Maximus Is the Man: How Gladiator (2000) Gave Us One of the Great Movie Heroes

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As a young teenager, Gladiator blew me away when I saw it in theatres in May 2000. From its famous opening battle in the wintery forests of Germania, to its powerful ending, when our hero dies in the Colosseum and goes to his family in the afterlife, Gladiator is incredible entertainment. It boasts exciting action scenes, beautiful visuals and music, and impactful drama. It’s the full package of Hollywood spectacle, and it still works so well. 

At that time, I was getting into the films of Ridley Scott, and my admiration for the film and its director made me disappointed when Gladiator took home Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe, but not Best Director for Scott. (Steven Soderbergh would take home Best Director, having been nominated for two movies, both Traffic and Erin Brockovich, and winning for the former.)

In the quarter century since 2000, that distinction which first annoyed me—Crowe winning and Scott just getting nominated—has become indicative of a truth about the movie, in my view. It’s not that I don’t think Scott does a great job directing Gladiator. I am a huge admirer of Scott, and love Blade Runner and Alien and many of his other films (Black Rain, ahem). In fact, I rank Gladiator among Scott’s top five films. Rather, it is because I have come to consider Russell Crowe’s performance as Maximus Decimus Meridius as nothing short of legendary. Gladiator lives and thrives based foremostly on Crowe’s performance. In fact, I would go one step further and argue that Crowe’s Maximus is the most memorable and iconic original movie character Hollywood has created over the past 25 years. 

Crowe gives Maximus some of the most recognizable personality tics in movies, so that if I leaned down and grabbed the earth and smelled it before a soccer game, many regular people might point out the movie reference. At the same time, Crowe needs Scott to capture his performance; Gladiator’s success is the case of a great director knowing how to shoot a great actor. For example, the memorable opening image works in part because Crowe has strong, thick, hard-worked hands. It might sound silly, but not every hand would function the same way in that lyrical shot of the hand running through the stalks of wheat, or in the close-ups of hands reaching down to grasp a handful of earth. Yet, more than these small gestures, what makes Maximus so memorable is that he is a good and honourable and deeply admirable man. While he will acquire the trauma that characterizes so many male protagonists in the 2000s (there are many dead wives in the movies of that decade), and while the film enacts a familiar revenge plot, Maximus’s circumstances never make him a bad man and actually only ennoble him. His cause is always just in the eyes of the movie—and of audiences.

Maximus is devout. Even though he is a pagan and I am a Christian, I can still admire his portrayal as a man dedicated to his ancestors, who prays regularly and lives with integrity according to his principles. Maximus doesn’t really question his beliefs when he suffers; in fact, he can live through his suffering because he believes. The unbroken arc of the Hollywood revenge plot parallels Maximus’s view of the unbroken arc from this life to the next: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

Maximus is a family man. The romance between Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla and Maximus is all the more romantic and aching because it is mostly hinted at and only openly declared in one scene. These hints at their past youthful love—and progeny?—and the knowledge that they don’t have a future together makes a few whispered, torchlit moments very impactful. At the same time, Maximus remains dedicated to his wife and son after their deaths, which is the primary scene they feature in, and who live on screen mostly in his dreams and imaginings—and perhaps in the afterlife. 

(Much more could be said about Scott and editor Pietro Scalia’s use of intercutting to suggest dimensions of consciousness beyond immediate experience, such as the way Maximus actually seems to see his family die as we the audience see the sequence occur, or how the film’s first image is actually of the afterlife, and which is repeated at the end. Is that afterlife always present around Maximus? As with many warriors of old, there seems to be only a thin veil around him separating this world from the world beyond.)

Throughout Gladiator, Maximus is admired by those around him—from his soldiers in the scenes before the opening battle, to his fellow slaves and gladiators, to, eventually, the citizens and senators of Rome. All of this only encourages the audience to admire him as well. Part of Maximus’s training as a gladiator under the instruction of Oliver Reed’s Proximo is to learn how to make the crowd not just admire him but love him. “Win the crowd and you will win your freedom,” Proximo says, and it is true for the character and for the movie. The screenplay, by David Franzoni and John Logan and William Nicholson, offers some interesting comments on how public images are created and maintained. The public persona has a power that goes beyond personal interactions, which is also why a cinematic portrayal such as Maximus’s can have such an impact on a culture. In these ways, Gladiator is both a straightforward historical action movie, and a metatextual film about the nature and power of entertainment.

