Seeing Corvus be incinerated alive is pretty disturbing. We only get a very brief glimpse of his charred body, but that doesn't make it any less horrific. It doesn't help that he screams the entire time.
The volcano eruption and gladiator fights in general. The latter are not elegant or dignified. They're messy, bloody, and disturbing.
The movie doesn't skimp on showing the terrifying speed of a pyroclastic flow. You can possibly dodge the flaming debris and the mini-tsunami flooding the harbour, but good luck outrunning a 400mph landslide of searing hot gases. And they don't. What's even worse is that before they die, they realise that trying to outrun it won't do a damn thing too. As they get off, they let the horse go with the hope that it may survive and then await their fate.
How it’s formed is just as bad. The volcano’s summit implodes and spills down the mountain, and as we see the pyroclastic flows start to inundate Pompeii, we also see not only that but the entire Bay of Naples is also being consumed by the fiery cloud. If that isn’t bad enough then look at the summit and you’ll see that it’s starting to overflow down the other flanks as well. I hope any bastard that’s still alive down there has gotten the fuck away from that mountain while they could.
Even more terrifying is that despite how well documented this eruption was by Pliny the Younger geological records indicted that the volcano’s previous eruption in the 3rd century BC was even BIGGER with deposits at least 60 feet deep from said eruption having been discovered under the center of Naples itself! The big difference between both eruptions and now is that there are nearly 15 million people who live within the vicinity of the volcano some on top of the buried cities themselves! Now imagine the chaos and panic that would ensue as millions have only hours if not minutes to escape and that’s even with an advanced warning!
The bodies of Milo and Cassia after they are killed by the pyroclastic flow are a haunting sight. Their bodies are frozen in place in their dying moments and preserved in ash not unlike the real victims◊. And both of them are eternally locked mid-embrace in their final kiss. At least they are Together in Death now.
. You can possibly dodge the flaming debris and the mini-tsunami flooding the harbour, but good luck outrunning a 400mph landslide of searing hot gases. And they don't. What's even worse is that before they die, they realise that trying to outrun it won't do a damn thing too. As they get off, they let the horse go with the hope that it may survive and then await their fate.
