Russell Crowe has decided that enough time has passed to openly criticize the 2024 sequel to Gladiator, the film that cemented his status as a Hollywood A-lister over 25 years ago. The New Zealander famously played Maximus, the titular gladiator, in Sir Ridley Scott's original film—a Roman general on a quest for vengeance after the murder of his wife and son, following his refusal to swear loyalty to the corrupt emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Crowe, who won an Oscar for his performance, was not involved in the sequel, which starred Paul Mescal as Lucius Verus, the secret son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), daughter of former emperor Marcus Aurelius and sister to Commodus.
Crowe's criticism at Taormina Film Festival
Over the weekend at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, Crowe criticized Gladiator II in no uncertain terms, calling it a 'failure.' He pointed to its box office, which was nearly identical to the original's but, over two decades later, did not account for inflation or its significantly larger budget ($347 million for the first versus $344.3 million for the second). While I don't think Gladiator II was a failure—I reviewed it favorably and found it delivered on spectacle, with Mescal rising to the occasion—there was something missing in Lucius's character development. Tied as he was to his parents, even ardent fans agree it didn't reach the heights of the first film.
The moral core argument
Crowe explained how he resisted filming a sex scene with co-star Nielsen in the original Gladiator because 'this is a story about a man who's avenging the death of his wife and his child.' He added, 'There cannot be a moment on that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn't make any sense because that destroys the journey.' While he faced pushback, director Scott agreed that this was the 'moral core' of the film. In Crowe's view, the sequel 'destroys that moral centre' by focusing on Maximus's son with Lucilla—a relationship not central to Maximus's vengeance in the first film.
Gladiator as a romance, not revenge
Initially skeptical, I began to understand Crowe's point as he described how the first Gladiator aimed for 'something really, really old-fashioned'—the simple devotion of a husband and father at its heart. Mescal's Lucius had similar motivations with the deaths of his wife and child, but his journey was also tied to discovering his parentage, diluting the clear-cut vengeance. Crowe noted, 'On the surface, Gladiator is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge. But it's not about revenge. It's a movie for women because it's about vengeance—a subtle difference.' Audiences vindicated him, with the film skewing more female than male.
Gladiator isn't a revenge movie; it's a romance. As Crowe argued, that's why it became one of the most popular films of all time, consistently aired on television and streaming. 'We all want to be that guy who can stay that strong, if you're a man. And if you're a woman, we all want a man to love us in that way,' he said. While the gender line may not be so neat, everyone wants to be loved enough to inspire vengeance—in this life or the next.
