Coleman says the film's producers prioritized the glamour of the film over its historical accuracy.

The dialogue in the movie, Coleman says, was just one of many misrepresentations that she spent hours trying to correct.

Even Franzoni admits he was "bothered" by some of the semantics. He points out that addressing the Emperor Commodus as "sire"--a title used in the middle ages--was nonsensical.

"I didn't write most of the dialogue," he says. "That was one of the other writers."

Coleman feels that her impact was minimized because she was not present for the actual filming of the movie.

"The process of creating the film while the camera is running poses the greatest challenge for the historical consultant," Coleman says. "As far as I know, they didn't have anyone [on the set]."

And for the most part they didn't. Franzoni says that for the production in England they hired a consultant who was not familiar with the German background against which the scenes were set.

For a film to be historically authentic, Coleman says she believes that a consultant would need to be taken on for at least a year with absolute commitment to accuracy from both sides.

"It's absolutely critical to have a team of consultants in confidence with the director," she says.

Coleman says she realizes the difficulties of creating historical accuracy, particularly for fictional stories that depend heavily on characterization.

"Many facts are objectively verifiable," Coleman says. "Cultural assumptions are more difficult."

Franzoni says it was difficult for Coleman to evaluate not whether something had happened historically, but whether it could have happened. Coleman agrees, and says that movies present a unique challenge for scholars.

"The world of scholarship reaches a very narrow audience and film has the potential to reach an exponentially larger audience," Coleman says. "The convention of using historical characters in fictional stories is well established. But film is such a strong medium that there's a special responsibility."

Franzoni says it is difficult to convince those making the movie that historical accuracy is important, partly because many of them don't understand the history. Franzoni contrasts Gladiator with The Patriot, which he says gives Americans credit for things they didn't do.

"The majority of those going to the movie are not going to care whether it's the 3rd or the 7th [army] division. It's one thing to know that you're not getting it right. It's another thing not to care," Franzoni says. "We cared."