the rest of the scene), leading up to the procession of Commodus. At one point in the Nazi film, a little girl gives flowers to Hitler, while Commodus is met by several girls who all give him bundles of flowers. Legacy Cultural influence Gladiator has been considered a cultural phenomenon since its release. Prior to the release of Gladiator, the swords and sandal genre had fallen out of public popularity by the mid-1960s following a string of expensive box office flops such as Cleopatra (1963) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). In the 1990s, the historical epic genre saw a revival in popularity following the success of films such as Dances With Wolves (1990), Schindler's List (1993), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Gladiator continued these films' realism with more of a focus on the Ancient History, which had not been explored extensively since the 1960s. In season 3 of the critically acclaimed HBO series, The Sopranos, antagonist Ralph Ciferetto develops an obsession with the film. Retrospective reviews and film critics have noted that Gladiator's success spurred a revival of the historical epic genre with films during the 2000s such as The Last Samurai (2003), Troy (2004), The Alamo (2004), King Arthur (2004), Alexander (2004), 300 (2007), and its sequel 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and Robin Hood (2010) (the last two were also directed by Scott). The gladiator arena set piece from the Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), which entered production shortly after the release of Gladiator, has been compared to the arena setting in the film. While a majority of these films were critically and commercially successful in their own rights, The Guardian's Steve Rose argued that the historical epic revival devolved back into parody by 2007, as none of the films recaptures the impact of Gladiator. Rose also argued that after twenty years, the film's story was more relevant now than it was then with its themes of populism and fascism. Cineramble's James Humphreys wrote on the film's twentieth anniversary that the swords and sandal epic revival was short-lived because studios and producers focused more on Gladiator's visuals rather than the quality of its storytelling and characters. Humphreys, however, argued that the film influenced several films in the fantasy and superhero film genres more than the historical epic genre itself, with the