Part of the success of the portrayal of Maximus is due to the sharp contrast the film creates and maintains between Crowe’s hero and Joaquin Phoenix’s villain, the young, usurping Emperor Commodus. In contrast to the virtuous Maximus, Commodus, as his father Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) laments, “is not a moral man.” The conflict in early scenes between Commodus and his father, then the Emperor, makes clear that Commodus hates Maximus even more for personal reasons than for Maximus being in Commodus’s way politically. Aurelius’s desire to appoint Maximus as his successor to the throne only flames the jealousy that already exists. Before Richard Harris gave us his portrayal of the wise old wizard, Dumbledore, in the first two Harry Potter movies, he gave us the wise old emperor, Marcus Aurelius. As a philosopher-king, Aurelius’s presence in the film allows for explicit discussions of virtues and ethics. That is, until Commodus suffocates his father, in a very unvirtuous, dishonourable, and disturbing display of violence. 

Furthermore, Commodus’s incestuous desire for his sister Lucilla adds an extra layer to Commodus’s disturbing nature, which is all the more creepy because of Phoenix’s performance. Phoenix lingers around Nielsen’s Lucilla during each encounter between the brother and sister, always hovering too close, always a moment away from kissing her, or worse. And as Commodus schemes for more power and moans about the fickleness of politicians and the people, his dishonesty and petty whining stand in stark contrast to Maximus’ patience and fortitude.

Phoenix gave one of his great early performances in Gladiator. As they say, a hero is only as good as his villain, and Phoenix’s Commodus fulfils the role.

In classical Hollywood fashion, Maximus’s personal narrative is entwined with a public narrative about restoring the Roman Republic and ending the regime’s corruption (and yes, historical movies don’t have to always be strict history). Here the double plot makes the case that Maximus’s personal righteousness is essential for the flourishing of the state. Personal choices and individual morality make the world around us. Both Maximus and Commodus show this. Think about how the gladiators come to be Maximus’s new loyal soldiers. Maximus’s example ennobles those around him, and at the end of the film it seems as though Djimon Hounsou’s fellow gladiator, now freed, will carry on Maximus’s legacy of virtue.

Of course, these are just some of the ways that Maximus is a moral exemplar, while still being the driver of an exciting narrative. I know that some of this runs counter to the assumption that deep flaws are the only things that are interesting about character creations. In contrast, what is interesting about Maximus is seeing how he will maintain his virtue amidst the world around him, in spite of his many trials, which interestingly replicates aspects of the Stoic philosophy that the real-life Marcus Aurelius wrote about.

I once had a grad student friend describe for me how a particular movie was beautiful for celebrating all the flawed humanity of its characters. The sincerity of the observation has stuck with me. When I praise Crowe’s Maximus, I’m not saying that we should not appreciate a carefully nuanced character, nor that we should not admire the realness and humanity in a portrayal if it represents human flaws and weaknesses. We all make mistakes, and yes, life can be messy. Even Maximus is not perfect.

But sometimes we want, and need, to see a hero. Sometimes entertainment should give moral exemplars. Sometimes we need to see a representation of masculinity as a positive force in the world. And seeing a man on screen who is and remains virtuous doesn’t mean the movie can’t be interesting or even entertaining. In fact, the genius of Gladiator is to construct a story that is all the more interesting and engaging and powerful for its hero’s virtue. At the end, when Maximus dies, we feel sad, but because we can cheer his life, it is also a happy ending. Few films achieve such a balance of sorrow and gladness for a good life that arrives at a good death.

Russell Crowe’s Maximus is one of the great movie heroes. I cannot wait to share Gladiator with my two boys when they are older. They’ll be entertained, and so much more.   

Gladiator (2000, USA/UK)

Directed by Ridley Scott; written by David Franzoni and John Logan and William Nicholson; starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, and Richard Harris.

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