Battle of Vindobonia

In the Kingdom of Khauran, every hundred years a witch shall be born to the royal family. In the United States of America, every ten years Ridley Scott shall borrow unimaginable sums of money to mangle a new period of warfare. This has been foretold and has come to pass although none can foretell whether he will return with an Amarna Age epic where the chariots have exhaust pipes or a science fiction adventure which makes Starship Troopers look like sound military science.¹ Making fun of all the things these films get wrong is healthy fun around a gaming table or along a bar, and recently Bret Devereaux entered the genre on his ACOUP blog (part 1) (part 2) (part 3). But as I wrote back in 2016, complaining about bad things is often bad strategy. So this week I will wrote about the things I like about the opening scene in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. That is something I can cover in a short bookandsword post, whereas it takes three long ACOUP posts to cover some of the things that are wrong with the same scene.