"Favourite ancients movie?" Topic

Having watched (again) the great 300 Spartans (original) and the unintentionally hilarious Hannibal (if you havn't seen it do so as it's a real turkey classic!!!) I was wondering what your favourite ancients period movie is? I have to admit to quite liking Alexander (despite the horrible purple dream bit) and Troy.

I also like The 300 Spartans along with Alexander the Great with Richard Burton,regardless of what many people say about it.

There's several others done back there that i like but can't remember them right now.

As for more recent Ancient movies i like several for example Gladiator with Russell Crowe,and The Last Legion was good too.

I've got other's but these are some of my favorites.

Captain Gideon

My two favourites are Alexander and 300. I wasn't very fond of 300 Spartans or Alexander the Great though.

My most favorite is Cleopatra with Taylor and Burton. It boosted my teenaged budding interest in Roman history.

Troy

Spartacus! Saw it first when I was 8 or 9, so didn't get some of the…er…themes…"Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"

I also liked 300, but realize why some don't.

Spartacus. The one with Kirk Douglas, of course. There have been some wretched TV ones.

Ben Hur.

Cleopatra. too bad it bombed. All the money spent was right up there on the screen.

A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum.

The Ten Commandments. I am a fan of chariots, and these are quite well done.

Erik the Viking
Jabberwocky

I only go for the most historically accurate films available.

Carry on Cleo

Quo Vadis.

I also like the Claudette Colbert version of Cleopatra, not as eye-popping as the Taylor-Burton one but a lot more humor in it.

"Jupiter's Darling":

link

I was inveigled into procuring a copy on video for Phil and Sue Barker.

Allen

Another vote for Gladiator. The history was poor, the equipment was decent, but the "period feel" was very, very good.

If the 2 seasons of HBO Rome count as a movie, that's my choice.

Guess I have to go with HBO "Rome" also.

If we have to stick to movies, probably "Spartacus" with Kirk Douglas. I know, no surprises there. How about the Marlon Brando film version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" then?

I'm pleased to see other people enjoyed "Troy" also; I thought it was much better than the marketplace gave it credit for -- certainly much better than "Alexander" which came out around the same time.

"Troy" had Paris as the hero, surviving the fall of the city. It also had Achilles as a ninja. Pooh on that.

The only one I feel a need to see now, from all the recommendations here, is Allen's oick.

HBO "Rome", the two seasons.
Otherwise, "Ben Hur" is, IMHO, far better than "Spartacus".
I also like "Alexander" and "Jason & the Argonauts"

err…does "The Mummy" count ?

If we are counting TV shows too then I vote for I, Claudius.

My top five picks are as follows:

Gladiator
Ben Hur
Spartacus
The Fall of the Roman Empire
Quo Vadis

I happened to have watched Gladiator again over the weekend and I think that it may well be the best ancients movie ever made.

Braveheart………….ducks and runs for cover. 8-)

Jason and the Argonauts
Clash of the Titans (Harryhausen)

The Vikings,NOW!who sails with me…

Alexander
I Claudius
Rome (HBO)

IMHO, Troy, apart from the excellent performance of Peter O'Toole as Priam, is beyond awful.

I Claudius
300 Spartans
Fall of the Roman Empire
Up Pompeii
Demetrius & the Gladiators

Spartacus (Douglas)
Ben Hur
Jason and the Argonauts (Harryhausen)
300 (I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it was— the myth, rather than the truth)
Gladiator (ditto)

I've seen 300 Spartans, and thought it was slow and on the dull side. Ditto for Burton's Alexander the Great (I gave up on that one, in fact).

I definitely need to watch I, Claudius and Quo Vadis.

Oh, and NBC's miniseries of The Odyssey wasn't bad.

The Fall of the Roman Empire – see where Ridley Scott got all his ideas for Gladiator – great funeral scene in the snow also copied by Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.

Fall of the Roman Empire
Spartacus
300 Spartans
Masada
Alexander the Great

Not really ancients but I like…..

The Vikings
Kings of the Sun

Up Pompeii no contest!

