The Eagle's Director on Roman Battles, Pict Rituals and Lying

Jordan Hoffman: What qualities of the Roman epic did you want to bring into The Eagle?

Kevin Macdonald: I think what’s different about this film to other Roman or “sword-and-sandal” films is we tried to do a very naturalistic, realistic approach in the film, in the way we shot it. The kind of rule we had was we wouldn’t use lots of CG, we wouldn’t people it with lots of places and individuals that weren’t there and obviously we wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of people in the battle or sweeping eagle-eye views of things, and that kind of stuff, which is pretty much the approach that people seem to take for some reason to the genre now a days, as in, say, Prince of Persia for instance.

I come from documentaries and come from more realist tradition, I wanted to take that approach, but also I was excited because, what makes this different from other Roman films is that its about the edge of the Empire, its not about the heart of the Empire. I grew up in Scotland so I can relate to that. The unconquerable and semi-uninhabitable Scotland. I was interested primarily in the clash of cultures or the place where two different cultures meet, how one culture deals with another culture, and the lack of respect or respect they have for each other.

I think this is why Roman films are so popular. We admire the civilization, for want of a better word, we admire what Rome achieved, the amazing military and political machine that rolled itself out across this huge swath of Europe and Asia, and brought with it so many great things, so many benefits, the Roman roads and the writing, but also was a kind of monolithic steamroller over other cultures. Rome had a sense that Roman civilization was superior to anybody else, and that’s what Channing Tatum’s character in the film does.

Jordan Hoffman: And there’s enough history between then and now that we can distance ourselves and not be concerned with the politics?

Kevin Macdonald: Yeah, but I think the thing is that Roman films allow you to have big military set pieces, the excitement and action, but the appeal is that it’s to do with the fact that it’s a society that seemingly was very very sophisticated but was ruled by violence.

Jump ahead to read:
Kevin Macdonald's take on battle sequences.
What's known about Pict culture.
Just how much of this damned picture is true?
A quick conversation about Donald Cammell.