Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Primary Source Summary

The primary source I have chosen is the official Gladiator movie trailer.  The trailer gives the main parts of the story, as a General in the Roman empire is made a slave.  Then he is made a Gladiator, or someone who fights in the Colosseum.  And finally, he defies an empire, as one would assume, he fights the power that was stripped from him (one would guess based on just the trailer). We are told that Russel Crow's character 'Maximus' has his wife and son murdered.  We assume this happened because of the Emperor, as Maximus is walking towards him with a terrifying glare, and tells us/him he is the husband of a murdered wife, and the father of a murdered son.

The music in the trailer sounds very adventurous, but also angry and complex.  It sounds like the way Maximus looks to be feeling.  When the people cheer and the music goes silence, that seems to be an important part of the trailer.  Obviously the people turn to Maximus's side sometime during all these events.  The feeling I got from the trailer was one of defiance, anger, and hope.  All very different feelings, so the director of this trailer clearly knew what they were doing.  Another sense I got from watching this was the whole...rooting for the under-dog thing.  This small, insignificant gladiator, seems to capture the gaze of an entire population, and get them to cheer his name.  This is not something that would ever go on ignored.  The trailer has a very dense foundation.  One that I look forward to picking apart and analyzing.

No comments:

Post a Comment