I am actually pretty surprised to see Alexander being counted as a good Ancients movie. I saw some of it and thought it was garbage.

the original troy film ''helen of troy '' .. with stanley baker as Achilles …

link

i also enjoyed the new film ''centurion ''

Nothing has kicked Spartacus off my top list. it has dialogue and acting, slips off the track of history but in logical ways, and is entertaining. And still has that wonderful scene of those cohorts in array (but my dad ruined it by explaining how it was a composite shot :)

Oliver Stone's attempt at a historical Alexander is puzzling more than entertaining, and that is just sad. parts are better than the whole. It actually causes a historical dialog though, which is interesting.

300 Spartans over 300 any day, real men dying against real men, now that's heroic, rather than phony white muscle men shouting down all the blacks and ethnic peoples of the world trying to take away their righteous gains of colonialism. And the bad CGI of 300 uneccessary awful elephants and rhinos and scythed chariotmen makes me squirm.

Gladiator is entertaining, that's all I can say. I liked how they depicted the battles and fake battle in the coliseum as described in "Those about to die"…. too bad they relaly didn't follow the actual event where the lasso cavalry were trying to break up the 'gay' greek phalanx, and the Roman crowd was disapointed to see the phalanx close ranks and sweep the stadium clear of them killing off the odds- favored horsemen.

TV shows are often better as the ancient world needs some room to take in the tapestries. So HBO's Rome is my favorite followed by I Claudius.

My favorite guilty pleasure is Gordon Scott's "Hero of Rome", but I haven't seen the Etruscan cavalry charge in a long time… "hail Mucius!!"
JJ

Red Cliff Parts 1 and 2

Ya, I liked Sparticus.

I am still so torn after the last Alexander movie.

They should of made it like the Lord of the Rings, in three movies.

1 Rise of Philip and Macedon to the battle of Chaeronea.
2 Death of Daddy to battle of grannicus, Siege of Tyre, Battle of Issus.
3 Fight of Gagga to the battle in the Kush bush and back home to kiss his boys farewell.

"Sigh", I still love that movie… The battle scenes and armour are just too good for me to let it go.

I didn't like Rome all that much. Too much people sex and plastic armour and not enough battle!

I remember when my wife,then girlfriend asked me who the hell "Clavdivs" was. I told her they hadnt invented the "U" yet.

The problem is simple, Alexander the Great is not interesting to a modern general audience on his own merits(as is ancient history in general). 300 launched a new round of sword and sandal epic B- movies… Hollywood will tire of it soon… they just don't get it… a movie like Gladiator which is mostly a rip-off of "Fall of the Roman Empire" has relevance to the modern audience was successful, Alexander not. 300 successful based on an awful graphic novel but well done, spawn mediocre remakes of Harryhausen flops… they don't learn.

Some just are homophobic and won't abide Oly Stone's Alexander for those overtones, others don't like it because it is boring to try to explore Alexander like he was Lawrence of Arabia. I applaud Oliver Stone for trying to make a history movie, but the parallels that make it intersting to the general audience are not there, and the drama that makes it entertainment is not there, and therefore it fails. Richard Burton's version is equally irrelevant to the modern audience "I am not my father"…. 1950's style psycho babble….

Unfortunately by not coming up with an angle, good or evil for Alexander, we are left with too much gray area and psycho-anal-ness, and that is simply not what an audience wants…. Darius III is actually the good guy… and that's bad for plot as well.

The Alexander character in Oliver Stone's movie is not defined enough to reveal in any way why anybody would march to the ends of the earth with him, he is left to us a confused brat who seems to just go with the flow from event to event never pausing to reflect on why, with no attempt at all to point out any of the misery he caused in his swathe of destruction.
JJ

Ben Hur.

Accept no substitutes, although Spartacus is pretty good as well.

An honourable mention to that modern upstart Gladiator.

I think it's hard to say that 300 had modern resonance in a way that Alexander didn't…300 merely made its resonances heavy-handed and unavoidable. While attempting to avoid the Blue Fez, I will say that the plot of Alexander seems to me to have had more explicitly relevant aspects to modern western audiences than 300, but it seems Stone went out of his way to obscure them in his incoherent character study of Alexander.

