While not every film needs to have heart (I adore plenty of movies that are just slop), it certainly helps if you want your project to convey drama and stakes. Recently, while talking about Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator II, Russell Crowe, who played Maximus in the 2000 original, says the sequel lacked a “moral core,” and that’s why audiences failed to connect with it.
Crowe comments on Maximus’ Gladiator journey
Speaking with Deadline, Crowe also said he pushed back on his character engaging in sex scenes, thinking it did not make sense for a man grieving the loss of his wife.
“I just kept pushing back,” he recounted. “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’.”
“They fought me, they sent me letters about it and everything, and I just stuck to my guns. 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.”
“We were shooting for something really, really old fashioned and the studio kind of, at the time, didn’t quite understand why,” he continued.
Crowe went on to say that he felt vindicated by his actions after analysts revealed that more women than men saw Gladiator. He says that, on the surface, Gladiator is a movie for men, but if it were, it would be about revenge. However, Crowe thinks the movie is about vengeance, and there’s a distinct difference between the two. He wanted Maximus to stay on track, and adding sex scenes with other women could become a thorn in the character’s healing journey.
Crowe on Gladiator II lacking a moral core
“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.”
I agree with Crowe about not punching his ticket to Pound Town in Gladiator. I have my own issues with sex in film (mostly, I find it egregious, sensationalized, and woefully inaccurate to the real thing), but I understand what he’s getting at. This example is going to sound stupid, but when I think of ridiculous sex in film, I think of the scene in Alien: Covenant where two characters get busy in a shower during a crisis. I can appreciate wanting to feel any other emotion than terror, but c’mon! Rewatch the movie (or don’t), you’ll see.
What do you think about Crowe’s assessment of Gladiator II and his fight to keep Maximus out of the bedroom in the original film? Let us know in the comments section below.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed