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What is the WORST Rome related movie/show you've ever seen?


G-Manicus

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For me, it's got to be that insipid "Empire" miniseries

 

empire_big.jpg

 

There are so many reasons for why it's the worst of the worst that I would bring down the UNRV server if I were to start listing them. It was SOOO historically inaccurate I'm surprised they didn't have it take place in Australia! The ONLY positive thing I will say for it is that the actor who portrayed Caesar looked like how I imagined Caesar would look. That's it.

 

I'm ill just thinking about this show.

 

:D

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For me, it's got to be that insipid "Empire" miniseries

 

Indeed, a clear winner. There's a thread on it around here somewhere, so I won't repeat the vitriol.

 

I also despised the 2004 King Arthur film with Clive Owen. I have no opposition to the theory of Arthur as L. Artorius Castus or Ambrose Aurelianus or what have you, I just thought the movie was terrible.

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Also, the Cleopatra miniseries with Timothy Dalton as Caesar and Billy Zane as Mark Antony, while far superior to "Empire" ... was still a veritable crapfest.

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Druids, with Max von Sydow as Caesar and Lambert as Vercingetorix, was about as bad as it gets. That said, I haven't seen Caligula yet.

Given it's overall score of 2.9/10, the voters at IMDB would seem to agree with you. Especially this guy:

 

Rather than bash what has already been destroyed by the filmakers, I just recommend anyone who would see Druids solely as a Lambert fan to save their time.

 

This film has all the look and feel of a college, maybe highschool film project.

 

I've seen 18 of Lambert's movies; a number of them over again; and this one (which for some odd reason took a month to be available in my local video store because of rentals on it) I fell asleep during at 9 o'clock at night!! There was not one redeeming thing to this film, let alone the cheap wigs and fake moustaches, Klaus Maria Brandauer doing Julius Caeser and sounding like Marlon Brando in the Young Lions as a Nazi officer, and the intro and exit with the view from space that looked like the schlock film "Hercules goes to New York" with Arnold Schwarznegger back in the early 70's.

 

If you haven't seen it, save your rental fee...they must have burned theaters in Europe when it came out.

 

ZING!

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Empire was a shocking massacre of history.

 

Still, I enjoyed it. If only because I thought Tyrranus was cute. :furious:

The 1960's Cleopatra film hasn't stood the test of time ... but Liz Taylor was hubba-hubba'esque in it. ;)

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My vote goes for one of the earliest Dr Who serials (starring William Hartnell), which was called "The Romans" (first broadcast 1965). I've seen it. It's pretty bad.

 

TheRomans.jpg

 

Pictured above is William Hartnell (the first Doctor) confronting Nero in the Baths (are those spa towels?). The actor playing Nero is in his forties -- whereas Nero would have been age 26 when the events in this story took place (the summer that Nero supposedly burned Rome).

 

At one point in one of the episodes (there were four episodes to "The Romans"), The Doctor, while playing a lyre, archly refers to his companion Vicki as "the keeper of the liars." It's like, say whut?

 

I dunno. Maybe it was funnier in the '60s. With drugs.

 

-- Nephele

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  • 3 weeks later...
"Empire" is among my leading candidates, although TNT did a remake of Spartacus which was lame, and I believe it was USA who did a production on Attila the Hun which was even worse.

 

Yep, the Usa network's Attila the Hun takes the biscuit as the most horribly inaccurate Roman period film I've seen.

 

I mean you have Gerard Butler playing the role of a short, horribly disfigured asian king and Powers Boothe as Flavius Aetius - straight from a 1950's Hollywood B-movie. Even weirder is the depiction of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Rome is a pagan, classical city straight from the high imperial era, while Constantinople is displayed as a christian medieval city, complete with dank dark rooms, huge candles and tapestries hanging from the walls.

 

I won't bother going into the inaccuracies concerning the film's narrative.

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And the dialogue from that Atilla production was so lame, I nearly choked. I couldn't finish watching it.

 

You are right about that. I can't remember a single line from it.

 

I tried to enjoy it as a piece of light entertainment fluff (ignoring all the historical inaccuracies) but it was really outstretched, going on for over 3 hours. That was a bad move on the USA network's part - it was too inaccurate for history buffs and too long for the casual viewer.

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Why is historical accuracy such an issue? Things like "Empire" are entertainment first and foremost, though with that particular period of history, I can't really understand why there's a need to dramatise or alter the facts, it was pretty torrid time after all! Films are rarely accurate - Braveheart, Patriot, Gladiator, 300 - the list goes on, and it's always been the same. I can't see it changing, either.

 

I'm just pleased that the past few years have seen a renaissence of the sword and sandals movie - whilst we can slight films for not being accurate, wouldn't we be slighting hollywood if they weren't making these types of movies. I'd rather have them with their inaccuracies than not have them at all.

 

Cheers

 

Hister the Lanista

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Why is historical accuracy such an issue? Things like "Empire" are entertainment first and foremost, though with that particular period of history, I can't really understand why there's a need to dramatise or alter the facts, it was pretty torrid time after all!

 

I think historical accuracy is only an issue when it's widely known or understood history. Why change the history for entertainment purposes, when the actual history is equally entertaining as the fiction. This would not be such an issue when fictionalizing little known events or people, or inserting famous characters/events as backdrops or into ancillary roles of a fiction. However, most of us take offense when something we know as fact and/or consensus probability is altered in order to entertain the masses.

 

I'm just pleased that the past few years have seen a renaissence of the sword and sandals movie - whilst we can slight films for not being accurate, wouldn't we be slighting hollywood if they weren't making these types of movies. I'd rather have them with their inaccuracies than not have them at all.

 

I agree here, especially with such finely produced epics as HBO's Rome (season 1) and even Gladiator (despite it's inaccuracy). However, hatchet jobs like Empire and their horrible failures at the box office or in the television ratings might very well make producers and investors shudder at the thought of historical productions.

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I think historical accuracy is only an issue when it's widely known or understood history. Why change the history for entertainment purposes, when the actual history is equally entertaining as the fiction.

 

 

Amen!

"Gladiator" was a fine picture with many innovative angles on the lives of the provincial non-Romans and on the struggle to reinstate the Republic. Also the acting was very convincing. Nonetheless, I regret that the script writer, on a large scale, rewrote the history of the reign of Marcus Aurelius and successor Commodus. Why couldn't Hollywood have just invented a fictitious cast of Roman characters instead of butchering history?

 

For more on the historical deviations of "Gladiator." :

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator_(20...ical_deviations

Edited by Ludovicus
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