Hobbit director Del Toro quits
I was gutted to read this article this morning, as I really love Del Toro’s artistic style and I think he would have been perfect in the role of director for The Hobbit films.
Hopefully Peter Jackson just steps up and takes the reigns as director on this project – the last thing I would want to see is that the Hobbit being turned into a Michael Bay type film, or a rather lame poor cousin to the truly amazing Lord of The Rings triology of films.
Guillermo Del Toro has quit as director of the two The Hobbit movies, but will still help write the screenplays for the Lord of the Rings prequels.
“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit I am faced with the hardest decision of my life,” the Mexican filmmaker said in a press release.
“After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures.”
Del Toro and producer Sir Peter Jackson said they remained committed to the films and would do everything they could to satisfy fans.
Del Toro said he would be first in line to see the finished films.
“I’ve been privileged to work in one of the greatest countries on earth with some of the best people ever in our craft and my life will be forever changed.
“The blessings have been plenty, but the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project.”
Jackson told fan website TheOneRing.net: “We feel very sad to see Guillermo leave The Hobbit, but he has kept us fully in the loop and we understand how the protracted development time on these two films, due to reasons beyond anyone’s control – has compromised his commitment to other long term projects.
“The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn’t feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. Guillermo is one of the most remarkable creative spirits I’ve ever encountered and it has been a complete joy working with him.”
Jackson told TheOneRing.net that he would discuss options for a new director with MGM this week.
A few weeks back I lamented the absolute fail that Kingdom of Heaven was for Ridley Scott.
Well, last weekend I went to see his latest offering, Robin Hood, and the verdict is that Ridley Scott has well and truly made amends for the failure of Kingdom of Heaven.
On top of this, with this film, he has also helped to purge our collective memories of the comical cheese-fest that was Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
I was actually quite surprised, because in many ways this isn’t your usual Ridley Scott film – especially it’s action scenes which don’t feature anywhere near the level of graphic blood and guts brutality seen in Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, etc.
Robin Hood wasn’t perfect, but it was a pretty good little period action piece which featured a solid script, some great acting and the usual attention to costume and set details which make Ridley Scott films such truly great escapism.
In many ways it reminded me of Braveheart (albeit much shorter and much lighter), and I think that, apart from the historically inaccurate notions about an English version of the Declaration of Independence, the dialogue was actually slightly better than Gladiator.
So, yes, if you’ve got a bit of walking money to spare, and you’re looking for something to fill one of those long winter evenings, then I’d recommend a trip to the theatre for Robin Hood.
I love a good redemption flick…
Trailer for the new film Solomon Kane, looks like it could be a classic good vs evil redemption flick…
Angels and Demons – yawn
I’m a bit of a sucker for punishment, so last week when I saw Angels and Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, in the weekly DVD section of my local DVD store, I decided to shell out the $1 hire fee in order to check it out.
First the good stuff (and this is the short bit)…
Leaving aside all the factual, historical and theological errors which plague The Da Vinci Code, one of the worst things about that film was the pacing; it was literally one of the most boring movies I’ve seen in a long time – it felt like all the characters did in that movie was talk!
But not so in Angels and Demons, this time the pacing is much faster, and the movie is one constant action stream that takes place over a very short timeframe.
Right. that’s the good stuff out of the way, now let’s talk about the failings of Angels and Demons…
Please sir, may I have some more character development?
Apart from Ewan McGregor’s character, none of the characters in Angels and Demons are really developed at all.
Aside from what he does on screen during this film, we don’t actually learn anything about the main protagonist Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks. Does he have a family? Has ever had his heart broken? Did he always want to be a symbologist (which is a made up profession by the way)? Why is he an atheist?
The movie never even delves into the motivations and background of this character, and things are even worse for the lesser characters, like the female sidekick and the Vatican police officers.
Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough
Sure, it’s a movie based on a Dan Brown book, so I know I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I just couldn’t get over the excessive helping of anti-Catholic cheap shots that riddle this film. All that these petty and ignorant jibes do is cheapen the film and turn it into a blatantly prejudicial piece of anti-Church propaganda.
Stop talking to us like we’re idiots!
There are places in this film where there is just too much explaining going on, and the characters become little more than hollow script devices to feed us information which could have either been fed to us in other ways, or which could have been treated with a bit more of an intelligent subtlety, rather than the overly wordy explanatory monologues.
Research, it’s always a good idea
I couldn’t get over the serious lack of research on Angels and Demons.
