Joaquin Phoenix was earning notice as a villain long before his game-changing Oscar win for Joker. 20 years earlier, he earned another Oscar nomination for an equally psychotic character: Emperor Commodus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. While he didn’t quite steal the show from star Russell Crowe, he proved more than capable of sharing the screen with him. In fact, arguably the film’s most iconic line belongs to him.
As it turns out, it wasn’t in the script. Phoenix himself ad-libbed it on set in an effort to punctuate the character’s rotten core. It helped cement the figure in the public memory as much as any line from Joker did. Considering the director and the film’s standing -- to say nothing of the actor’s later work as the Clown Prince of Crime -- it says a great deal.
The line is “Am I not merciful?” and frankly it’s as crazed as anything the Joker has said in any context. With his enemy captured and his rule seemingly cemented, Commodus gloats at his sister Lucilla about the power he now possesses. He muses on whether he should adopt her son (his nephew) as his own and force her to witness every moment without speaking out, lest he kills the boy on the spot. He promises to do the same if she takes her own life or displeases him in any way. That extends to an incestuous marriage to him as queen. He couches this fate as “mercy,” in lieu of simply executing them.
More than the lines, it’s the performance that captures the horror show of his proposal. Most of the speech is delivered conversationally, in an ostensibly pleasant and even-handed tone of voice. It’s the speech of a man who ponders terrible things with the casualness of deciding what to have for dinner. Only at the end does he scream the line, inches from her face, as she ponders the hell he has prepared for her.
It’s the speech of a man who holds absolute power and has been utterly consumed by it. As Emperor of Rome, he can define the terms of any social interaction, and the society around him will make it so. If he calls it mercy -- regardless of how awful it is -- no one is in a position to refute him. Phoenix is using the cadence of the delivery to demonstrate the monstrosity. In the process, he finds a sliver of the same narcissistic darkness he later displayed as the Joker.
And the line wasn’t planned. According to IMDb, Phoenix’s speech was supposed to end with a more conversation “Am I not merciful?” Instead, he screams it at Lucilla a second time. The suddenness is shocking, and it caught Nielsen completely by surprise. Her unscripted reaction is part of what made the line so memorable.
It’s doubly notable because of director Ridley Scott’s fastidious attention to detail. Gladiator’s script underwent a number of rewrites during its production, with particular emphasis on the dialogue, which Crowe felt needed improvement. Ad-libs became more normal during the production, and the best of them found their way into the movie. Given the director’s proclivities, he must have sensed something pivotal in Phoenix’s moment, because he let it stay, and made movie history in the process.