Empire

After all the teasers, I watched the pilot & found it typically Disneyfied. It takes historical characters of late first century BCE and early 1st century CE and weaves a majestic tapestry of fabrication. It then hangs it on a few pegs of historical truth and expects you to swallow the whole story as fact, when it's mostly fiction. Some of this lack of fidelity to history has been pointed out by others already, so I shall not belabor the point. Having the adequate & comely Santiago Cabrera play Octavian or Octavianus, NOT Octavius! is a stretch. The future first emperor of Rome was 18 not 28 in 44 BCE. Given the state of cultural/historical illiteracy today, I am not surprised by 'Empire.' Afterall, it's Disney/ABC and not the History channel or PBS.

Fiends and I at work thoroughly enjoyed Empire. We liked the characters as well as the actors playing them. We thought the story line was exciting and looked forward to each installment. We were not expecting a documentary or doctoral thesis, we simply enjoyed being entertained, as well as having the opportunity to learn interesting facts about antiquities, the Roman way of life and history, and period clothing. We believed Empire to be interesting, intriguing, and thought provoking as well as not insulting to our intelligence. We are vastly disappointed that Empire was canceled. We were prepared to watch Empire last week, and even speculated about whether a follow up series might be produced. Then, something else came on.

Like that other gladiator asked of the crowd, "Are you entertained?" Regarding Empire? Heck yeah! Screw history lessons. If I want to learn Roman history then I'll do it the old fashion way and read library books, or take the new fashion route and read the cliffnotes on the internet or watch the Hitler Chan....er, I mean the History Channel. ABC's Empire is gloriously bereft of CGI and instead we are treated to beautiful sights of the Italian countryside and forests and the lively cities caught in the crossfire of a power struggle, even the stones seem to breathe. The Roman pageantry allows the viewers to feel that they are part of an ancient civilization on the cusp of greatness. The beautiful soundtrack and singing helps too.

I found myself easily forgiving the many historical liberties taken with Empire, probably because it is not difficult to explain away the discrepancies: Octavius present in Rome during Creaser's assassination and funeral? He was shown hiding in the shadows and out of the mobs' eyes. Tyrannus the recently freed gladiator turned bodyguard? Rarely shown publicly with Caesar and so far never with Octavius, thus one of the many background characters that history does not record. Fictional bodyguard for Octavius? History cliffnotes said the family begged Octavius to renounce the adoption and the inheritance in fear he would be target for possible assassinations. Octavius' status as the unfavored nephew of Caeser? History claimed people were genuinely surprised that Octavius turned out to be Caesar's heir and historians are constantly combing for clues of when Ceaser decided that Octavius was the real deal.

And folks, stop advertising HBO's Rome already, some of us don't get HBO and have no plans to fork over the $$$ to do so.

Watching and taking EMPIRE seriously after having seen ROME is a near impossibility. EMPIRE is a TV miniseries charting the rise to power of Julius Caesar's nephew, Octavius (isn't it Octavian?), in much the same way that ROME did, except the two productions are totally at odds. ROME was lavish, expensive, expertly made and very well written. EMPIRE is silly, generic and more often than not, derivative.

The main source of inspiration is Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR, thus we have the presence of a gladiator in the leading role. It's not just that Tyrannus is out of place - what's a gladiator doing having one-to-ones with Caesar, for goodness' sake? - it's that he's so bland. The producers picked a good-looking guy to make the housewives swoon and do zilch with his character for the entire running time. It makes for a highly boring production. His character arc is non-existence and he feels like a male model simply acting as a clothes horse throughout.

Not that the rest is much good, either. I'm no stickler for historical accuracy, I'd rather a historical series or movie be entertaining rather than realistic and deathly dull. But EMPIRE takes the biscuit, throwing in sub-plot after sub-plot that never happened, and ludicrous situations like a romance with a Vestal Virgin. There's far too much senseless combat featuring the aforementioned gladiator hacking his way through various foes, and of course as this is a TV production there's no real sex or violence to offend anybody.

Some of the cast members ARE good, it's just that their characters aren't. Vincent Regan was excellent in 300, but his Mark Antony seems a bit impotent, lacking in menace and failing to be larger than life as the role requires. James Frain seems to be doing a dry run for his turn in THE TUDORS but is underutilised, as are Michael Maloney (TRULY MADLY DEEPLY), Michael Byrne and RAMBO's Graham McTavish. The women fare less well: Emily Blunt, on the cusp of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and stardom, fails to convince and the horrendous Trudie Styler is little more than a walking advert for Botox (who knew the Romans invented it?). The effeminate Santiago Cabrera might as well be listed under the female parts, so weak and weedy is he.

Lack of a decent budget means that there are no real set-pieces or memorable moments, just a couple of CGI-enhanced backdrops here and there. However, the production does seem to have been made in Italy with an Italian supporting cast and crew, which counts for something, and the episodes are fast paced and have stuff going on. It's just a shame that the stuff that does happen is so familiar, made up, and derivative of what's come before. This TV stuff can be good - I liked the recent version of BEN HUR for instance - but EMPIRE misses the mark by quite a bit.

I've watched this four-hour TV epic on DVD with many reservations, which mostly turned out to be true. I've stopped counting the historical inaccuracies long ago and am now trying simply to enjoy this mini-series as entertainment but it's still hard to do, what with a retired Roman general named Magonius who is played by a Black man (!), a "gladiator prison" called "Arkham" (!!) and a slave, played by Jonathan (Beef) Cake, who speaks better English than his master (!!!). The treachery of Anthony is particularly appalling in historical terms but is typical of a script that must have been workshopped in a weekend writers' seminar while channeling every Roman epic cliché ever shot (including some from grand opera, like the deviant Vestal virgin) and putting their incidents in a blender, with the Cate Blanchett voice-over from "The Lord of the Rings" and the medical emergencies from "All My Children" thrown in for good measure. The production values are acceptable, the film shows a lot of sex, violence, sadism and decadence but the cinematography is divided into two groups of scenes: luscious long CGI shots of the countryside or cityscapes with great emphasis on colour, time of day, composition etc. and action/crowd scenes where the camera is jittery at all times and only captures the action in grainy or telephoto close-ups (à la "Gladiator") chopped up in an editing style which makes theses scenes very forgiving of little things like missed cues, bad stunt-work and confused direction, but unfortunately robs them of all majesty, grandeur and clarity. I suppose it could have been much worse. One positive thing is that since this was made for American television, all the major story points are repeated at least six times to allow the addle-brained viewer to follow the plot between bathroom and snack breaks. The four hours fly by rather fast even if they make the viewer less informed about Roman times than if he had never seen them.