Gladiator (2000) - 79 corrections

Directed by Ridley Scott, starring Connie Nielsen, Djimon Hounsou, Joaquin Phoenix, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Russell Crowe (add more)

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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Entry After the battle with the Germanians Marcus Aurelius says to Maximus, "You have proved your valor, yet again Maximus." The camera then shows Maximus turning around to face him. Then it shows Marcus Aurelius again and if you look to the right (his left), behind him is a horse on the ground. The horse gets up and tries to walk away, but can't because his back right foot has a rope around it, that is tied to the ground to keep the horse in place. [Actually, its foot is stuck in the branches from the bush on the ground.]
Corrected by Mortug Time
Entry In the scene when Maximus and Juba are fighting (tied together with a chain) against other gladiators, they kill the last one and win the contest. Hagen was also fighting and is alive later in the movie. But when the camera is turning around to show Maximus and Juba with the arena and the spectators in the background, Hagen is not there. [When the camera is turning around in circle we can't see the whole arena. For all we know Hagen is exhausted and is sitting on the ground below camera view.]
Corrected by Mortug Time
Entry Watch when Maximus has thrown his sword at the box and is saying "are you not entertained?" there is a shot where it shows the whole arena. One of the men is looking up at him even though they are all supposed to be dead. [He's not dead, he's wounded.]
Corrected by Mortug Time
Entry In one of the first gladiator fights, when Maximus chops off the head of his enemies with two swords, it can be clearly seen that the head, or object posing as a head, is already detached. [You can see that the head doesn't come off until impact.]
Corrected by Mortug Time
Entry In the battle against the Germanians, the Romans are using German Shepherds as attack dogs. The German Shepherd didn't exist at that time. The Romans used the Mastino-Napolitano (commonly known as the Mastiff), a much older and fiercer breed, in war and in the arena. They even provide armor and helmets for those dogs. [According to the script, Maximus' canine companion is supposed to be a wolf, not a German shepherd.]
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Entry During every Colosseum fighting scene, the senators are all wearing white togas. They would have only worn them during election time, not to attend the games in. [While during elections a candidate's toga was specially whitened with chalk to produce a blindingly white toga candida, the normal white toga, without chalk, was routinely worn by Romans citizens.]
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Entry In the battle with the Germanians, we see a Roman soldier killing a fallen opponent with the tip of his spear. This would not happen in reality. The spear is a javelin, or 'pilum', used for throwing. If the soldier still had his pilum, he would have used the reverse end of it, the 'shoe', for finishing off his foe. The shoe was a sharp metal point used to stick the spear into the ground. [Another of those entries that is really just an "I would have acted differently" submission. Faced with a German barbarian, nothing a Roman soldier does with a weapon that stops him, is a mistake.]
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Entry In the scene where the four Praetorians are taking Maximus out in the woods to execute him, the swords don't add up. Maximus grabs the first Praetorian's sword and kills him with it. Then the other one tries to take his own sword, but the frost makes it stick to the blade and then he is killed. Maximus yells for the third, and when he comes closer, Maximus throws his sword at him, so he dies. He yells for the fourth and last Praetorian, and suddenly he has a sword in his hand - where did it come from? The only available sword was stuck in the scabbard by frost. [The sword that was stuck in the scabbard by frost, wouldn't necessarily be stuck there forever - with a little effort and a few seconds I'm sure Maximus could get it out. Besides, there's also the sword from the third Praetorian, killed by the first sword at close range. What's to keep Maximus from grabbing that sword?]
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Entry In the first battle in Rome the gladiators are running through the chamber to the arena. Maximus is at the back of the group, though when they emerge from the tunnel Maximus is at the front of the group. What happened? [He isn't at the front after entering the arena. The camera spins round, and you can see that about one third of the gladiators are behind him, and about two-thirds are ahead of him. They've spread out as they pass through the gate, and he's moved ahead of a few of them.]
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Entry One of the senators claim that "Rome was founded as a Republic". This is wrong, Rome was founded as a Monarchy. [This isn't really a "mistake". The senator is a republican, and Rome had been a republic. Modern politicians come out with self-serving distortions of history all the time. There is no reason to suppose Roman politicians were any different.]
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Entry After the battle against the Germans, Maximus lets out a cry of victory: "Roma victor." This is supposed to be Latin, but, they got the grammar all wrong. "Roma" is feminine, so it should be "Roma victrix". Amazing how a mistake is still possible as there are only about three sentences in Latin in the entire movie and a lot of specialists were supposed to have been working on it. [The grammar is incorrect, but the usage is not necessarily. Rome was feminine, but Roman society was highly patriarchal- and all soldiers were male, thus making it appropriate (if somewhat lowbrow) to substitute "victor" for "victrix" in the conversational Latin that Maximus and his soldiers would have spoken. Rhetorically, it would be more effective to shout "Roma victor"- four syllables, long-short, long-short metrical quality. To be quite honest, I doubt that the submitter, or most military men, would pay attention to strict rules of grammar after slaughtering hundreds of barbarians and feeling the pulse of bloodlust move through their veins.]
