Rooting for the barbarians to smash the Meds at the beginning purely because they're my ancestors. Vae victis. Also, the British Empire was 10x bigger. Ratio, boyfuckers. As for the movie, hmm, initially underwhelming and overall good, but far from perfect. There was nice consistent action and it at least never became boring. Some nice setpieces and costumes in the way only an old-fashioned big-budget historical epic can deliver. But the script was bad. The plot, though there was much exciting scenery along the way and the core 'avenge-his-murdered-family' premise couldn't be stronger as a motivation for the hero or for the audience to root for him, was a bumpy and uneven road and often took turns that didn't really make sense and was pitted with rather large plotholes (Why didn't Maximus kill Commodus in the arena the first time, knowing he'd probably never get another chance? The sister overheard her brother ordering all senators to be followed, so why did she then immediately have the senators go to risky meetings? Why would she speak unguardedly around anyone, including her son? And Quintus' motivations for disobeying and betraying Commodus the second time weren't much better established than his motivations for obeying Commodus and betraying Maximus the first time). And the dialogue was frequently not good at all. The lines were often either badly written or badly delivered (is that bad acting or bad directing?) or both. This tended to undercut the major emotional beats/turning-points of the story, and this mishandling meant that when they came they didn't have the impact on the audience they should have, based purely on what was happening and what had happened up to that point. And that alone means this move belongs in the second-rate category of botched epics like Troy or the Star Wars prequels, and will never rise to the first rank to join peerless classics like Lord of the Rings, wherein (almost) every line was crafted and delivered perfectly. This film, plus his recent less than sucessful excursions, including this movies' sequel, has made me wonder whether Ridley Scott is really as good as his reputation makes him out to be.