Ridley Scott is one of the few directors nowadays that can approach a studio and seemingly get a blank cheque. He spent hundreds of millions on Napoleon and Gladiator 2, and yet moviegoers were split over both films. Even Russel Crowe, the star of the original Gladiator, has no love lost for the sequel.
According to Crowe, Gladiator 2 was "a really unfortunate example of even the people in that engine room not actually understanding what made the first one special ... It wasn't the circumstance. It wasn't the action. It was the moral core," he said in an interview with triple j.
Crowe also did not like the reveal that Paul Mescal's character Lucius was Maximus' illegitimate son, saying: "So you're saying at the same time he had this relationship with his wife, he was fucking this other girl? ... What are you talking about? It's crazy."
That aspect does seem to tarnish the love that Crowe shared for his fictional, murdered wife in the first film. While Gladiator 2 proved to be a spectacle, it certainly did not entertain the star of the first film.