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Entry At the time of the movie the name "Colosseum" would not have been used. It's original and correct title is the Flavian Amphitheatre. Colosseum is a nickname given to it in the 9th century by an English explorer because of the colossal bronze statue of Nero as the sun god which used to stand next to it. [While technically correct, virtually all of the dialogue in the movie represents an idiomatic translation of Latin into English. While in official documents and in proper (upper-class) Latin the Colosseum would be referred to as the Flavian Amphitheatre (or, idiomatically, simply The Amphitheatre), commoners, slaves, and soldiers in Rome had a whole host of names for what we now call the Colosseum. Christians were often known to call it "The Place of Blood" and other such colorful names. Again, because this is an idiomatic translation, this "error" is more likely simply "translator's license."]
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Entry At the end fight there are rose petals falling all over the coliseum. But how did the rose petals get in the middle? Did mother nature decide to rain rose petals? [The petals are being thrown from the sides, and they blow into the middle. In some of the long shots you can see them lying in drifts, showing where they've been blown by the wind.]
Corrected by STP Time
Entry How did Maximus get the horse he rides in the "Battle of Carthage"? We never see him cut the ropes/chains and the horse obviously didn't grab a sword and cuts the chains off itself. [There is a moment where we see Maximus busy cutting or undoing the harness, before he rides away on the horse.]
Corrected by STP Time
Entry Maximus states the number of his troops incorrectly a couple times. In the German fight, he says something to the extent that he has 4000 troops plus another 2000 making 5000 altogether. At the end of the battle, he says 2000 died, but when talking to Gracchus later he says he has 5000 men waiting for him. [First of all 2000 4000=6000, not 5000. If he lost 2000, he would have had 4000. His army could have easily received 1000 reinforcements.]
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Entry In the real gladiatorial games of ancient Rome, the emperor didn't make the gesture of "thumbs up" (kill) or "thumbs down" (live) That was the job of a referee, even though it isn't as dramatic. Also, the thumbs down sign usually didn't mean death for the defeated gladiator, but instead he would face a flogging. [There is no conclusive evidence to suggest that this was the case. The thumbs up or thumbs down issue has been argued by top historians for a long time. The emperor always had final say (sometimes with the crowds help). The referee's or Lanista as they were called usually just carried out the emperors wishes.]
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Entry The daughter of Marcus Aurelius could not be called "Lucilla" because Roman women were named after the female form of their father's nomen (second or clan name). Since "Aurelius" is the emperor's nomen, his daughter's name should be "Aurelia" (female form of the nomen) not Lucilla. She can be named Lucilla if her father's nomen is Lucius. [This is correct, however since all daughters by the same father would therefore have the same name, daughters were often given nicknames to distinguish them from the others (much nicer than Aurelia Prima, Aurelia Seconda & Aurelia Tertia). I have no idea how many daughters Marcus Aurelius had, but even if he had only one, 'Lucilla' could conceivably be her nickname.]
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Entry Throughout the film, the main character is referred to as Maximus. However, as his name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, there is no way that anyone in the army, even the highest officers, would have called him by his first name. The higher officers may have referred to him as Meridius, but only his family and very close friends would have adressed him as Maximus. However, in several places in the film, his junior officers refer to him as Maximus. ["Maximus" is probably his last name. His first name is most likely to be "Decimus", the only name he is given in the film that was actually a Roman first name. The Romans didn't consider names as fixed as we do, and regularly left bits out and mixed up their order, resulting in the "Maximus Decimus Meridius" statement in the arena, which could never have been an actual Roman name in that order.]
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Entry During the Battle of Carthage, there is a female gladiator cut in half by a passing chariot. Watch carefully before she's bisected, and you'll see she's leaning forward inside her chariot trying to release the chariot from a wounded horse, which oddly is still moving. However when she's cut in half, she's kneeling on the ground, not in the chariot. It happens very fast, but if you have it on DVD you can clearly see the error. [This is wrong, the black woman that is shown trying to free herself from the chariot while its still in motion is another woman, the driver of the chariot, she is not the woman that gets cut in half. After the woman gets cut in half you can see that the chariot looses control and the black woman in the chariot is trying to take control before it crashes.]
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Entry In one of the scenes after the first big battle, there is a horse in the background. You see it stand up. If you look closely, there is about 5 feet of chain, attached to its leg, holding it to a nearby tree. [It is not a chain. The horse is standing on a branch of the nearby fallen tree, and when it lifts its foot, the branch springs up, making it look like it's something attached to the horse's leg.]
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