Ridley Scott has revealed that he almost made Gladiator II into a musical, but it ultimately never came to fruition.
The filmmaker told Deadline that the Gladiator sequel was going to be a musical and see Russell Crowe reprising his role of Maximus – despite the character dying in the first film.
The concept involved Nick Cave, who worked with Crowe to come up with a storyline focusing on Maximus “being sent back to Earth by the gods to kill Jesus Christ and his followers because he was stealing their thunder,” but Scott decided it was “bloody silly.”
The director explained: “Nick Cave did a great job of invention and Russell was fully engaged. We all were, but I was the one dragging my feet. I was like, ‘I dunno about this.’ I thought we were getting too far off the mark, and if you do that, that’s where you can lose it.”
He added: “I was going along with the boys. I didn’t really believe in it. It got too rich and started to go to time warps, which frankly I thought was bloody silly. But the one thing I added to it was this great idea of [opening] a portal of time in death, and it would have to come from the dying soul of a dying soldier in a battlefield. Isn’t that cool? I kept it as a little silver bullet, thinking, ‘I’ll use that again somewhere.’”
In the end, Gladiator II, which arrived in cinemas today (November 15) in the UK and will premiere in the US on November 22, is rather more conventional. Set 20 years after the events of the first movie, it features Paul Mescal as Lucius, the son of Maximus, who remains deceased.
Also starring in the sequel are Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington.
In a three-star review, NME described Gladiator II as a “Colosseum-sized sequel” to the first film, adding: “If you loved Gladiator, it’s odds-on you’ll enjoy this too. It’s got all of the same exciting bits – swordfighting, rousing speeches, nasty poshos getting what they deserve. The problem is that’s all it gives you. You want to feel like you’re watching Maximus lift off his helmet and deliver that iconic monologue for the first time again.
“You want the thrill of a core memory being unlocked. You want to know you’ll be quoting Mescal’s lines to your mates in the pub for the next 10 years. Gladiator 2, piously respectful as it is, can only offer a faded memory of that experience. There was a dream that was Rome – and this is kind of it.”
Meanwhile, Scott has said that he’s been considering another sequel. He told France’s Premiere magazine, “No seriously! I’ve lit the fuse. The ending of Gladiator 2 is reminiscent of The Godfather with Michael Corleone finding himself with a job he didn’t want, and wondering, ‘Now, father, what do I do?’ So the next [film] will be about a man who doesn’t want to be where he is.”
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