For years, Ridley Scott talked about making a sequel to his massively successful 2000 film Gladiator. Gladiator was a phenomenon back in the day, it won Best Picture and Best Actor and established Russell Crowe as one of the biggest actors in the world. While Crowe was never coming back to the Gladiator universe (spoiler: Maximus dies in the end of the first film), Ridley spent years trying to figure out what would be next for certain characters. Then, finally, 22 years later, they put the project together. Paul Mescal was cast as the now-adult Lucius, Pedro Pascal came in to play Connie Nielsen’s husband and general of the Roman army. Most importantly, they brought in Denzel Washington to play Macrinus, the wealthiest man in Rome. Well, after all of that, Gladiator II was a MESS! Don’t get me wrong, I loved Denzel in it, and I thought it was so cool to see him in those costumes and watch him play a bad guy in that way. He was the best part of the movie. But the rest of it was pretty awful. As it turns out, Russell Crowe thought it was awful too.

Russell Crowe has said that the makers of Gladiator II did not “understand … what made that first one special”. In interview excerpts posted on social media by Australian radio station Triple J, Crowe said that the Gladiator sequel, which starred Paul Mescal and was released in 2024, was let down by “the people in that engine room not actually understanding what made that first one special”.

He added: “It wasn’t the pomp. It wasn’t the circumstance. It wasn’t the action. It was the moral core.”

In the first Gladiator film, directed by Ridley Scott, Crowe played Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius, who is forced to become a slave and who dies of his wounds at the end of the film. Released in 2000, Gladiator won the best picture Oscar, alongside Crowe’s win for best actor Oscar. In the sequel, also directed by Scott, Mescal plays Hanno, who is revealed to be Maximus’s son with his lover Lucilla (played by Connie Nielsen).

Crowe says he particularly objected to the idea floated during the making of the first film that Maximus’s relationship with Lucilla should have resumed. He said: “There was a daily fight on that set … to keep that moral core of the character. The amount of times that they suggested sex scenes and stuff like that for Maximus – it’s like you’re taking away his power.”

He added: “So you’re saying at the same time he had this relationship with his wife, he was f–king this other girl? What are you talking about? It’s crazy. The women in Europe, when [Gladiator II] started coming out, I would be at a restaurant and they’d come talk to me. It’s like: ‘Hey, it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it.’”

[From The Guardian]

I mean… the film makes it very clear that Lucius (played by Paul Mescal) was the product of Lucilla and Maximus’s relationship before either of them married other people. That was heavily insinuated in the first film as well. I don’t think that the Lucius backstory was the reason why the sequel failed, nor was it the film’s lack of moral center. I actually thought the film captured the chaos of a failed empire really well in many ways, and the moral rot was central to that. No, the film didn’t work because the script was a hot mess. The “gladiator fights” made absolutely no sense within the context of the story they were trying to tell. It came across as a script trying to do two distinct things: give Denzel carte blanche to act his ass off AND create “cool gladiator fights.” The story simply did not connect those two things well enough. Mescal and Pascal were kind of phoning it in acting-wise as well.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, ‘Gladiator’ stills and poster.