesting story in a time period that is still largely talked about in today’s day in age. For fans who love history, this film will immerse you in a time when the coliseum was the pinnacle of entertainment, and men fought to the death, all in the name of Roman glory. It is quite possible that it is exactly this film’s lack of historical accuracy, aside from the general historical setting and character names, that makes this movie so great. However, based on the movie’s 87 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it appears that moviegoers are indeed, sorry for the joke, entertained. Gladiator, a film about a Roman general turned common gladiator after the murder of his family and his subsequent enslavement, is undoubtedly a beloved movie, but it is not free from historical error, and many of the movie’s major plot points are based on embellished historical moments, or ones that are flat out untrue. Maybe the only question that matters is this: does history matter if the movie is awesome? Can a Hollywood film get the history right and make a decently entertaining piece of art? Certainly, there have been attempts, but maybe none of those previous questions really matter. It is certainly hard to argue with that last point, and it is more than likely that historians will never be able to nail down all the facts without some inaccuracy or historical bias.īut what happens when you combine history and Hollywood? Now, that could cause some problems. It is researched, studied, argued over, recorded, and everything in between, with the age-old criticism being that only the victors ever really get a say.

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