Maximus

My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.

Jesus our gospel today seems to begin where the movie Gladiator ends up when Maximus Decimus Meridius is walking through the fields of grain And he's lightly brushing his hand across the top or across the heads of grain.

Well, Jesus, that's where we find you today.

Not in the Elysian Fields, of course.

This is from...

Maximus Decimus Meridius or something like that.

Okay.

Salutations, gentlemen.

There's Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, there's Hector from Troy, there's William Wallace from Braveheart, there's Spartacus, there's Leonidas from 300.

All these characters are the same archetypal figures, but somehow only Maximus Decimus Meridius really sticks through the years.

And I have put some thought into this and I have some ideas about why particularly this character and this movie sticks.

I want to present to you three points that culminate in what I think is the implicit central thesis that runs throughout the movie.

So I'm going to list now the three points and then the central thesis.

Point number one is that Maximus is by far the best modern portrayal of the male archetype.

So he's highly capable, but very gentle, and he's modest in word and body language, and he's admired and loved solely for his character and skill.

So that's the portrayal of the archetype.

Let's give you a flavour then of another movie he could have enhanced.

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance in this life or the next.

Did somebody order a

I love the one when he, and this is my last night before we work chronologically, I also love it when he wins the crowd in Rome after the speech that everyone knows and he's getting entered down.

So he faces Commodus for the first time and he gets entered down and all the gladiators are going, Maximus, Maximus, Maximus.

And that music, again, that's like another eight-minute track.

if you go on Spotify, but like that last little minute there when he's entering down.

And then this is just a tiny little way to bow up before we get into the character study of Maximus, is that this man, whether he is in North Germany leading the Roman legions, has people kneeling just as he walks by to talk to his second in command, or he ends up being a slave and he ends up being a guy that they're all chanting his name and they're all willing to die for.

We were here for you, Maximus.

Like that... is Maximus, right? That is Maximus the character.

Now, before we jump in, Tobler, any notes? Because I cut you off about your music.