total waste of time (and resources)

I couldn't believe in what I just watched.
Plenty of resources wasted with a terrible script; even worse acting and a director still trapped within Resident Evil nonsense.

So many mistakes. One for all: Londinium is showed at the very beginning as a very large city ... pretty big for a city estabilished just 30 yy before.

Someone should also remind the director that Pompeii was NOT south of the Cotton Belt. The number of black slaves shown is absolutely unbelievable, being 99.9% of them coming from north Europe (celts, germans), east (Tracia, Dacia, Illyria) and middle east. The only black resources available (and the only known to Romans) were Nubians and ... they were not so common even in Egypt.
Still, watching the movie I would say Pompeii was in the nearby of ... Savannah.

Last but not least.
Gladiators were a very valuable tool for Romans. Most of the fighting did NOT end with the killing of the loser (except during very important events or when the fighting was btwn a gladiator and war prisoners). A dead gladiator was useless and the cost to find a decent (and trained) substitute was very high. This is why venationes (fighting with animals) or later on killing Christians was more common in Rome.