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Rating:  - Great acting, great landscapes
A fine mixture of young and experienced actors, and the story of the Roman Empire is always interesting. Great landscapes.
Rating:  - Anachronistic sword and sandal
I enjoy Roman history, so I rented "Empire" on netflix. I admit, I could barely sustain my interest as I watched a group of gladiators fight (one with a full facial tribal tattoo), versus our hero, anachronistically attired Tyranus. Come on people. This is the height of the Roman empire. Characters are dressed like braveheart extras or rejects from the world wrestling federation.
Next, we see young Octavius flirting with a vestal virgin. Come on people? A vestal virgin? They were kept under lock and key and chaperoned. Roman women were not roaming around on the streets and speaking their minds to rich upperclass men unless they were loose.
This was overall, pretty cheesy, and worse boring- I'm having trouble maintaining my interest.
Rating: - My Brain is Melting
GARBAGE! GARBAGE! GARBAGE! AAIIIEEEEEEE! My brain is melting.I have never written a review on Amazon before, but after sitting through this Turkeyosaur (I can't believe I watched the whole thing, I think I was mesmerized and rendered unable to respond by hitting the off-switch by an evil spirit)I felt it my duty to my fellow man and woman to warn them about it. This is the most ludicrous and ridiculous piece of junk ever reduced to celluloid. It makes Plan Nine from Outer Space look like a combination of Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird and Ben-Hur. Everybody associated with this thing would be banned from the film industry for life if there were any justice. It bears no semblance to history after the first twenty minutes, the only things even remotely historical are the names of the supposedly historical characters. The writing is awful, the acting is awful and everybody looks like they are walking through a grungy music video. Can't anybody make a decent historical costume drama anymore? The only decent ones of the last fifteen years have been Tombstone and Master and Commander, but this one is by far the worst. Has everybody's brain turned to jello? They're laughing at us, folks! Please, please don't support these fools and dumbdowners by buying this! I'm burning the copy I have as a sacrifice in an attempt to appease the muse of drama. My only regret is that Amazon won't let me post a lower rating.....
Rating:  - Lacking historical accuracy! Why???
Empire brings to the screen the rise to power of one of the most well known historical figures: Roman Emperor Octavius Augustus.
Nevertheless, it is a series that brings to life the director's version of how he would have liked Octavius' rise to be. The movie does not faithfully follow the sources associated with the well known Roman emperor (even though historians should have been hired to do just that), rather it is a film BASED on and INSPIRED by the legendary emperor, and therefore has a great deal of flaws and deviations from the truth.
One could list one after another the discrepancies that occur, and for those that have read/studied Roman History, it is common knowledge that the list would be very long indeed, some will say too long... From this very long list the most important alteration was in relation to the historical discrepancies regarding the "disappearance" of the co-regency between Octavius and Marc Anthony that seems to have miraculously slipped the writers' minds, not to mention that Julius Caesar is to have perished on the Senate steps, and not while sitting inside the Senate.
As other reviewers have also pointed out, the series starts off pretty well and it is mainly in the second half that Empire goes "Xena" on us.
Therefore, once it is established that this is a work of fiction and not an historical adaptation things change, though the problems do not go away, they just transform;
1) To start with, Empire is very biased against the Senate, the Patricians, and even/especially Marc Anthony!
2) Where is the piety and sternness associated with Augustus?
2) Octavius seems to be getting out of too many impossible situations too often.
3) The slave out of nowhere, Tyrannus, attempts to provide a Spartacus/Gladiator feel that does not need to be present in a film about Octavius.
4) No one recognized Tyrannus or Octavius in the Gladiator School (!!!)
5) Magonius was a little too dark to be a Roman General (of the 4th Legion).
6) The "Legendary 3rd" while interesting (!) was like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean and LOR's Return of the King more than anything else.
7) The nurse at Marc Anthony's villa was more Nubian than Egyptian.
8) Marcus Agrippa was a teenager!
And the list goes on and on...
On the positive side, the acting and cast are very good (overall).
Moreover, the setting, the dialogues and the costumes are also commendable!
Even though this is a Hollywoodish production and one should be more flexible and lenient when dealing with adaptations, one should also keep in mind that this is Octavian Augustus in question and not some petty, modern leader. Therefore, the only real problem arises when the majority of people (and most people have NOT read/studied the sources) who see the series start believing that events happened the way the film depicts/portrays and not the way they actually occurred. Consequently, due to these distortions, the movie establishes a very serious threat of producing armies of misinformed people who think they have accurate knowledge of Octavius Augustus when they really do not. That is NOT good!
The dead heroes would be turning in their graves if they knew what is being written and said about them by people who are either misinformed or are purposely out to distort the truth in following their own personal agendas.
Hopefully, more films will be made set in the ancient times, as the demand for them is definitely there, but please let's make them accurate.
In a nutshell, though not a masterpiece, Empire will provide for an evening's entertainment, especially for those with a soft spot for History and all things Roman, though you might not want to go as far as purchasing it.
Rating: - Really falls apart on the second dvd
The first dvd of this 2-dvd set is very entertaining and follows history a lot closer than the second dvd in this set, maybe except for Octavius being sold as a slave, but that was still fun to watch.
That's not saying much because the writers took great liberties with history on the second dvd. They just took the names from Roman history and made up everything else! I mean really made it up! I was in disbelief while watching the second dvd. None of that crap was true, at all.
It really ruined it for me. I can't watch history movies like this. If you get this dvd set, watch the first one and throw the second one away. I sure hope no one watches this and thinks that's how history really happened!
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