In making the film Gladiator (2000), director Ridley Scott wanted to portray the Roman culture more accurately than in any previous film and to that end hired several historians as advisors. Nevertheless, some deviations from historical fact were made to increase interest, some to maintain narrative continuity, and some were for practical or safety reasons. The public perception of what ancient Rome was like, due to previous Hollywood movies, made some historical facts, according to Scott, "too unbelievable" to include.
At least one historical advisor resigned due to the changes he made and another advisor Kathleen Coleman asked not to be mentioned in the credits. Historians called the movie both the worst and best of all films: the worst for the historical inaccuracies in a film Scott promoted as historically accurate, and the best for the film's accurate depiction of the people and violence of the late 2nd century AD. Historian Allen Ward of the University of Connecticut noted that historical accuracy would not have made Gladiator less interesting or exciting and stated: "creative artists need to be granted some poetic license, but that should not be a permit for the wholesale disregard of facts in historical fiction."
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