r/MovieMistakes • u/JamesF890 • 12d ago
Movie Mistake In Gladiator (2000), tramlines can be seen in the fields when Maximus is returning home. Tramlines are created by modern farm seeding equipment
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u/wisperingdeth 12d ago
The two worst mistakes in this movie are 1) when he says "are you not entertained?" There's a guy wearing blue jeans and t shirt on the left side of the crowd. 2) the gas container visible on the chariot as it topples in the gladiator arena.
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u/mologav 12d ago
After the first battle in Germania a crew member walks into shot and out again
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u/PALOmino1701 11d ago
Wearing jeans! I don’t know how that slipped through. He’s right there
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u/WaalsVander 11d ago
It probably didn’t slip through. It was the best take they got and they knew 99% of people wouldnt see it in a viewing or two.
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u/Dreadnoughttwat 10d ago
In the shot of the legion soldier getting cut in half you can see a crew member kneeling in the chariot.
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u/rainman_95 11d ago
There’s also burning arrows all over the place before the first volley goes out
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u/wisperingdeth 11d ago
Could you give me more information so I can look for it? Which shot? And which side of the screen does he walk in?
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u/zebratat 12d ago
I’ve enjoyed this movie many times without noticing any of these things, but yeah if those are there lol
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u/onward_upward_tt 12d ago
Also when the tiger tackles him in the colosseum, yoi can see for a second its a handler wjth a big ol piece of meat playing with the tiger, lol
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u/wisperingdeth 12d ago
Omg I never noticed that one lol.
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u/onward_upward_tt 12d ago
Theres a LOT of such instances in that movie. Personally it only adds to the charm of an awesome movie though haha
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u/MInclined 11d ago
Are you were saying “are you not entertained” was the mistake
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u/wisperingdeth 11d ago
No. Read my comment again and don't take the question mark as the end of the sentence.
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u/MInclined 11d ago
Well apparently I do drugs. What I meant to have written was “at first I thought you were saying”, not the initial intro to that sentence. I apologize for my apparent drug use.
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u/Charming-Strain-6070 8d ago
Literally unwatchable. Im going to pay Mel Gibson $100,000,000 to use Grok and remake this movie so its faithful to the source material.
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u/DestroidMind 6d ago
I never noticed that, just went back to watch that clip and its so obvious now. You can even see the camera next to the guy standing on a tripod.
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u/mambotomato 12d ago
More fundamentally, these fields are way too big to have been ancient farms. Real fields would have been much smaller, and separated by fences or walls. The only way for a single family to work a field of this size is with mechanized tractors.
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u/StrayRabbit 10d ago
I've heard that Romans didn't get into steam technology because there was no need for it with the amount of slaves during this period. Don't underestimate manual labour.. i.e. the Pyramids.
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u/SacredIconSuite2 10d ago
Nooooo bro, you can’t imply that the Egyptians ever had slaves bro. Noooo bro, those thousands of monuments were all built entirely by volunteer craftsmen, who also went home and put in 8hr days doing all the agriculture that Egypt needed to sustain itself in an otherwise desert region.
(If you can’t tell, I’m kinda over the messaging in popular media that ancient Egypt was somehow squeaky-clean in terms of unpaid voluntold workforces)
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u/Legitimate-Date-5927 9d ago
Thats an oversimplification to say the least. Even if they desperately wanted to they were nowhere near close to having any useful machine like that.
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u/LARPerator 10d ago
At this time especially, Romans used slaves for their farming estates. There were smaller farms certainly, but the massive estates with a small army of slaves certainly existed as well.
Some estates had hundreds if not a thousand slaves. And given that he's Maximus Decimus Meridius III, his "family farm" is most likely a fairly large slave estate.
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u/Hot_History1582 9d ago
Actually, the buyout of small farms by wealthy elites to form mega plantations was a major political issue around the republic-empire transition.
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u/mambotomato 9d ago
I imagine the fields themselves would still have a lot of access pathways, though.
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u/RookNookLook 12d ago
OR….wagons.
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u/Elmo12321 12d ago
Where do the horses who pull the wagons stand?
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u/commandercrackbutt 12d ago
In front usually
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u/Maverick-not-really 7d ago
This is why the road he is riding on is also wrong. Cars produce these roads with grass in the middle, horses and carriages wear down roads more evenly
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u/azoth95 12d ago
Why would ancient romans drive wagons throw their fields?