There are a few things that nearly all successful movies have, and Hollywood will routinely inject them into scripts that don't already have them, regardless of the artistic consequence. Among these things are a likeable ego vehicle for the audience kept close to the center of action, adventure episodes exposing the ego vehicle to physical danger and escape, a recurring, physically compelling female character, and a charismatic antagonist against whom the heroes are competing. 300 had all of these things, Alexander had almost none of them, except the female character, but even that was made off-putting and alienating, by choosing to make that woman the protagonist's mother.

In the final analysis, I think, Stone was just given too much rope by the studios, and went off and hanged himself with it.

Ben Hur, yeah that's up there, but for some reason I lump it into holiday religious movies than historical epics. For the naval battle and chariot race it has to be on the list of tops.

JJ,

Maybe if Oliver did make an effort to implement what you are saying, the Alexander movie might be 3 more hours long!!!

Dunno…

In any case, I am a sucker for epic battles with proper historical armour and battle array.

Mike

P.S. I just loved Collin Farrels whinning. "You left your King in Asia, for I will go go go on with my Ase Ase Asians"

"To the Jackles with you Alexander!"

"Heh' son of Zeus!"

LOL

"There are a few things that nearly all successful movies have, and Hollywood will routinely inject them into scripts that don't already have them, regardless of the artistic consequence."

----> Now that I can agree with.
JJ

There is nothing Colin Ferrell's Alexander says that I remember at all , there are plenty of things that Kevin McKidd's Vorenus says that I remember with delight.
JJ

I prefer The Fall of the Roman Empire out of a tight top three with Spartacus and Hero .

If it was TV then I Claudius tops the list.

Darius didn't have to be the good guy for the movie to work, but he did need to be at least a compelling antagonist--in Stone's movie he barely existed. Think about how well Rome portrayed Pompey, versus Stone's treatment of Darius.

Loved the Ten Commandments. Hated "Troy". I found the idea of an introspective, whiny Achilles to be just a tad ridiculous.

Loved "Cleopatra" too. The scene where Cleopatra enters Rome is unforgettable.

" I found the idea of an introspective, whiny Achilles to be just a tad ridiculous."

You need to reread Book I of the Iliad, wherein brave Achilles goes crying to his mama…I thought casting Pitt as a self-absorbed, petulant Achilles was brilliant type-casting.

Having said that, the script was an abominable nonsense and their Helen was…meh.

Wasn't there a "Jason & the Argonauts" movie from the 60s? Atrocius special effects by modern standards, but for it's day it was fun. I love those skeleton warriors that spring up from the ground!

Of the more "serious" movies, I'd go for 300 Spartans and Ben Hur.

Having said that, the script was an abominable nonsense and their Helen was…meh.

-----> Many reason's why I simply abhor this version… give me Stanley Baker and Rossana Podestà.
Pitt's Achilles is absolute crap, and the CGI hordes swelling the plains… somebody has lost the idea that less is more…. not even worth discount DVD, I wouldn't unwrap it if free. Yes script huh? Helen meh? Wasteful of time, the only good scene is Priam asking for his son's body back, that has a kick to it.
JJ

Darius III is the good guy… that's the problem with the Alexander story that folks don't get. It would have been an interesting movie from Darius' viewpoint rather than wacko Alexander's.
JJ

How was Darius the good guy? Was it because he had a bigger herum?

Mike

Darius was a Good Guy because Alexander was a psychotic drunkard who only wanted to conquer new lands. Darius was defending against an aggressor.
If it boils down to defending civilization versus barbarians, that defines Darius.

Darius III was an accident on the throne, the result of the murderous nature of Persian imperial politics. He was racing to catch up with events and conspiracies unfolding around him his entire reign, and never quite made it. He was a good guy insofar as he was trying to fill the role of Great King thrust upon him…but, then again, wasn't Alexander doing more or less the same, just with a sociopathic personality disorder?