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A little over six months on, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” is seen as a bit of a misfire depending upon whom you talk to.
The title pulled in an impressive $462.2 million at the box-office, but considering its net production budget of $210 million it was likely not the giant hit the studio wanted it to be.
Reviews were overall positive, albeit softly so, while its awards nominations were limited mostly to costumes and Denzel Washington’s supporting performance.
Now the original “Gladiator” star, Russell Crowe, popped up at the Taormina Film Festival recently to talk about the film which he dubs as having “failed” in comparison to the first.
Why? Because it misunderstood the reasons behind the first film’s popularity and its emotional impact:
“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. That’s 20 years later… When you apply how much of a change there’s been on the value of a dollar, they failed. They failed because they didn’t understand why [the original movie] was successful — it had a moral core.”
He goes on to explain he took a hard moral stance in the first film which included stopping producers that were pushing for a sex scene:
“When we were shooting that film, there was a lot of pressure. The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters. I kept pushing back. This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child. There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because that destroys the journey.
Luckily for me, Ridley, even though he’d love a sex scene between me and Connie Nielsen, agreed with me back then that that was the emotional core of the film.
The studio at the time didn’t quite understand why [it was a success]. That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize: from the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theaters than men. You think that 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 is a movie for women because it is about vengeance.
[‘Gladiator’] was successful because it had a moral core. In a way, 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. “
Crowe is at the Sicilian festival for the world premiere of Australian action thriller “Bear Country” starring Aaron Paul, Nina Dobrev and Luke Evans. Crowe plays an aging club owner whose dreams of retirement go awry.
Source: Yahoo
The post Russell Crowe On Why “Gladiator II” ‘Failed’ appeared first on Dark Horizons.