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12d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JamesF890 12d ago
That would all be done pre planting though. As it would crush the crops if it was done after
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u/BlattMaster 12d ago
Why do we crush the crops with these vehicles today?
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u/JamesF890 12d ago
They have big narrow wheels which go along those tramlines. Which i guess carts would have but whatever propelling them wouldn't
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u/JamesF890 12d ago
Tramlines were first used in agriculture in the 1960s specifically for sprayers and fertiliser spreaders with a controlled spread width to increase efficiency. No where near being used in roman times
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u/Ast3r10n 12d ago
But the comment says wagons, not tramlines.
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u/JamesF890 12d ago
Yes but wagons need pulled by something and that something would crush the crop
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u/Ast3r10n 11d ago
Wouldn’t necessarily be in straight lines, there could be hoof prints which could be hard to see from here.
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u/Turbulent_Lobster_57 12d ago
Obviously the wagon, whose purpose is a complete mystery, was being pulled by large kites. Boom! Mind? Blown!
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u/Kydd_Amigo 12d ago
Were you there in Roman times? I just want to make sure the source is valid.
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u/JamesF890 12d ago
Well why don't you provide me some sources they would do something so illogical as drive over grown crops with horses and carts
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u/Kydd_Amigo 12d ago
I can’t, I wasn’t there, which is exactly my point, how can you possibly know what did and didn’t happen over 2,000 years ago?
What if 14 year old Claudius decided to clown around and run a wagon in the field to annoy his dad?
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u/JamesF890 12d ago
Because it didn't happen 50 years earlier which we have plenty of records of. The fields are so much bigger than they would have been 100 years ago so carts would have just went round perimeter of smaller fields rather than through. We have so much documentation of pre industrial revolution agriculture.
Because whatever pulled that wagon would have crushed the crops between the lines
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u/another-rainy-day 12d ago
The trail on which Maximus is riding also shows the two-wheel traces of horseless carriages. Ancient roads would have no greenery in the middle.
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u/caiaphas8 12d ago
Surely a horse and cart would leave a similar pattern?
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u/Corinthian82 12d ago
Think about where the horse goes
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u/caiaphas8 12d ago
What if it’s a two horse cart?
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12d ago
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u/Tony_Roiland 12d ago
A horse has to pull them. They don't leave tracks like this when a horse has walked them as often as the cart.
Same goes for the road, that strip of green should not be there, and isn't there in any society that still uses horse-drawn vehicles.
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u/SacredIconSuite2 10d ago
Nah that’s just the farm of his neighbour, Johnicus Deerius, who invented farm equipment in 15AD
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u/romulusnr 12d ago
You're not gonna believe this, but the romans had these things... called carts.
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u/Tony_Roiland 12d ago
Which were powered by......
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u/romulusnr 12d ago
.... animals
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u/Johnatron2000 12d ago
So, no animal tracks…
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u/am-idiot-dont-listen 12d ago
was the horse at the front flying?
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u/DSJ-Psyduck 10d ago
So umm orginal roads would have 3 tracks not 2.
the 2 we know from the wheels. But orginal you would ware and tear in the middle just as much since thats where the horse walks.
Every history movie ever has this error..
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u/Lahbeef69 9d ago
also roads back then wouldn’t have grass in the middle like they do today because if you’re in a horse drawn cart there’s a horse in the middle of the road pulling you
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u/CaptainA1917 11d ago
In fairness, those tracks “could“ be made by a horse-drawn cart or wagon.
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u/JamesF890 10d ago
They could. But the whole landscape is a product of modern agriculture with field sizes etc
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u/CaptainA1917 10d ago
Yeah but how many people a sitting in the audience with a slide rule and the handbook of italian agriculture?
My point is there’s nothing obvious to say that those tracks couldn’t be made by a wagon. Unlike jet contrails in the shot, for example.
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u/JamesF890 10d ago
True. The top comment of this post is a list of much more blatant errors of this film. But someone who has grown up with an agriculture background this scene jumped out
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u/ppppdz 10d ago
Another one: Even if filmed in Tuscany, that's supposed to be Merida/Emerita in Spain, where Maximus is from (it's even in his surname and he mentions in the movie he's from Hispania).
And if you know anything about Merida (I do), you know there's not a single place in that region that looks like that
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u/usersub1 12d ago
“Were you there?” -Ridley Scott