Monotreme
05-08-2006, 01:34 PM
And thank god for that. Gladiator is one of my all-time favourite movies, an unprecedented masterpiece and one of those movies that not only does making a sequel not make any sense, as the movie ended with such closure, but any form of sequel, no matter who is involved, would completely ruin the original. Here's the info from an interview with Ridley Scott:
UGO: I've also heard that you and Russell Crowe approached Nick Cave about writing a Gladiator sequel? Is that true?
RIDLEY: We tried. Russell didn't want to let it go, obviously, because it worked very well. I mean, when I say ‘worked very well,' I don't refer to success. I mean, as a piece it works very well. Storytelling, he works brilliantly. I think he enjoyed doing it, and I think it was one of those things that he thought, "Well, maybe there's a sequel where we can adjust the fantasy and bring him back from the dead."
UGO: You said that you loved the ending. What was it about that draft that you couldn't get it off the ground?
RIDLEY: We were all having a go. DreamWorks was having a go, so we were having a go. DreamWorks was addressing Rome without Maximus, because clearly he's gone, and he's dead. Therefore, it would be to the son that Maximus had probably left behind with his affair with Lucilla. You're then basing a film on a different kind of premise. Again, you're basing it on a corrupt Rome, the Rome that would be heading to its own demise. It was far more rambling and complex. Often great plays are very simple, and I think that the mechanics of the Gladiator story were really very satisfactory and worked very well.
The full article can be found here (http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/tristanandisolde/interview.asp).
UGO: I've also heard that you and Russell Crowe approached Nick Cave about writing a Gladiator sequel? Is that true?
RIDLEY: We tried. Russell didn't want to let it go, obviously, because it worked very well. I mean, when I say ‘worked very well,' I don't refer to success. I mean, as a piece it works very well. Storytelling, he works brilliantly. I think he enjoyed doing it, and I think it was one of those things that he thought, "Well, maybe there's a sequel where we can adjust the fantasy and bring him back from the dead."
UGO: You said that you loved the ending. What was it about that draft that you couldn't get it off the ground?
RIDLEY: We were all having a go. DreamWorks was having a go, so we were having a go. DreamWorks was addressing Rome without Maximus, because clearly he's gone, and he's dead. Therefore, it would be to the son that Maximus had probably left behind with his affair with Lucilla. You're then basing a film on a different kind of premise. Again, you're basing it on a corrupt Rome, the Rome that would be heading to its own demise. It was far more rambling and complex. Often great plays are very simple, and I think that the mechanics of the Gladiator story were really very satisfactory and worked very well.
The full article can be found here (http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/tristanandisolde/interview.asp).