Gladiator (2000)
dpgSingularity
After Rome’s greatest general is betrayed by the Emperor’s corrupt son and forced to become a gladiator, he must fight his way to Rome to avenge the death of his family.
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31 words.
This one’s for you, Moses99,? inspired by your logline for the boxer unjustly sent to prison.
In reality, the plot line was ginned up to justify all the bloody spectacle of the gladiator games,? the violence and slaughter.? The gladiator fights are the main course of the movie; the actual plot is the dish on which it is served.? But, that’s show biz.
Yeah I agree that the story isn’t hhe most original (I actually wrote an essay in film school about the similarities between this film and Bravheart, scarily similar) but as the film says “we’re you not entertained?” ?Gladiator?is?a classic, and this actually really helps with my boxing film idea. It’s a complex plot but you got it almost perfectly, thanks.
I don’t know…
Me thinks that Gladiator has a little more to it than only a revenge plot. I’ll use your draft as a basis:
After Rome?s greatest general is betrayed by the Emperor?s son, who kills his father, and forced to become a gladiator, he must fight his way to Rome to free the empire from the psychotic usurper.
Sure his family was his greatest motivator, but ultimately the goal he achieves is for the greater good.
Nir Shelter: ?I agree with you that there was more going on in the plot than revenge. ?And my first version threw in the political angle.
But then I reasoned that getting rid of the evil Emperor Commodus and restoring the Republic was the objective goal of Senator Gracchus and ?Lucilla. ?They harnessed Maximus’s pursuit of his objective goal, ?avenging his family’s death, for their political purposes and for the greater good of Rome.
Eliminating a corrupt emperor was a desirable consequence — a bonus — but it was never the protagonist’s primary motivation. ?Maximus had no political aspirations. ?Hey only agreed to become a transitional “Protector of Rome” at the request of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
And then I considered that the plot could have been written such that Commodus assassinates ?his father but never kills, or threatens to kill, Maximus’s family. ?Rather, Commondus just seeks?to kill Maximus, the greatest threat to usurping the throne. ? Why didn’t Ridley Scott deem that sufficient? ?Wasn’t it enough for Maximus’s objective goal to be to topple Commodus and restore the Republic, honoring the request of his father figure Marcus Aurelius???One might think that because of the special father-son relationship Maximus enjoyed with Maximus, that would work good enough for a personal motive.
Apparently, it wasn’t good enough for Ridley Scott, who went through 3 screenwriters on the project. ?He wanted a protagonist whose objective goal was more personal than political.
Agreed about the personal goal, it does indeed take priority when considering the emotional drive of the story and the audience empathy. However, I argue that the original goal – reunite?with his family, remains the same throughout. The emperor is killed before he finds out about his family’s murder, Commodus’ act of usurping the throne?was the inciting incident of the story – it set in motion all that follows.
As a result of the inciting incident Commodus interviews Maximus to find out where he stands, then orders his soldiers to kill Maximus,?and subsequently Maximus’ family. Yet?before any of this happens, Maximus’ goal to reunite with?his family was clearly established. I would wage that the reason Ridley Scott initially found it hard to nail the story, is because there were essentially two intertwining, yet separate, plots ?vying for dominants.
On a technical level the A plot is Maximus trying to stop Commodus, this means he wants to get him off the throne to?restore the republic – his disenchantment with the empire was clear. The B plot is him wanting to reunite?with his family, and the C plot is him exacting revenge on Commodus. Naturally the A plot and C plot require the same objective – kill Commodus, but the inciting incidents, and subsequently the motivations, of both were different.
This is not an easy film to logline (good choice by the way). A logline could be written about the personal goal of revenge to attract audience and investor’s attentions, but at the same time a logline could be written to describe the A plot about stopping Commodus for structural and development purposes.