Marcus Aurelius informs first Maximus, then Commodus, that Maximus will succeed him. Before this can be publicly announced, Commodus murders his father, ensuring his own promotion to emperor. He then orders the killing of Maximus, and believes him dead.
Instead, Maximus is sold to Proximo (Oliver Reed), who has a stable of gladiator slaves. Commodus decrees daily "games" at the Roman Colosseum, where Maximus proves his worth, and gains celebrity, by killing myriad gladiators in combat. After Maximus reveals his identity, Commodus tries to arrange his murder, and Maximus conspires with Roman Senators to seize Rome and murder Commodus.
Meanwhile, Commodus lusts after his attractive sister, and threatens to kill both her and Lucius if she resists his advances.
How others will see it. Gladiator was a mammoth, costly production, and its budget exceeded 100M. But Universal's investment paid off handsomely. The movie's worldwide gross was more than 450M, excluding video rentals and sales.
Much of its success was due to resounding critical praise and success at film festivals. At the Academy Awards, the movie won five Oscars, including Best Actor (Russell Crowe) and the biggest prize of all, Best Picture. There were an additional seven nominations, including Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Phoenix).
Today at imdb.com, the film remains highly popular. There are a spectacular 1.1M user votes, and the user rating of 8.5 out of 10 is extremely high. There is only a modest gap between the film's target audience, men under 30, who give it an 8.7, and women over 30, who bestow an 8.2.
User reviews are predominantly positive, extolling the acting of the leads, the scale of the spectacle, and the edge-of-your-seats drama.
How I felt about it. The most obvious criticism to make of Gladiator is that it is bad history. The lead character, Maximus, is fictional. Marcus Aurelius died of the plague, and Commodus did not die in the arena.
Gladiator is also derivative, with plot elements taken from Ben-Hur and Spartacus, in particular the transition of the lead from prominence to slavery to prominence before attaining his revenge.
One could argue that the gladiator combat scenes are the point of the movie, and similar battle scenes were certainly effective in Braveheart (1995). Still, it is disconcerting to watch Ridley Scott strutting about the arena, slicing and dicing larger opponents as if they were props, despite their superior weapons and armor. Are we supposed to cheer for him while he does this?
Ultimately, Gladiator is another tale of Good (Maximus) versus Evil (Commodus), with the former overcoming great odds and injustice to defeat the latter. It is true that Maximus is willing to murder strangers to save his own skin, which is less than admirable, but at least he does manage to kill the patricidal Commodus, something we could have predicted by the second reel even though its accomplishment is virtually impossible.