Russell Crowe has criticized the 2024 sequel to "Gladiator," saying the film misunderstands what defined the original.
Crowe, who won an Oscar for portraying Maximus in the 2000 release, said in an interview with Australia's Triple J that the new installment breaks from the principles he considered central to the first movie.
Crowe said the sequel got the basics of the original story wrong and ignored what drove his performance.
"I think the recent sequel that, you know, we don't have to name out loud is a really unfortunate example of even the people in that engine room not actually understanding what made the first one special," he said. "It wasn't the pomp. It wasn't the circumstance. It wasn't the action. It was the moral core."
He said that focus guided day-to-day decisions on the original set.
According to Crowe, he resisted attempts to add material that he believed would undermine Maximus' motivations.
"The thing is, there was a daily fight on that set. It was a daily fight to keep that moral core of the character," he said. "The amount of times they suggested sex scenes and stuff like that for Maximus, it's like you're taking away his power. So you're saying at the same time he had this relationship with his wife, he was f*cking this other girl? What are you talking about? It's crazy."
Crowe said Maximus' commitment to his wife was key to the narrative, which is driven by the murder of his family.
He said introducing affairs would have broken the emotional logic behind Maximus' character.
In the sequel, Maximus is revealed to have fathered Lucius through a past relationship with Lucilla, a development Crowe suggested weakened the character's moral foundation.
Crowe also said he had no role in shaping the sequel and was not contacted by director Ridley Scott or others involved in the production.
In the lead-up to the film's November 2024 release, he stated publicly that he did not expect actor Paul Mescal to reach out either, given Maximus' death at the end of the original.
Crowe has said he likely would have objected to linking Maximus to Lucius if he had been consulted.
He added that questions about the sequel have followed him throughout press appearances despite his absence from the project.
Speaking at the Karlovy Film Festival, Crowe said, "They should be f*cking paying me for the amount of questions I am asked about a film I am not even in," according to Variety.
"It has nothing to do with me. In that world, I am dead. Six feet under. But I do admit to a certain tinge of jealousy, because it reminds me of when I was younger and what it meant for me, in my life."
"Gladiator II" screenwriter David Scarpa previously discussed the challenges of creating a story that still aimed to honor the original during an interview last year with The Hollywood Reporter.
"You have to deal with people's emotional relationship to [the original] movie and to their proprietary feelings about it," he said at the time. "As much as Ridley wanted the continuity of the world, he was not going to just do a greatest hits album of the first movie."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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