Review

Had no idea going in that I was getting the same story as The Sign of the Cross. That was a bit weird. "This feels very familiar..." I picked out a bunch of historical epics from a list to get through at some point and this one was on it. I do love a nice epic. I would say that in general this one is definitely a lot larger than DeMille's version of the story. Though I can't help but feel I preferred the prior version.

The big negative towards Quo Vadis is I don't much like the ending. I feel Cross' ending of accepting that we're going to the lions is a lot stronger. I do appreciate the theatricality of Nero here. He's still quite fun. So I enjoy as we follow him and he does the whole suicide and whatnot. But I think it's just a much stronger emotional ending where we accept our deaths and go to the lord. The other negative is I don't buy the relationship between Marcus and Lydia. He's quite a jerk here and I don't really see what Lydia sees. Not very believable. I mean it wasn't great wither in Cross, but there was also more B plots going in Quo Vadis so even though the runtime was longer, I think we got a lot less time with just the two of them. Didn't end up serving the romance well.

Also I did not fucking like those bits with the green screen on the chariots. No good! The bits where we aren't doing a green screen are fabulous. You could've totally just cut out any part of the scene where we are trying to do the crazy camera angles that there is no way we'd be able to get otherwise and just accept what is. Because what is there is lovely to look at. Be confident in the craft.

Overall good, but I preferred