Hey there, fellow Cinemaniacs! Ealan here with another HMC newsletter!
“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the North. General of the Felix Legions. Loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”
In today’s Double Take, we will be going over Gladiator (2000), since we got inspiration from watching Ben-Hur last week. This is Ridley Scott’s epic revenge tale about a revered Roman general betrayed by a wicked new Caesar, only to evade his executioners, become a famous gladiator and seek revenge for his family’s murder.
I watched it on a plane traveling back from an audio expo in Chicago (AXPONA), and it sure did make the time fly by! In fact – and Derek and I will speak on this in more detail – I happened to watch the extended version! Did you know that there even was an extended version? Again, this was a good thing, though, since my flight was over 4 hours long and clearly I couldn’t go anywhere else. 😄
But Derek and I are very excited to talk about this one. In an era where a lot of 3-hour epics were being made, Gladiator stands out from the crowd, for sure.
So please join us on the Double Take live stream today at 3PM EDT/12PM PDT! Hope to see you there in the comments!