Ridley Scott · 2000 · overland

Ridley Scott's 2000 epic. Maximus wins Marcus Aurelius's last battle on the Danube frontier and is named his heir - so the emperor's son has him condemned and his family killed. Sold south into the slave markets of Zucchabar in Roman Africa, he fights his way back up through the provincial arenas to the Colosseum, and to the man who took everything from him.

1. 1
   Germania

   On the Danube frontier, Maximus breaks the last of the Germanic tribes and wins the final battle of Marcus Aurelius's long war - and the dying emperor names him, rather than his son Commodus, to hold Rome in trust.

2. 2
   Trujillo

   Condemned and left for dead, Maximus rides for the hills above Trujillo in Hispania and the farm he has not seen in years - and arrives too late, to find his wife and son murdered and the house burning.

3. 3
   Zucchabar

   Taken by slavers into Roman Africa, he is sold at Zucchabar to the lanista Proximo and put into the provincial arena - a man with nothing left, discovering that he wins, and that winning will carry him back toward Rome.

4. 4
   Rome

   Proximo's troupe is called to the Colosseum, and the Spaniard becomes the darling of the mob under the eyes of the emperor who ordered him killed - until the two of them settle it on the sand in front of a hundred thousand people.