This oversight was made even more hilarious after watching the special features, which feature an interview with director Ron Howard raving about what a thorough researcher he thinks Dan Brown (author of the Angels and Demons novel) is, and how scholarly he thinks Brown’s work is.
If Ron Howard, or the scriptwriters, had spent just ten minutes on Google, they would have quickly discovered that the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons novels are totally riddled with all manner of errors and inaccuracies. Instead of doing this, they just opted to transfer these errors to the big screen, without so much as a Wiki search.
Someone really needs to explain to these guys that good research doesn’t just involve getting geographical place names right and repeating totally dubious conspiracy theories without error.
If these guys had done even the most rudimentary of fact checking they would have discovered that having a Catholic archbishop adopt a young orphan boy is a totally farcical plot device, because Catholic clergy simply couldn’t and wouldn’t do this.
Instead of having the character say “the archbishop adopted me after my parents were killed”, all they had to go to get around this little issue in the plot was to have the character say something like “after my parents were killed I came to Rome as a very young seminarian, the archbishop was the only one who took the time to look out for me and to help me land on my feet – he cared for me like I was a son, and he became like a father to me.”
Simple. But oh no, instead Angels and Demons opts for the totally farcical concept of an archbishop adopting an orphan on an overseas trip.
And then there this is the moment when the script tells us that Galileo wrote his codes in english because that was the language of freethinkers, which is why Shakespeare wrote his plays in English. This sort of tripe is so ignorant that it astounds me that someone even dared to include it in a movie.
Everyone knows that Catholics hate science
The main theme of this film is the SUPPOSED clash between faith and science.
The only problem is that someone forgot to tell Ron Howard that there is no clash between faith and science within Catholicism – in fact, not only do we have a proud and longstanding history of close engagement with the physical sciences, but we can also take credit for advancing the very foundational philosophical principals of scientific inquiry and observation.
Any well formed Catholic can tell you that authentic faith and authentic science can never be opposed, because both seek and proclaim truth, and all truth, scientific or theological, has the same source – God Himself.
Some scientists have overstepped the bounds at different times in history, and tried to make claims about theology and philosophy that the physical sciences can simply never examine or even make pronouncements on. And of course, some minorities within Protestantism have set themselves up against science, but the Catholic Church does not fear or oppose the physical sciences.
The movie also falls back on the good old anti-Catholic chestnut of the Galileo incident, but it presents the typical straw man version of the actual event, which is more urban legend than fact.
And for good measure it throws in some confused garbage about the Church opposing certain scientific advances because she thinks that mankind is moving too fast in these areas, and isn’t ready for the responsibilities of such technologies, so she just wants the scientists to slow down until mankind is ready for such responsibility.
Oh, and they just couldn’t help themselves, so they round out the ignorant bigotry by including a scene with an elderly Catholic woman yelling at a young man that stem cells are evil, to which he retorts something about how the Church is stopping people’s lives from being saved, etc.
Lame dialogue alert!
This movie contained a lot of lame dialogue, which is basically dialogue that is goofy, cheesy or nothing more than garden variety cliche. At times it really gets cringeworthy – like the cliched and poorly crafted speech that Ewan McGregor’s character gives to the Cardinals in the Conclave.
Basically, this sort of rubbish shouldn’t even be tolerated by a filmmaker of Ron Howard’s calibre.
I learned everything I know from Emperor Palpatine
The Machiavellian scheme employed by the main antagonist in this film makes absolutely no sense. Not only could it have easily failed at several different junctures, but, thanks to his own plan, he could have easily killed himself before he even managed to trick his way into becoming Pope (which was the entire purpose of his dastardly scheme).
We all know that you have to willingly suspend your disbelief when watching certain types of films, but Angels and Demons goes well beyond that. The problem is that the plot is too convoluted for its own good, with so many different twists and turns, that the evil plan of the main antagonist becomes more and more likely to fail the longer the movie drags on.
Watch out for those plot holes in the road!
I think Angels and Demons may have contained more glaring plot holes than any other movie I’ve watched recently, and it certainly contains more plot holes than any big budget movie that I’ve ever seen.
Here are just some of them:
* A Vatican security agent and the main protagonist get trapped in a Vatican archive room, and so the security agent immediately tries to radio for help, but after getting no response he turns to the main protagonist and tells him that all the lead in the walls prevents radio communications.
Um, well if he knew that already, then why did he waste time trying to radio HQ – why not just tell the main protagonist that radio communication won’t work?!
