The film genre of Roman and Greek epics fell hard after being used extensively in the early to mid twentieth century. The many long toga movies had taken the genre to the limit creating an audience that wanted nothing to do with it. A few of the titles that contributed the end of the epic era are Cleopatra (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Viewers may have initially enjoyed Cleopatra, but after four hours people tend to lose interest in what they are watching.The international co-productions lost their mojo once films became exhaustingly long and the cost of thousands of extras paired with ginormous sets were too costly. The cost of building magnificent sets and hiring an actual cast to fill the space made these movies quite the production gamble. One could only hope that the large expense would be payed of with a box office hit. The historical war epics were on the decline by the end of the 1960s, which gave the genre a break it needed.

 The dry season for Roman and Greek epics ended with the release of Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), reviving the sword wielding fighter in all of us. The new Roman epic loosely mixed a fictional character with history to create a powerful revenge story for the ages. Our main character Maximus Decimus Merdius, played by Russell Crowe, is a Roman general who has won many great battles for his country.  Commodus, the antagonist of this film and son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius , takes away everything Maximus knows and loves in his quest to rule Rome. Unfortunately for him, our unrelenting hero is driven by revenge and will not stop until he finds it. The fantastic storyline combined with top notch acting and beautiful imagery made for one memorable epic.

Gladiator was such a huge hit that the Roman and Greek epics it inspired to be created could not match it. Troy (2004), 300 (2006), Clash of the Titans (2010), and Hercules (2014) are all examples of movies in the same genre that could not duplicate the box office success. Although all of these movies can be a joy to watch, they will mostly likely leave you wishing there was a bit more substance to them. The issue with these films is that they were not approached the same way as Gladiator. Many of the epics after Gladiator do not have the same level of cinematography and acting. They also lack storylines that can grab the attention of viewers like Gladiator's. Most people enjoy an underdog story but they can be a little over used. Gladiator takes a man of power and proceeds to make an underdog out of him. Even in the end they don't quite allow him to win, but that may vary with who you ask. Gladiator thus makes it difficult for a movie to compete with it and not use some of the same elements.