do you think a film about the Colosseum?

Question

with CGI and other special effects they could make a very graphic movie about the colosseum.
starting with the animal battles and slaughters in the morning, then the prisoner exicutions at lunch, a little bit of porn in the brothels then the gladiator battles in the afternoon, a typical day at the colosseum.
do you think a film like that would be a big hit?
IF such a film did come out what do you think would cause the most offence,
the animal cruelty, the pornography or the human killings?
YOUR THOUGHTS PLEASE.

i'm not talking about gladiator or a gladiator rip off, i'm talking about a documentry style movie about a typical day at the collosseum which i thought i had explained in the original question.

Answer 1

Well, we did get a little bit of that already in the film ‘Gladiator’. I guess they must have considered the same things too, because among the deleted scenes was a scene depicting Christians being fed to the lions.

Of course, modern technologies could easily reproduce a slice of life in the colloseum arena quite splendidly. But, I suppose, we would need to ask what the point of this would be; to inform; entertain; disgust; teach...? Most movies are intended for the purpose of entertainment and often this is achieved in the most gratuitous sense. A film about what went on in the colloseum would probably be no different.

Given that many movies already feature large doses of violence and wanton sex, I think that the main issue would be the animal cruelty. It would seem that in our current culture of film-making, cruelty against other humans is generally considered OK in a dog-eat-dog sense, but I think society is generally quite rejecting of watching scenes of animal cruelty for pleasure and movie-makers tend to err on the side of sensitivity in this area, with good reason. Whilst many people are aware that animal cruelty still occurs, few would enjoy seeing it depicted graphically – for the main reason that it’s pointless and the animal is usually the painfully ignorant underdog in a fight. Human on human is fairer game.

Whilst in many ways we might like to think we are morally superior to our bloodthirsty Roman ancestors, are we really much different? A bull ring or extreme fighting arena isn’t that far removed from a colosseum arena. As a culture we also live voraciously through movies which stimulate us with heavy doses of violence and sex. Whilst this undoubtedly provides us with a safer outlet for our more base desires, does the fact that we can justify our enjoyment of this with the fact that movies aren’t real make us that much better...?

Finally, to answer your question; yes - I think a film like that would be a big hit. People would watch it for the same reason we watch horror films we know will scare us; morbid fascination.

NOTE: In response to your additional details, I think a documentary style film, for the purpose of informing, would have to be very careful to avoid being too gratuitous simply due to the extreme nature of the content. If balanced with facts and kept as historically correct as possible, it might work.

Answer 2

The animal cruelty definitely, even knowing it's not real doesn't help me one bit. However, porn and human (man, woman and child) death/torture/mutliation - no problem.
Animals are ace and people are crap. Though animals can't make movies... ah! let's not go there.
I'd like to see more animals killing people, that would be good.

Answer 3

porn is every day stuff now so i think animal cruelty would cause most offense great idea though id come to the cinema and watch it with ya!!

Answer 4

I would like it alot for the historical aspect, except for the porn, which would cause the most offense.

Answer 5

didn't they call it Gladiator?