Jeffrey Harris is a writer at Collider who specializes in animation, superhero movies, and sci-fi and believes in animation's imaginative power.
The Big Picture With Gladiator II hitting theaters later this year, it’s a good time to revisit the iconic historical epic, Gladiator. Ridley Scott's Best Picture winner of the year 2000 is an all-time cinematic classic. However, the production of the original film faced many challenges, including the tragic passing of actor Oliver Reed, who portrayed Proximo in the film. Reed passed away in 1999 during the middle of filming while he was out drinking at a local pub.
The ending of Gladiator was a tough one to get right. At one point, Maximus Decimus Meridius was going to take his vengeance and survive, moving on with his life after killing Emperor Commodus . During an interview with Empire, Crowe revealed that Maximus was originally going to live. Both Crowe and filmmaker Ridley Scott ultimately decided that Maximus' character needed to die after taking his vengeance, later returning to his slain family in the afterlife, fulfilling his purpose.
As mentioned in Scott's DVD commentary, the scene where Proximo frees Maximus was created after Reed's death, requiring the use of digital images of Reed’s face and attaching them to a physical body double. Special effects house The Mill pulled off the posthumous sequence. The next sequence depicts Reed’s execution by Roman Centurions, in a moment of self-sacrifice. Earlier in the film, Proximo is merely a slaver who wants to profit from gladiatorial fights.
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