Thanks for the review! As someone who has loved Ancient Rome since I was 10 years old (way back in 1988) I really appreciate the fact that someone is still putting big budget films set in Rome. I totally get what you say about the narrative issues and the historical accuracies but I still found myself enjoying the film and found it quite fast-paced for a 2 1/2 hr film. I guess as an artist who paints Ancient Roman portraits, figures and armour I could switch on my artist/lover of visuals hat and lose myself in the aesthetics and scope of the movie. I found the armour worn by the soldiers in the opening battle to be generally quite accurate (more so than the first film) - even is a little anochranistic (centurions and legionaries look like something more from the first/early to mid second centuries AD. Loved the use of the face masks worn by the standard bearers and some of the praetorians. What I found impressive was the helmets worn by the praetorians, Acacius and his officers. You can tell they had done their research on 3rd century AD helmets (thielenhofen-style and heddernheim-style helmets). The gold armour worn by Caracalla and Geta seems also to have been taken from military/cuirass statues of Roman emperors. Sorry for the long-winded reply! Love your podcast! Cheers! Jeremy
Thanks for the review! As someone who has loved Ancient Rome since I was 10 years old (way back in 1988) I really appreciate the fact that someone is still putting big budget films set in Rome. I totally get what you say about the narrative issues and the historical accuracies but I still found myself enjoying the film and found it quite fast-paced for a 2 1/2 hr film. I guess as an artist who paints Ancient Roman portraits, figures and armour I could switch on my artist/lover of visuals hat and lose myself in the aesthetics and scope of the movie. I found the armour worn by the soldiers in the opening battle to be generally quite accurate (more so than the first film) - even is a little anochranistic (centurions and legionaries look like something more from the first/early to mid second centuries AD. Loved the use of the face masks worn by the standard bearers and some of the praetorians. What I found impressive was the helmets worn by the praetorians, Acacius and his officers. You can tell they had done their research on 3rd century AD helmets (thielenhofen-style and heddernheim-style helmets). The gold armour worn by Caracalla and Geta seems also to have been taken from military/cuirass statues of Roman emperors. Sorry for the long-winded reply! Love your podcast! Cheers! Jeremy