* Highly trained Vatican security agents shoot a high ranking unarmed Catholic clergyman, in the back, when all they needed to do was tackle him to stop him from hitting another person.
* At one point we are told that the Vatican security is impenetrable, even though, in real life, Pope John Paul II was almost killed after being shot and wounded 4 times by an assassin in Saint Peter’s Square, and the fictional plot of this film involves 4 cardinals being kidnaped from within the Vatican, and a highly destructive bomb being planted inside the Vatican’s central Church.
* The Illuminati engage in religious ritual killings, etc, even though they are empiricists hellbent on the destruction of religion, which they see as being opposed to science.
* We are told that the Church was totally opposed to Galileo, and that she systematically sought to destroy the written work that he was producing (via book burnings, etc). We are also told that the Church is at war with science, yet the Vatican archive contains original copies of all Galileo’s writings.
* The highly trained mercenary who works for the main antagonist kills anyone and everyone who gets in his way, or poses a threat to his work. He also shoots at Robert Langdon in the scene where the third cardinal is executed, yet in a later scene he leaves Langdon and his female sidekick alive, telling them that he isn’t going to kill them because they are unarmed, and he wasn’t ordered to kill them.
This of course leaves Langdon alive and free to thwart the plan that the mercenary has just finished implementing.
* At a critical moment in Angels and Demons, a character flies a helicopter high into the air in order to detonate a bomb inside it, thus saving everyone from certain doom. When he enters the helicopter he has no parachute on, and he is shown flying the helicopter without one on, but he eventually jumps out of the helicopter with a parachute on.
The final word…
I know you’re probably thinking that I was never really going to like Angels and Demons, purely because I am a Catholic, but I can honestly say that I watched this film with no preconceived notions either way.
In the end, while all the cliched anti-Catholicism quickly gets boring, this film fails first and foremost on an artistic level. The scripting is sloppy, the storytelling is below average, and even the acting is not really worthy of the people involved in this project.
Angels and Demons is probably the biggest budget b-grade movie that you’ll ever see, and I can’t help but get the feeling that Ron Howard and his cohort have found themselves a golden goose in the Dan Brown novels, much like Lucas did with the Star Wars prequels. And it seems that as long as the golden goose keeps laying those eggs, cinematic and artistic substance doesn’t really matter to Howard, Hanks and co.
Maybe the ‘W’ stands for ‘waste of time’?
I watched the new Oliver Stone film W. last week.
Two sure indicators that a movie is not that popular are that it makes its way into the weekly rental section of your local video store at a record pace, and when it is first sold as an ex-rental DVD, it is sold at a really cheap price.
Both of these things happened to the film W. at my local video store, and after watching it for myself I now understand why.
Don’t get me wrong, Josh Brolin does an amazing job playing the lead role of George W. Bush, it’s just that the film as a whole is little more than an anti-George Bush propaganda piece.
W. sells itself as a film about former US President George W. Bush, but in actual fact it’s primarily a film about the political lead up to the Iraq war, with certain moments in George Bush’s life before becoming President thrown in as well.
Here’s a list of some of the reasons why I think this film was such a dismal failure:
1. The film literally portrays George Bush as nothing more than a dumb hick who was a political puppet on a lunatic revenge mission, and whose sole motivation in life was pleasing his unloving father.
The simple fact is that, love him or hate him, a dumb, barely literate simpleton couldn’t have achieved Bush’s initial political victories, and then gone on to become a two term US President (via election both times).
It’s worth noting at this point that Oliver Stone has already been criticized for a lack of accuracy on several of his former biopic films, in fact, the surviving members of the Doors have distanced themselves from Stone’s film about Jim Morrison and their band for this very reason.
Stone even admits, during the ‘making of’ documentary for this film, that one of the most important scenes in the movie, the Bush caucus debating, and then eventually deciding to go into Iraq, was nothing more than a fabrication that he concocted himself.
2. The film doesn’t even pretend that it is attempting to explore the life of George Bush in any balanced way, instead it plays out like a 2 hour ad hominem character assassination of the man. Among other things it regularly resorts to using movie devices, such as comedic musical scoring (think Benny Hill), for the purpose of lampooning the man.
This sort of blatant political propaganda, masquerading as serious cinema, very quickly gets boring, and it starts to look more and more childish and petty as the film wears on.
