Russell Crowe Doubles Down on Ridley Scott's Failed Gladiator Sequel - MCE Notices | California State Portal

Russell Crowe won his first Oscar for 2000’s Gladiator. The Ridley Scott-directed movie is now a classic, but its sequel failed to entertain.

Crowe has previously explained where Gladiator II went wrong, and argued how the sequel failed the story. In a new appearance at the Taormina Film Festival, Crowe doubled down on his criticism for the Gladiator sequel, highlighting how he pushed back to keep his character’s moral core, via Deadline.

Gladiator II Destroyed the Moral Center

Crowe looked back on his time on the sword-and-sandal hit, explaining how he fought against unnecessary sex scenes. In Gladiator, his character, Maximus, loses his wife and sons after a fierce battle, which leads to him being captured as a slave and forced to play a gladiator, while trying to get revenge for his family’s death.

“I just kept pushing back,” Crowe explained about potential scenes of Maximus having sex with someone else. “I said, ‘This is a story about a man who’s avenging the death of his wife and his child. There cannot be a moment on that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense… that destroys the journey.’ “

The actor revealed that the producers “fought” him over that plotline, but he “just stuck to my guns.” He praised filmmaker Ridley Scott for agreeing with him, “Luckily for me, Ridley, even though he would have loved to write a sex scene with me and Connie Nielsen, he agreed with me back then, and that that was the moral core of the film.”

Crowe also highlighted how Gladiator, despite its brutality and thirst for blood, was also celebrated by a female audience. “On the surface, Gladiator is a movie for men but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge. But it’s not about revenge. It’s a movie for women because it’s about vengeance and this is a subtle difference, but it is a difference. I needed the character to stay on that track.”

As for what Gladiator II, Crowe noted, “So for them, in a second movie to destroy that moral centre, it’s very interesting because the second movie barely took the same box office that the first movie took but that’s 20 years later, and when you apply how much of a change there’s been on the value of a dollar, they failed, and they failed because they didn’t understand why it was successful, because it had a moral core.”

Gladiator II Underperformed at the Box Office

Paramount Pictures

Since Maximus dies at the end of the iconic film, he didn’t reprise his role in the sequel. However, Lucilla reveals that her young son, Lucius Verus, who was a young child in the first film, was Maximus’ son.

Gladiator II received enough positive reviews, holding a Certified Fresh 70% approval score out of 406 reviews, and 80% from the audience.

However, that roughly translated into ticket sales. The movie grossed $460.3 million worldwide, according to The Numbers, with a reported $210 million net budget. To become successful, the sequel needed around $525 million. The first film grossed $466 million against a $103 million budget.

Even so, Ridley Scott teased a third installment is in the works. However, the second protagonist, Paul Mescal, teased an acting break after his ambitious The Beatles project and didn’t confirm a potential return.