“I don’t know if I could have handled it, because you know you’re going to be compared – ‘Oh, it’s not like the other one’ – no matter what you do, you’re not going to be able to win.And he still won!
He envisioned 12 starving baboons being released into the arena, using stunt actors to perform the high-octane fight before using CGI to create ferocious apes. “I told our stunt coordinator, Nikki Berwick, that I was going to need some short people – no taller than 5ft 5,” Scott remembers.“I wanted them all in black with masks painted to look like baboons… We went into a full-bore battle between men and apes, then we transformed the stunt people into realistic baboons with CGI.” The lengths the crew on Gladiator II went to, to create an environment that was as immersive for the actors as it is for audiences were palpable, Denzel Washington says. “It made it easy, because everybody was in the right period gear… even one major street we had – everywhere you look was Rome.
“So good for him. Good for him! The sky’s the limit for him.”
Like its predecessor, Gladiator II is also a political drama, its thrilling fights partnered with scenes of manipulation and manoeuvring by those in want of power over Rome. Lucius’s mother Lucilla, daughter of the former emperor Marcus Aurelius, has watched Roman politics unravel, both through the rule of her brother, Commodus, played by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2000 film, and in the intervening years between the events of Gladiator and Gladiator II. Now Rome is under the control of Emperors Geta and Caracalla, played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger respectively, maniacal brothers who rule in unhinged, unpredictable ways – with the help of a pet monkey. “Marcus Aurelius was the last emperor of these four emperors who had created this absolute golden age of Rome, of enormous economic growth and lots of innovation, and even further frontiers, even more people folded in under this great idea of Rome… After the death of Commodus, she’s just watched as one charlatan after another has taken over,” says Connie Nielsen, 59, who reprises the role of Lucilla. “The Praetorian Guard is basically auctioning off the rights to the kingdom, so to speak, to whoever pays the most to them.And so what you have is this absurd mirror of what Rome was supposed to be.” Because of its political through-line, it almost feels like an understatement to call Gladiator II an action film. Peppered with emotion, psychology, and historical drama, it’s got a real weight to it – a weight only made stronger by the incredibly inventive set pieces of a scale that can only come from the mind of Ridley Scott.As Washington says, describing the feeling on set,“it was watching a master orchestrate a masterpiece”. One such scene is a gripping mano a mano arena fight between the gladiators and gigantic, terrifying baboons – a scene which, Scott says, was actually inspired by a video of a real-life baboon attack on tourists in South Africa.
“No green screen, horses kicking up the dust, and people begging – just like America!” he jokes.
“Being on set with thousands of soldiers in beautiful costumes and brilliant colours, and swords, and shields, and horses made this seem like more than a movie for me,” continues Washington, who describes Gladiator II as the biggest film he’s ever been on.
“It’s a world unto itself. People are going to be blown away by what they see.”
Gladiator II is in UK cinemas on Friday, November 15.
“It was absolute chaos,” says the South Shields-born director, 86, of the attack that inspired his arena brawl.
“Baboons are carnivores.They will attack people and they’re about 40 pounds of solid muscle.They can rip a person’s arm off.”
Photo: Connie Nielsen as Lucilla.
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