3. There is no real attempt to properly engage with, and examine George Bush’s Christianity, instead Stone opts for cliches, like the scene with the deliberate zoom shot to draw attention to the Pentecostal minister’s cross emblazoned belt buckle, or the line about Bush consulting a higher father, rather than his own biological one.
Now this sort of stuff is just the usual fare for Hollywood, but what it makes it so frustrating in this film is the fact that W. specifically touts the examination of Bush’s faith as one its key selling points, but then it never actually does this.
There has been a lot of very interesting discussion about Bush’s Christianity over recent years, but none of this makes it into the film, instead all we get are passing cliches, and one small scene that appears to portray some sort of conversion, but no balanced substance.
1. What the heck was up with the portrayal of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell?
Honestly, it was farcical in the extreme, in fact Powell looked and sounded like he was about to break into an A-Team skit, and Rice constantly sounded like a bad comic impersonator. I can see why some critics have attacked this film as being like a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Seriously, Rice, who, by all reliable accounts, is a very intelligent, qualified and proficient woman, comes across as a total airhead, and she is portrayed with some of the worst acting I think I’ve ever seen (it really was like watching a bad impersonator at an open mic night) – I guess the old adage about liberals hating strong women who refuse to join them on the left side of the political spectrum really is true.
And why is it that Powell so blindly and easily agrees to support an Iraq invasion just moments after he has finished so vehemently and passionately opposing that very thing?
From a storytelling perspective this makes absolutely no sense at all, because it makes Powell look like a man without any principals whatsoever, or was Oliver Stone also intending to attack Powell’s integrity with this film?
This completely unexplainable about-face from Powell appears in the main caucus scene in the film, the one that Oliver Stone fabricated, and it seems to me that Stone has completely screwed this scene up by using Powell as a plot device to present the arguments against going into Iraq.
Of course the truth is that Powell showed strong public support for the Iraq invasion, and the film actually shows us this a bit later on, so Stone sloppily explains this away by having Powell do a speedy and total backdown on his previous (as in; just a couple of minutes previous) opposition to the invasion.
Like I said, this is just plain sloppy filmmaking – all Stone needed to do was use a fictional political aide to present the counter arguments (or maybe he could have had a journalist do it in a fictional interview setting), or he could have even had Powell do it, but then simply leave the question about Powell’s later support for the invasion unanswered by not showing a backdown, and the later scene of him going in to bat for the war.
5. The movie falls into revisionist history with its portrayal of a massive American opposition to the US incursion into Iraq.
The truth is that initially there was very strong popular support, in the US, for the war in Iraq, and the opposition came much later, once the realization of what Bush had actually committed the US to, and how dodgy the intelligence about WMDs was, started to dawn on the American populace.
I think I’ll stop at this point, because this is just one of several glaring accuracy issues in this film, and we’ve already established the fact that Stone doesn’t have a good track record in this department.
6. The portrayal of Tony Blair was just plain weird – Stone quite clearly thinks he was nothing more than a weak minded puppet who can’t think for himself, or at least that’s what the very, very short scene in this movie implied.
1. The movie portrays Bush and his presidency as being solely about the invasion of Iraq.
What it conveniently fails to present with any balance is the fact that George Bush invaded Iraq in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
W. strongly suggests that Bush went into his Presidency looking to invade Iraq, but it is hard to see how such an invasion could have been justified without the 9/11 attacks, which Bush, quite obviously, had no control over.
Why the heck would George Bush have built his presidency solely around an act (the Iraq invasion) that would never have been able to happen without totally unforeseen events that were beyond the control of Bush (the 9/11 attacks)?
This is just conspiracy theory stuff, and it misses the fact that Bush did a lot more with his time in office than just invade Iraq – sure, that’s what he is mainly remembered for, but this movie touted itself as being about Bush, not just about what Bush is remembered for.
Any uninformed watcher of this film would be totally forgiven for assuming that George Bush spent his entire Presidency doing nothing else but planning and overseeing the Iraq invasion.
The movie never mentions the fact that the world experienced one it greatest reductions in slavery because of Bush policies, or that Bono credits Bush for doing more to help Africa than other US President – but hey, why let those sorts of facts get in the way of a good story!
The final word…
This movie touts itself as being a comprehensive examination of Bush, when in reality it is a very shallow, one-dimensional lampooning of the man that any informed person would struggle to take seriously.
And you know that you’ve dropped the ball big time when the majority of critics (a good portion of whom would oppose Bush’s politics) have very little that is positive to say about your film, and many of them are actually quite cutting in their reviews.
