“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”
Gladiator – The story of the Roman general who became a slave, who became a gladiator – a gladiator who defied the emperor. A story accentuating that aspect of man’s eternal morality that justifies victory of good over the evil, of the moral over the immoral. A story depicting the invincibility of man’s courage, motivation, and ambition over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. A story of one man’s greatness evolving out of the desire to be reunited with his murdered family, and see to their commemoration. A story of a society turned rancid by petty ambitions, scheming politics, excessive hedonism and necrophilia. A story of a true hero’s fight for the upholding of his principles, and pursuit of that moment of finality that justifies his immortality forever.
Gladiator – The story of a hero. We all love heroes because of their abilities to astound, fascinate, stupify our faculties of reasoning by their acts of extreme consequences fuelled by their pereception of society’s founding principles and morality. We love heroes because they ignite our inherent passion and desire to oppose and struggle against any form of establishment and conformance. We love heroes because their singular devotion to their ideals, because of their knowledge and confidence in a definite path to the achievement of the ideals, and because of their often successful ventures in uniting with these ideals. We love heroes because while they’re everything we are not, they are everything we aspire to be.
Most of our heroes, or villians for that matter, have been propounders of theories and ideas gearing towards extremism. Interpreting extremism as hot blooded violence in this context would be inaccurate, for what is meant here is extremism of ideas, be they of peace, violence, romance, happiness and such. Ever heard of a hero who compromised on his ideals, his principles and yet lived up to the concept of heroism as defined by society? The hero, of our society has ideas dealing with absolutes, ideas that are either black or white. And his heroism, in our eyes, is qualified, justified by his abilities to translate those absolutes into actions.
So we have heroes leading armies of a handful soldiers against enemy armies numbering in thousands. We have heroes who challenge dictators, notwithstanding the fact that in a dictatorship, the dictator is the absolute. We have heroes who find their ways through the most complicated of mazes, even when they have no eyesight. Our heroes are absolutes, or people who challenge absolutes. As someone once said, heroes are ordinary people who behave ordinarily in extraordinary circumstances…
“Ultimately, we’re all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how but, what we can decide is how we meet that end, in order that we are remembered, as men. “
