Russell Crowe inGladiatorDreamWorks
It took more than 20 year , but they ultimately got around to making a continuation toGladiator , the rock candy - the - Colosseum phenomenon that conquered the boxwood agency and won the Best Picture Oscar at the start of this century . Ridley Scott ’s belated return to an Ancient Rome of swords , sandals , and teeming CGI crowds at long last arrives in American theater this weekend , ready to satiate the bloodlust of a manifold hoi polloi beforehand of the Thanksgiving holiday . Whether moviegoer will flock toGladiator IIas bounteously as they did to its beloved forerunner remain to be seen . Twenty - four years is a recollective meter . AndPaul Mescal , magnetic actor though he can be , is no Russell Crowe .
However wellGladiator IIdoes , one thing ’s for sure : It could have been weirder . Like , alotweirder . For proof , one need only consider the version theydidn’tmake — a particular , rejected pitch for aGladiatorsequel that ’s become about as fabled , in its unrealized way , as the fallen paladin it would have resurrected . Back in the early 2000s , Nick Cave — yes , thatNick Cave , the musician — spell a order of payment . HisGladiator IIfeatured no gladiators . It discover Maximus returning from the dead ( ! ) on a delegacy to ruin Christianity ( ! ! ) . And it ended in the present twenty-four hours , with our ageless hero washing his hands in a Pentagon bathroom .
Russell Crowe inGladiatorDreamWorks
The script persist a wild what - if of Hollywood story . It ’s also not the onlyGladiatorsequel that died on the vine . Multiple ideas were cast aside around in the years following the original ’s monumental succeeder . One reportedly would have functioned a bit likeThe Godfather Part II — part sequel and part prequel .
What they all had in common , for a while , was the same vexatious quandary : How do you doGladiatorwithout Russell Crowe ? So much of that movie ’s power rests on the commanding Kiwi actor , whose turn as Maximus won him an Academy Award and motivate him to stardom . Casting him in a sequel would require some kind of cheat , some way of life to get around the terminate ofGladiator , when Crowe ’s character said his rather final goodbyes and was reunited with his murdered family .
TheGladiator IIopening this weekend prefer to simply move beyond Maximus , taking the bequest continuation road of pass protagonist obligation to his bastard son . But in the 2000s , a Crowe - lessGladiatorstill seemed inconceivable . It was Crowe , in fact , who purportedly commissioned Cave to write a conscription of the subsequence — and to fancy out how to work his fibre back into the story . On a 2013 episode ofWTF with Marc Maron , Caverecalls asking Crowehow he could be in part two if he pall in part one . “ Yeah , yousort that out , ” he was tell .
The Bad Seeds frontman , who then had only one screenplay to his name ( he ’d finally write a couple more for Aussie countryman John Hillcoat , including the terrific Outback oaterThe Proposition ) , devised a supernatural solution . His script , which can now be easilyfound and read online , open with Maximus awakening not in Elysium — the golden - hued hereafter where he ’s imply to have landed at the end ofGladiator — but rather in a raw purgatory where souls cower together in a Brobdingnagian , squalid refugee camp . A mere 14 pages into the playscript , Maximus confronts the ailing R.C. god . to be reunite with his family , he must return to the commonwealth of the living , and lay off the rise of a messiah - similar soma circularize belief in a single immortal .
Not for nothing did Cave subtitle his scriptChrist Killer . Which is n’t to say that Jesus is actually a case in his version ofGladiator II — at least not the draft you may find out online . all the same , Cave did treat the assignment as an excuse to search the clangor between sure-enough and raw religion , respectively represented by develop interpretation of the two young boys we receive inGladiator . One of them is Maximus ’ slain boy , Marius , cryptically resurrected and now a devout Christian being hunted and persecuted by the Roman army . The other is a likewise elderly Lucius , the Logos of Connie Nielsen ’s character inGladiator , who might also be Maximus ’ fry , and who has become a cruel , trivial tyrant in adulthood . ( Lucius playing a key function seems to be the one idea share by every important draft ofGladiator II , including the one they film . )
It ’s no peachy mystery whythisscript was n’t filmed . The Colosseum does n’t show up until about 70 pages in , when we get a brief naval battle ( à la a scenery that made it into the ruined sequel , though there are alligators alternatively of sharks in Cave ’s take ) . Again , there are no actual gladiator in his screenplay ; Cave does n’t replicate the almost sports - moving picture arc of the original , and in fact , military reserve most of the play for the climax . WhileGladiatorstrongly suggest at a man beyond our own , it mostly fix itself in historic reality . Cave ’s take onGladiator IIgoes full myth , shifting the story full into the realm of surreal illusion . It would have made for a very strange anddifferentsequel , and the studios do n’t really do unusual and different .
Reports conflict on who exactly forbid the draft . Cave , on that same podcast episode , claims that Crowe did n’t wish it . But in arecent interviewwith TheNew York Times , Scott says it was producer Steven Spielberg who said “ nah . ” Either way , it ’s impossible to guess thisGladiator IImaking it to the screen as written . It ’s too rash , too bonkers , too low on what made the original such a bad strike . AGladiatorsequel without any field fight ? pipe dream on ! And the explicit focal point on the slaughter of Christians was in all probability too risky for Hollywood — at least beforeThe Passion of the Christ , which owes a pretty clear stylistic debt toGladiator , demonstrated the profitability of such subject topic .
By virtuousness of its audacity , Cave ’s take onGladiator IIhas cumulate a cult following over the years . ( “ Make Nick Cave’sGladiator 2Script , You Cowards,”crowed /Filmlast class . ) There ’s a fate to admire about it . Cave ’s dialog has flair and flavour : “ He is an fomenter , ” says the god Jupiter . “ He squeezes the bellow of objection … a short wind … a mere comforter … but with the presage of bedlam . ” And it would be exciting to see someone — like Scott or another maestro of epics — execute the more mythic passages , such as the opening stretchability in the sunless oblivion . That said , Cave ’s peculiar parable is hard lacking in just about everything that made the original a rouse good time . And it end just as it ’s getting interesting , with a montage of Maximus press his manner across time , a soldier of all state of war ( an estimation later plunk up , probably coincidently , by the awfulX - valet de chambre Origins : Wolverine ) .
You read Cave’sGladiator IIand you understand why it does n’t subsist beyond the page . Cave himself seems to read , too , confessing that he wrote it acknowledge it would probably never actually get made . The version theydidmake is almost sure as shooting more savvy — a smart box seat - office staff gaming , much closer in commercial , cornball spirit to Scott ’s Y2k hit . All the same , it ’s tough not to contrarily wish that the stars had someone ordinate for Cave’sGladiator II . The movie ’s chess opening weekend would have made the response toJoker : Folie à Deuxlook approve . Every multiplex would have become an enraged , unruly Colosseum .
prizefighter IIopens in theaters everywhere on Friday , November 22 . you’re able to register Nick Cave ’s untaped , mayhap unfilmable drafthere .