In the end, W. is a cinematic joke that plays out like one long skit that some drunk Democrats thought up with for a Democratic Party convention.
Look, I don’t support the war in Iraq, and I don’t consider myself to be a huge supporter of Bush, but I do know that there is far more to the man and his politics than this movie claims to portray. Stone himself even states on the ‘making of’ documentary that he once met Bush, and that he could see that there was more to the man that the public persona.
I also hate it when skilled filmmakers, like Stone, use their considerable talents to produce propaganda like this – it’s shameful from an artistic perspective, and it’s the equivalent of Van Gough hurriedly spray painting a street sign with the F-word and calling it art.
Like I said at the very start, this movie is little more than one long ad hominem attack on George W. Bush, that never really engages the philosophies and ideologies that guided his political deeds. It never treats its subject with seriousness or respect, and it leaves the viewer none the wiser about the real George Bush or his motivations.
This is definitely a major Oliver Stone FAIL.
The ABAF Golden Popcorn Rating for W.:
As an amateur movie buff, one thing I relish more than anything else is discovering great, and formerly unknown to me, movies at the local video store.
Sadly, such movies are few and far between, as so much of the straight to DVD fare is little more than b-grade pulp and ridiculous low-budget rehashes of former Hollywood blockbusters, movies like this one, this one and this one.
However, every now and then, one is rewarded with a great film that you didn’t even know existed until you picked it up off the local video store shelf.
These movies are often made on a smaller budget, even when top actors are involved, where the bulk of money is spent on making the actual film, rather than marketing it – which, I guess, is why they don’t get much popular attention.
I have noticed that, for reasons unknown, the horror and war genre seem to feature a lot of these types of movies. I’m not sure why this is, maybe it’s because both genres rely on good storytelling to achieve their full effect, something which generally comes far cheaper than big budget special effects!
In the coming weeks I might explore the topic of great movies from other genres you may have never heard of, but the topic of today’s post is six films from the war movie genre that went largely unnoticed upon their initial release, in fact you may have never even heard of some of them until now, but none the less they are still good films worthy of a watch.
Saints and Soldiers
Of all the films on today’s list, I think that this may be the one that was made on the smallest budget, and it’s certainly the only film which featured totally unknown actors at the time of its release.
But don’t let any of this fool you, because it recounts the true story of a group of allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in France during World War II, and their attempts to sneak back into Allied territory with vitally important intelligence information.
There are some little weakness with this film, like the sometimes overly sentimental portrayal of the relationship between the soldiers and the French woman in the farmhouse, and in one or two places the musical score is a little bit poorly chosen, but these are minor details that don’t really detract from the overall experience of this film.
A little bit of trivia – the main character in this film, for those who can’t guess from the clues provided during the movie, was a Mormon, and almost all of the actors in this film are Mormons themselves.
This film literally contains only one or two mild obscenities, and very little graphic violence, instead relying mainly on good storytelling to get its message about the horror of war across.
After it’s release, Saints and Soldiers quietly went about winning 13 international film awards, and impressing the majority of critics who saw it, most speak very highly of it.
Days of Glory
I think that the main reason why this film didn’t garner much attention upon its release here was due to the fact that it is a subtitled French film, and, even though it received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, the subtitles may have put your average punter off – but don’t you dare let that stop you from renting this movie!
Days of Glory tells the story of the French Africans who enlisted in the French army to fight against Hitler’s invading forces during World War II, with a particular focus on the tale of four Algerians who fought for the French.
But what this film really does is tell of the terribly unjust treatment these soldiers suffered from their fellow French soldiers, commanders, and even post-war French governments.
This film is a long overdue testament to the heroism of a group of men who were treated like second class citizens and cannon fodder by their own army, but despite this still fought with courage against the Nazi tyranny.
While the movie itself ends on a sad note, the good news is that it helped to change the course of history by drawing public attention to the fact that the French government had stopped paying these men their rightful soldier’s war pensions, with the subsequent public outrage forcing these to be reinstated by the French parliament.
Enemy at the Gates
I was in two minds about whether or not to include this film on this list, mainly because it has since gone on to attract more popular attention, probably thanks to the fact that it features a pretty solid cast (Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Ron Pearlman and Bob Hoskins).
In the end, this movie made it onto the list because of the fact that it didn’t really attract much attention at all upon its DVD release, and I still regularly run into people who have never even heard of it.
