Gladiator (Special Edition) (DVD)

...to Proximo (Oliver Reed), a gladiator trainer. As a gladiator he fight his way from the outer reaches of the empire to the gladiator games in Rome and a chance to be face to face with Commodus again.
Director Ridley Scott was badly in need of a hit after a few recent misses (GI Jane) but here he returns to one of his main strengths, stunning visuals from the fly-over of Rome (see also beginning of Blade Runner) to the wonderful gladiator fights. ...
...Audio

Gladiator is the first major British R2 release to include a DTS soundtrack as well as a DD 5.1 track on the disc. And whilst there is not widespread ownership of DTS amplifiers in this country at the moment, hopefully this trend of releasing DVDs with both sound options will mean people are willing to pay that little bit more when they buy their surround system. To be honest, you are not likely to be disappointed with either ... more

The last couple of years have been strange times for blockbuster films. Whilst many were big hits (Phantom Menace, X-Men) most of them have been overshadowed by films with far smaller budgets (American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix). There have of course also been the usual turkeys (Battlefield Earth) so you can imagine there was probably some trepidation for DreamWorks at the thought of spending $100m on a film in a genre that had remained unexplored for 40 years with a director whose last film sank under a storm of criticism and without an obviously bankable major star.
The Film

It has been 40 years since Spartacus was released in the cinema and in that time the cinema has gone through massive changes, with falling audiences making it financially impossible to make films with the sort of budget required for the Roman or Biblical epics that had been so popular for many years. It is only in the last 5-10 years that CGI has allowed filmmakers to create a large scale on film if not in reality. As with westerns, it seems that falling profits scare studios off from making a certain genre of films for a while, and so it has been with the Roman epics. It will be interesting to see if there is now a rash of these films rushed into production.
Anybody who has seen the trailer knows what the story is. Maximus (Russell Crowe) is General of the armies of Rome who is asked by the dying emperor (Richard Harris) to take over from him and stop the corruption in the empire. This doesn't go down well with his heir Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who kills his father before he can announce his decision and orders Maximus and his family killed. Maximus escapes but can't get home in time to rescue his family, he is captured by slave traders and sold to Proximo (Oliver Reed), a gladiator trainer. As a gladiator he fight his way from the outer reaches of the empire to the gladiator games in Rome and a chance to be face to face with Commodus again.
Director Ridley Scott was badly in need of a hit after a few recent misses (GI Jane) but here he returns to one of his main strengths, stunning visuals from the fly-over of Rome (see also beginning of Blade Runner) to the wonderful gladiator fights. He seems to get on better with the cast and crew than he used to (again see Blade Runner). He manages to get wonderful performances out of a amazingly diverse cast from the young Joaquin Phoenix (who required an evening in Richard Harris' trailer with him, Russell Crowe and a large amount of alcohol before he believed he could do the part justice), to the collection of the old generation of actors including coaxing Harris out of semi-retirement and getting one last great performance from Ollie Reed.
Russell Crowe in his first big budget lead is superb, and is now no doubt having to sift through thousands of Hollywood action scripts. He seems to be completely unaffected by it all and prefers to spend his time on his farm in Australia than in LA at parties. His last three major roles (Gladiator, The Insider and LA Confidential) have set him up as an actor who is capable of a wide range of roles and is willing to take on the most difficult of films.
For a film that is 2 ½ hours long it sails by and whilst it is clear who are the heroes and villains are from the start the characters are developed enough that you have some sympathy for all of the characters.
Audio

Gladiator is the first major British R2 release to include a DTS soundtrack as well as a DD 5.1 track on the disc. And whilst there is not widespread ownership of DTS amplifiers in this country at the moment, hopefully this trend of releasing DVDs with both sound options will mean people are willing to pay that little bit more when they buy their surround system. To be honest, you are not likely to be disappointed with either sound option but the DTS track seems to cope a little bit better with the wide range of sound in the film, from the wonderful orchestral score to the rousing battle scenes. The battle at the beginning is particularly satisfying turned up loud with the burning arrows flying over your head.
Picture
With this film having been released at the cinema within the last year you would expect the picture quality to be excellent and it doesn't disappoint. The picture is crisp and clear throughout even in the largely grey scenes at the beginning of the film. If anything, some of the computer-generated images of Rome are too clean, but this is no fault of the DVD as the transfer is identical to what I recall seeing at the cinema.
Technically there is one major difference between the R1 and the R2 release of the film - R1 is NTSC and R2 is PAL. This means that the R2 version has been transferred at a fractionally higher frame rate than the R1 disc. This has advantages and disadvantages: the picture lacks the notorious “judder” on panning movements seen with NTSC discs, but the soundtrack plays roughly a semitone higher to compensate for the higher rate. This also accounts for a 6-7 minute difference in the length of the film, though rest assured that both versions are identical in terms of actual footage. For anybody who has been confused by the above let me reassure you that without watching the two copies side by side you probably won't be able to notice the difference.
Extras

According to the case for the DVD there is no commentary track by Ridley Scott. I don't know whether this was a printing error or not because they do manage to tell you that there are animated menus - but the commentary has managed to survive the transition from R1 to R2.
Making-of Documentary: This is your standard "behind the scenes" featurette that is shown on TV near to the time of release. You get a look at some of the scenes and have quick sound bites from all the main players without anything particularly deep. This featurette is a case in point: you get a few amusing quotes from Russell Crowe about how difficult the fight scenes were and some clips of the special effects as they were created. These features are designed to be extended trailers and nothing more and therefore there are none of the revealingly frank interviews that were in the documentary on the Abyss release. However, for a feature of its type it is as good as they get.
Audio Commentary: The audio commentary by Ridley Scott for Alien is one of the best commentaries I have heard, giving an insight into the production without being too technical whilst also giving a lot of information as to what he was trying to achieve in each scene. So the commentary on Gladiator was the extra feature I was most looking forward too, and whilst the track isn't as entertaining as the Alien track, it is still one of the better commentaries I have heard recently. Even with the large number of visually and technically complex shots within the movie he manages to keep away from many commentaries I have heard where they have spent so long explaining how they did a particular shot that the scene has long since gone.
The big advantage for the Alien commentary is that it was recorded a long time after the film was made. This means the director can be more detached from the film and in all probability had more time to think about the film. This is not a major flaw with the Gladiator commentary because he has a couple of other people on the commentary to bounce off (the director of photography and the editor) meaning there is a good flow throughout the track, and whilst neither of the other two participants have all that much to say, Ridley Scott brings them in to talk about specific scenes very well. This means you get more information than you would get from just the director without having to sit through what tend to be rather tedious technical commentaries. The best feature of the commentary is Ridley Scott's dismissal of the historians who watch films like this and say, "they didn't do things like that in real life", commenting that if they can't prove to him they didn't he'll do whatever he wants to.
Deleted Scenes:

