Gladiator Overview: Three Sides of the Spectacle in a Heroic Epic Film

Released in 2000, Gladiator, a deeply moving epic film, bagged five nominations for the 73rd Academy Awards and won the Best Picture Award that year, marking a milestone in the career of director Ridley Scott. Through his inventive use of spectacle, Ridley Scott exemplifies the possibility of imbuing spectacle with multiple levels of meaning and provides his own commentary on the moral and political value of spectacle. This paper attempts a superficial analysis of the two types of the spectacle presented in the film’s visual expression and introduces the film’s true spectacle from the outside in.