Russell Crowe talks about his career-defining role and why he thinks efforts to recreate the movie’s magic in sequels have failed.
During a panel discussion at the Taormina Film Festival, the 62-year-old actor spoke about the “Gladiator” sequel, saying he believes it fails because it lacks the “moral core” of the 2000 original film, Variety reported.
“When we were shooting that movie, there was a lot of pressure. The studio and the producers[thought]there should be sex between Maximus and a female character. I kept resisting,” he said of the original film. “This is the story of a man who avenges the death of his wife and child. There can’t be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with someone. It makes no sense, because it would destroy the journey.”
He explained that he agreed with director Ridley Scott that intimate scenes between him and Connie Nielsen would take away from the film’s “emotional core” and be left out of the film.
The “Les Misérables” star went on to say that he found it interesting that management would “destroy the moral center” in the 2024 sequel.
“It’s very interesting because the second film almost didn’t get the same box office revenue as the first one, 20 years later,” he said. “They failed because they didn’t understand why[the original film]was so successful when you applied how much it changed to the value of a dollar. It had a moral core.”
The original film brought in approximately $465.5 million worldwide in 2000, and the second film earned approximately $462.11 million in 2024, but the original film’s total box office gross would have been even higher if adjusted for inflation.
Director Crowe explained that the studio had no idea why the film was so successful, but noticed that “starting in the second week of worldwide release, there were always more women in theaters than men.”
“Gladiator is superficially seen as a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men it would be about revenge, but it’s not a movie about revenge. It’s a movie about revenge, so it’s a movie for women.” “[Gladiator]was successful because it had a moral core. In a way, every man wants to be that strong and persistent. And every woman wants a man to love her like that.”
In the original film, Crowe played Maximus, a once powerful general who was sold into slavery and trained as a gladiator after the emperor’s son killed his family in a fit of jealousy.
The film became the second highest-grossing film of 2000 and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe.
In the second film, Paul Mescal plays Maximus’ son Lucius, who returns to Rome as a prisoner and is trained as a gladiator by Macrinus, played by Denzel Washington, a former slave who plans to overthrow the twin emperors.
“All we had to do was get dressed and start talking,” Washington said at a screening of the film in Los Angeles in October 2024. “I’m serious. What Ridley did, it was amazing. I mean he built Rome…When we were walking, you had 10,000 extras and horses in Rome. I mean, it was pretend, it was play.”