The deleted scenes section of the DVD is in my opinion the best feature on the disc. There are 11 deleted scenes as well as a deleted scene montage with musical accompaniment. Each of these scenes can be watched either with or without a commentary by Ridley Scott. All of these scenes could easily have been in the film and it would almost have been worth putting them back in for a director's cut. With many of the deleted scenes that are added to DVDs it is fairly obvious why they were deleted: they weren't very good. In this case that couldn't be further from the truth - each of these scenes are superbly acted and add more to the characters, especially those of Maximus and Commodus. From the director's comments on the scenes you can tell that he really didn't want to have to remove them but the length of the film meant that keeping them in would have pushed the film to over three hours, meaning one lost showing per day at the cinemas. In total there is nearly half an hour of extra footage with my favourite scene being the execution.
History of Gladiators: This documentary is the sort of thing you were occasionally allowed to watch in history class at school. Much of it is a standard educational video with the usual historians giving an interesting story of gladiatorial combat in Rome. Some of the information they give is pretty much the run-of-the-mill information that most people already know, but they do go into a lot of detail about the actual people who were gladiators. You then get some interviews and on set footage from the film, which is basically an extended trailer. Overall, an interesting documentary that gives a nice background to the story.
Hans Zimmer Profile: The musical score for a film can be as important as the acting or the direction with many good films being turned into great ones by the use of music. For example both Jaws and Star Wars were expected to flop by studio heads after seeing cuts of the films without John Williams’ score.
Many directors seem to form a bond with a particular composer, Lucas and Spielberg manage to keep John Williams pretty busy and whilst Hans Zimmer hasn't been used on all Ridley Scott's films they seem to have built up a good rapport on the films they have worked together on (they are also working on the upcoming Hannibal). This obviously helps when the director is trying to communicate what he is trying to achieve with a scene. This documentary is essentially a long interview with composer Hans Zimmer in which he discusses how the music for the film is discussed and developed and from what he says in the interview he spends a lot of time and energy making sure it is exactly right!
The composer discusses some of the different musical scenes and how they were decided upon as well as how the music was constructed. I think a documentary for this is probably better than a full length commentary on the film as the commentary tracks from musicians I have heard before (for example Ravenous) seem to run out of things to say half way through. It would have been nice to have an isolated score soundtrack but that would be nitpicking.
Lucius’ Journal: This was the one feature on the disc where I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable extras. It is in the form of a diary by Spencer Treat Clark (Lucius), which was written whilst he was on the set of the film. Whilst it is presented as plain text with the occasional picture it is a fascinating read and gives a far better behind the scenes insight than the documentary.
The writing style seems a bit mature for your average 12 year old but it gives an idea of the scale of the production, for example the amount of time he spent on the set compared with the amount of time that he is actually in the film. He seems to have had a great time on the set and after reading it you feel a bit jealous! He spends a long time talking about Russell Crowe, who seems to have been unaffected by the pressure of being the lead in such a massive film. There are stories of how the whole crew had fun together with both a cricket and football match arranged against the locals (even if the producers were a little reluctant to risk their star in a football match).
Trailers: As you would expect from any DVD release, the theatrical trailers are included on the disc as well as a couple of short TV spots which I find fascinating as not only do they manage to cut the trailer down to 20-30 seconds, they also manage to have different trailers for different audiences so in this case there is the 'lads' spot which includes all the fighting, there is also a 'girls' trailers which focuses on the love stories so if you saw both of these TV spots you could be forgiven for thinking they were for two different films!
Production Notes/ Biographies/ Photo Gallery/Storyboard Comparisons:

These are as standard on virtually all major releases, though it would be nice to see somebody try something a little different from solid text screens and photo click through. The storyboards do include some interesting alternate scenes that weren't shot as well as some alternate endings. The production notes are a word for word match of what is contained in the booklet inside the case and give a very brief overview of the film. The biographies are fairly in-depth and will show to the average American that this isn't Russell Crowe's first film.The photo gallery contains a large number of behind the scenes pictures but could have done with more detail about the picture.
There is also a rather interesting hidden extra available from the deleted scenes menu, which is some test footage of a rhinoceros that was created by Industrial Light and Magic, which was to be included in one of the gladiator battles. However, the cost involved in creating the scene was too much, so it was never filmed - but the test footage is included along with the relevant section from the screenplay.
Although the listed details of extras are identical on the R1 and R2 releases, there is a hidden trailer for Chicken Run (apparently a homage to Gladiator), which has been included on the R1 release but is missing from R2, due to differences in regional distribution rights (in the US, both films are owned by DreamWorks, but in the UK Pathe handles Chicken Run). Also missing from both versions is a publicised tribute to Oliver Reed, which had to be removed due to distribution rights on one of the songs used in the tribute. This is a great shame, as now there is only a brief mention in the commentary and on the credits of his passing during the making of the film.
Overall
Although the extra features may not have as much depth as some recent R1 releases (The Abyss, Terminator 2), their overall quality, especially the deleted scenes, together with the wonderful sound and video transfer make this one of the best all-round DVDs available. It is probably number one in the list of DVDs you put on when one of your friends says "I don't know whether I should bother with DVD, it's not much better than video really"!

 

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