Enemy at the Gates tells the true story of Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev (well, as much of his story as can be ascertained through the fog of the truckloads of Communist propaganda that accompanied his wartime deeds, that is).
This movie really took me by surprise when I first saw it, because it featured good acting, a great story, a memorable soundtrack, and a very gritty and unflinchingly frightening presentation of life in Communist Russia during World War II.
All of this still left me asking myself why this movie never attracted much in the way of popular attention when it was released, and still remains largely unseen today by those who aren’t diehard fans of war films.
Maybe people just didn’t realize that a movie about Soviet Russia during World War II could be anything other than a bleak arty type film?
Flyboys
Who would have though that a non-blockbuster movie about World War I pilots could deliver such a decent serving of good old fashioned excitement and drama?
Flyboys tells the tale of the Lafayette Escadrille, a group of Americans who volunteered to fly planes for the French military before the U.S. had entered World War I.
It features a good story, some pretty solid acting from James Franco, who plays the lead role, (it also includes a good performance from NZ’s very own Martin Henderson), but best of all it has some amazing aerial dogfighting scenes, and these alone make the film worth a watch.
In many ways, it’s hard to tell the story of World War I, which was a truly brutal and ugly trench war which took a lot of lives, without falling into melancholy, but this movie manages to avoid this, and it does it without glorifying war either.
The Great Raid
Another movie with James Franco playing one of the lead roles, except this time he’s an American Ranger during the Pacific campaign of World War II.
Like Enemy at the Gates, I’m also surprised that this movie didn’t garner more attention upon its release, as the cast features the likes of Joseph Fiennes, Connie Nielsen (from Gladiator) and Benjamin Bratt.
The Great Raid tells the true story of a group of American POWs who are going to be brutally executed by the Japanese, unless a group of US Rangers can succeed in their dangerous mission, well behind enemy lines, to save them.
This is one of those war movies which makes the story its primary concern, and it weaves a tale which includes captured US soldiers in a Japanese concentration camp, a resistance group in the Philippines, and of course, the recently formed US Rangers special operations unit in action behind enemy lines.
Stop-Loss
Repeating the sentiments of another film critic, I would suggest that this is one of the best movies made about the Iraq war, probably because, instead of focusing on the Iraq war itself, it focuses mainly on the specific issue of US troops who have been unjustly stop-Lossed by the US army during the Iraq campaign.
A soldier who has completed their contracted time in the US army would normally be released back into civilian life, but during a time of war, the army can arbitrarily choose to renege on this contract and force a soldier back into active service, even if he has completed his required period of military service, this practice is referred to as a ‘Stop-Loss’, which is where the film derives its name from.
Stop-Loss focuses on the lives of several American soldiers serving in Iraq, and the impact that the decision of one of them to flee, rather than be forced back to Iraq on a Stop-Loss, has on friendships, relationships and families.
Apart from the opening sequences in Iraq, most of this movie takes place back in the United States, but it is still a powerful film that has some important things to say about the treatment of soldiers in the modern era.
I really love the film Gladiator, and recently I found myself watching the movie length documentary that is included with the extended edition DVD.
It’s a great documentary, but there is a claim that is made, several times, in that documentary, and it irked me no end.
That claim is that Gladiator should be credited with igniting the popularity and renewed interest in big budget historical epics.
But I think that such credit fairly and squarely belongs to Braveheart, a film that was released five years prior to Gladiator, and which Gladiator appears to clearly borrow key elements from.
Like, for example, the fact that both lead characters have their wives killed very early on in their character arc, they are both fighting for freedom and an end to tyranny, both films feature a royal love interest for the main character, and they both see their dead wives welcoming them into the afterlife moments before they actually die.
Anyway, after watching the Gladiator documentary, I was inspired to compare the two films in key areas to see just which one comes out on top in the battle of the historical epics.
Let me start this battle by declaring that I really like both movies, and I think that they are both worthy of much praise, anyway, let’s get to comparing the two films…
Script:
Both movies have a great script, but I think that Braveheart probably has a more realistic feel to its dialogue, and it certainly has a much broader and deeper scope than Gladiator does.
The dialogue in Gladiator tends to falter in a couple of spots, with some lines that feel a little bit on the corny side, but Braveheart doesn’t ever really fall into this trap, and while it deals with some very intense drama and action, it does so without resorting to cliched dialogue.
