Here’s your hot take for Monday: Ridley Scott has gone from being a filmmaker to a movie manufacturer, pumping out trusted, branded entertainment. He’s recently said that the “Alien” franchise could essentially go on forever, he’s producing the upcoming sequel to “Blade Runner,” and he’s still got his eye on the much discussed followup to “Gladiator.”
“I know how to bring him back,” the director said at SXSW (via EW). “I was having this talk with the studio — ‘but he’s dead.’ But there is a way of bringing him back. Whether it will happen I don’t know. ‘Gladiator’ was 2000, so Russell [Crowe]’s changed a little bit. He’s doing something right now but I’m trying to get him back down here.”
Bringing back the deceased Maximus isn’t as zany as you think, and has been percolating for awhile. Way back in the day, Nick Cave was asked to try coming up with a script for the sequel. And needless to say, it was kinda out there.
“[Maximus] goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods, who are dying in heaven because there’s this one god, there’s this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers,” Cave said in 2013.
“[It would be revealed] that the main guy was his son so he has to kill his son and he was tricked by the gods. He becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20 minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild,” he added. Damn.
The proposed movie was called “Christ Killer” and it’s probably not a big surprise it didn’t get made. Whether or not this is the concept Scott is still going with remains to seen, but if a “Blade Runner” sequel can happen 35 years after the original, a followup to “Gladiator” doesn’t seem so impossible.
Is R. Scott trolling us at this point?!
Gladiator sequal sounds terrible
After reading that proposed method for bringing Maximus back I can only marvel at the quality of the drugs that screenwriters can get their hands on these days.
Gladiator isn’t Clash of the Titans, nor is Maximus Hercules. There WERE no gods, only petty despots, ambitious courtiers, allies, and a very human hero. Maximus died and to take that back would to be to reduce the impact of the original film. It was an excellent film that stands on its own merits and that absolutely does not demand a sequel.
I have to imagine that Sir Scott feels his mortality looming over him. Revisiting past triumphs must be terribly tempting, but the risks have got to be greater than the rewards at this point. His legacy is already assured; he can only diminish it by pursuing these backward-looking vanity projects.
“…gone from being a filmaker to a movie manufacturer…”
That says it all!
Like Spielberg
I tried to imagine how a Gladiator sequel could be decent and compliment the first movie, but I can’t come up with anything. The story is complete and the only advantage I can see in making it would be from a financial perspective. The only character from the first movie that I can imagine centering the movie on is Djimon Hounsou’s Juba. A kind of redemption story of the journey back home and coming to terms with his violent slave past. But again, doesn’t really add the the story, just tells a new story that have some overlapping scenes and characters from the first movie.
But lets face it, Ridley Scott isn’t known for quality over quantity. There are a handful of his movies that I absolutely loved. But there are even more that I didn’t. While enough of his movies are successful for him to continue a productive career as a director, I can only recommend watching about 1 out of every 3 that he has made.
Gladiator stands alone. There is no continuation of that story. Please don’t let this happen.
No No No!!!!!
I’ve sure like a lot of Scott’s movies in the past, but I fear he’s becoming the James Patterson of the movie business and just putting out movie after movie after movie and they seem, for me, to suffer from that kind of output and mentality. Like I wouldn’t read a mass produced James Patterson book if they were the only books available on Earth. Pity, as Scott was a very talented and unique director once upon a time.
My question is why would it even have to be Russell Crowe’s character?
It’s been way too long as it is. Another film based around a different gladiator wouldn’t be so bad.
sounds cool. I’d watch it…
That can’t be actually what they were planning…
To be followed by a sequal to Blackhawk Down. He seems intent on ruining all goodwill associated with his previous good movies.
From what I remember, Gladiator did not have any fantastical parts like Gods, people coming back from the dead, immortality, etc. It was set in the “real world” with real life-and-death rules. Bring Crowe’s character back to life just so you can make a sequel that nobody seems to be asking for (except Scott) seems to be a mistake and a betrayal of everything Gladiator stands for.
As big a tonal shift as it would be if you made a sequel to Bridesmaids where they all went into space.