Sometimes you can't figure out where the tagline for a movie came from. Sometimes you read it and think that they came up with it as an afterthought, or as a last ditch effort to explain the movie right before the posters were sent to the printer. Then there are those rare times when the movie gives you a break and tells you what it is and that makes everything easier. Such was the case with Gladiator, in which the ever level-headed Emperor Commodus (or Caesar, or whatever he wanted to be called) pretty much summed up the whole movie when he said, "The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor." (All he had to do was say, "In a world," and there wouldn't have been any need for a voice over in the trailer.) Of course, me being me, I usually want to add him saying, "It would make a terrific movie, if only I knew what one was." Still, even this isn't the first time that the movie has helped the audience out by telling them what was going on, since earlier our hero Maximus was considerate enough to summarize his character by saying, "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." More movies should be so considerate, the problem being that I'm not sure that a lot of movies know what they are, or they're trying to be what they aren't and can't possibly be, so trying to explain what they are could just make them seem even more plotless and pointless.
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