While both movies focus on the unjust treatment of one main character, and his response to that injustice, the plot of Braveheart seems to have a bit more meat on its bones than the plot of Gladiator. This is possibly due to the fact that Braveheart features a few more characters, and this introduces extra sub plots which add something extra to the overall plot.
So, when the dust is settled, I’d have to say that Braveheart wins this part of the battle quite easily.
Plot:
Both movies have great story lines, with good character arcs, but I think that Braveheart has a more developed plot, that presents an amazing cinematic vision of some very important truths, which at times feel a little bit lost in Gladiator.
It can be difficult to judge such things from movie to movie, but in this case, both plots revolve around similar themes, like a quest for justice, opposition to tyranny, familial love, patriotism, etc, and both feature great acting, and excellent filmmaking, so a comparison is a bit easier to make in this case.
One well utilized turn in the plot of Gladiator is the introduction of a plan to mount a political coup to overthrow the tyrannical Emperor Commodus, and institute a just government in his place. Up until that point, the actions of Maximus, the lead character, are motivated by nothing more than a dark and all consuming desire for revenge.
The problem is that, even with this development in the plot, revenge is clearly still the primary motivation for Maximus.
The same isn’t true of Braveheart, which also employs the murder of the lead character’s wife as the catalyst for starting his quest against the tyrannical ruler. Instead it maintains a purity of intention on the part of the lead character by keeping his love for what is right (in this case; justice, and freedom for his people from brutal oppression) as his primary motivation, not a secondary one that also happens to fit in with a different, but selfish and immoral, desired end.
Characters:
This one’s a bit tougher, as both films feature very memorable characters.
Obviously both lead characters are fairly evenly matched, although Braveheart does feature good character development of William Wallace’s wife, whereas Gladiator features none for Maximus’. This is probably evened out, however, by the fact that Gladiator pays more attention to its lead villain than Braveheart does (more about that soon).
Both films feature strong supporting female characters, and numerous other bit players, although, as mentioned earlier, Braveheart opts for a few more of these than Gladiator does.
In the end, I think that both films are fairly evenly matched in the character stakes, so in this area it’s a draw.
Lead actors:
Both films feature talented and strong male lead actors, who, coincidentally, are both also Australians.
Comparing leads in a film can be a tricky thing to do, especially if one lead is provided with a much more substantial script with which to showcase their acting abilities, which is the case with Braveheart.
Both Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and Mel Gibson (Braveheart) deliver very strong performances in their respective roles, but Mel Gibson probably manages to trump Russell Crowe, purely because the Braveheart script is longer, and therefore affords him a wider range of acting scenarios, from comedy, to drama to action, in which he really does shine.
The Villain:
Another difficult category to score, as each film features a very memorable lead villain.
Edward the Longshanks (Braveheart), played by Patrick McGoohan, is a great antagonist, as is Commodus (Gladiator), played by Joaquin Phoenix, but I think that the attention paid to Commodus’ character development in Gladiator, and Phoenix’s deft portrayal of him, means that Gladiator comes out on top in this part of the dual.
The main difference that I see between these two villains is that more attention is paid to character development in Gladiator.
We are shown Commodus prior to his ascendency to the throne, which is accomplished by treason and the murder of his own father, and his motivations (jealousy, inadequacy, a need to suppress the truth) are clearly explained, and they provide ample motivation for his evil actions as the film progresses.
But in Braveheart, we never really get told why Longshanks should be motivated to be such a cruel and barbaric tyrant, with such a hatred for the people of Scotland. This is a weakness for Braveheart, as it tends to reduce Longshanks to more of a one dimensional bad guy, with no clear rational behind his villainous actions – is it revenge? is it jealousy? is it fear?; this is never actually made clear.
What also works in Gladiator’s favor here is the portrayal of it’s lead villain by Joaquin Phoenix, who really works hard to produce a memorable, and realistic portrayal of a fame seeking, power hungry, mentally unstable Roman emperor – at several points in the film your skin literally crawls as Phoenix uses his considerable talent to produce a maniacal Commodus.
Musical score:
Another tough aspect to call, as both movies feature rousing musical scores from two renowned composers.
Gladiator features the music of Hans Zimmer, while Braveheart features the work of James Horner.
While Zimmer produces some of his usual stellar composition work, it’s probably just a little too similar to many of his other great film scores, and it features several memorable themes, rather than a wide-ranging score which is great as a complete whole.
