Random Thoughts on Gladiator Movies

It wasn’t all fun and gladiator games.

Cartoon by Lambert-King

Gladiator movies are an interesting genre. I’ll try to get past the remark that Peter Graves made about gladiator movies in the classic comedy, “Airplane’ to make some salient points. Probably the ultimate gladiator movie is the appropriately named, ‘Gladiator”. First of all, when your name is Maximus, it’s got to give you some serious self-confidence. Serious kudos to the parents that named their son Maximus.

I have a hard time remembering the rest of Maximus’ name but I think it was something like Maximus Testosteronius Baddude. It’s also the kind of name that inspires men to follow that person. Maximus’ adversary also had an interesting name, Commodus.

While Commodus is an interesting name, it doesn’t elicit the same respect as Maximus. It actually sounds a lot like Common. Or even worse, Comode, or Comodius. Really, who’s going to follow somebody named Comodius into battle.

Another big-time time player in the gladiator movie genre is “Spartacus.” Of course, Spartacus was portrayed by Kirk Douglas. Douglas’s chin dimple actually walked away with the Oscar for best supporting actor, but that’s another story.

Spartacus is the story of a slave who led a rebellion of gladiators against the Roman Empire. Ultimately, Spartuc was killed, but not…