Horner, on the other hand, manages to produce a film score that really adds to all aspects of Braveheart, not just the dramatic moments. It is a score that utilizes ethnic instrumentation to its fullest, and it really injects the film with a grand musical score reminiscent of, and equal to, the great Hollywood epics of previous eras.
So when it comes to music, Braveheart is definitely the winner on the day.
Visual effects:
This one was actually really difficult to score as well, because Gladiator featured a lot of computer generated visual effects that result in some really spectacular scenes, but Braveheart produces just as spectacular results by relying on lighting, landscapes and environmental factors instead.
One of the really impressive, and recurring, visual effects featured in Gladiator is the Colosseum, which was almost entirely made up of computer generated images.
However, Braveheart opts for a more traditional approach, and it includes some truly impressive, and amazingly well lensed and lit shots, of both indoor and outdoor locations, in Scotland and England.
There is no doubting that Ridley Scott produced a unique visual look to Gladiator, which has become a bit of a standard in subsequent big budget movies, but I think that Braveheart has to take this section out, by a nose, partly because it achieves its look without the use of artificial computer effects.
Costumes and sets:
Once again, another very close run thing, but I think that Braveheart probably has to come out the winner here too.
Both films have truly impressive costuming, but for some reason, not all of the Gladiator costumes look as organic and worn in as they probably should, something that Braveheart gets stunningly right – look for the scene where William Wallace bends down to collect his dead wife’s wedding keepsake, just after he has killed the local English noble at the pole, check out the footwear he has on, and the amazing attention to detail in regards to wear and tear, etc.
The other aspect of this section are the sets.
Gladiator uses a lot of computer generated effects to give them their full effect. Now most of these are truly impressive, but some of the shots can clearly be discerned as being digital.
Braveheart, on the other hand, opts for actual sets, which look far more authentic, and add another dimension to the film, almost becoming another character in their own right.
It’s a real shame, because the physical sets on Gladiator look really great, as do many of the computer generated ones, like the Colosseum, it’s just that the way that Ridley Scott chose to shoot some of the other shots, with Roman monuments and buildings in them, it becomes quite easy to see the digital additions at times.
So, Braveheart has to win this section because their physical sets clearly display a lot of research and construction work, and they never distract from the film, even in the slightest, the simply enhance what is already a great story.
Battle scenes:
You can’t really have an epic historical movie without epic battle scenes, something which both movies do really well.
There is a slight difference between the two films, in that Gladiator features only one major military battle scene, with the rest of the battles taking place on a smaller scale in Gladiatorial combat scenarios, etc. Having said that, I think that Gladiator does contain enough epic battle footage for a fair comparison to be made.
This was yet another tough section to make a final call on, but I think that Braveheart probably has to win this section by the slightest of margins because it’s combat scenes feel a little less choreographed than some of the scenes in Gladiator.
I also think that there is a more authentic feel to the combat scenes in Braveheart, which features a gritty realism and ugliness that would have been part of actual sword and spear warfare.
Historicity:
Both films take a bit of artistic historical license in the storytelling process, but Braveheart has to win this section because it takes less than Gladiator does.
One really intriguing aspect of Gladiator, for me, was the complete lack of any reference to Christianity, something that was actually a big deal for the Roman Empire during the historical period that Gladiator is set in. Interestingly, a couple of scenes pertaining to the execution of Christians by Romans were filmed, but they were cut from the final theatrical release of the film.
Braveheart, on the other hand, does actually take the time to include references to Christianity, which had become a huge part of daily life in Europe by that period. It could have adopted the Gladiator tactic of simply ignoring Christianity, but then the film would have lacked a certain historical accuracy and authenticity that make it so impressive.
Anyway, that’s just an irrelevant tangent on my part, the important thing is that Braveheart wins this section of the battle!
Final scores
Script: Braveheart
Plot: Braveheart
Characters: Draw
Lead actors: Braveheart
The Villain: Gladiator
Musical score: Braveheart
Visual effects: Braveheart
Costumes and sets: Braveheart
Battle scenes: Braveheart
Historicity: Braveheart
Totals:
Gladiator – 2
Braveheart – 9
At the end of the day, Braveheart clearly comes out on top, but in many areas this is by the slightest of margins, which means that both films are a lot closer than this crude rating system suggests.
When all is said and done, I think that Braveheart is the better of the two films, and it can take more of the credit, than Gladiator can, for the recent renaissance of big budget historical epics.
The ABAF Golden Popcorn Rating for Gladiator:
The ABAF Golden Popcorn Rating for Braveheart:
