{"id":6193,"date":"2026-06-20T04:15:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/russell-crowe-says-gladiator-ii-failed-because-it-lacked-original-films-moral-core\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T04:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:15:30","slug":"russell-crowe-says-gladiator-ii-failed-because-it-lacked-original-films-moral-core","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/russell-crowe-says-gladiator-ii-failed-because-it-lacked-original-films-moral-core\/","title":{"rendered":"Russell Crowe says &#8216;Gladiator II&#8217; failed because it lacked original film&#8217;s &#8216;moral core&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F3%2F2026%2F06%2Fnewspress-collage-ohfzbxx04-1781928166071.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261781913803\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft wp-block-nypost-editor-partner-article-links\">\n<\/aside>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/2026\/05\/26\/celebrity-news\/russell-crowe-warns-autograph-hunters-gathered-outside-his-paris-hotel-dont-f-king-push-in-on-me\/\">Russell Crowe\u00a0is opening up <\/a>about his career-defining role and why he thinks efforts to replicate the magic of the film with a sequel failed.<\/p>\n<p>During a panel at the Taormina Film Festival, the 62-year-old actor spoke about <a href=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/2026\/05\/26\/celebrity-news\/russell-crowe-defends-confronting-autograph-seekers-outside-paris-hotel\/\">the sequel to \u201cGladiator,\u201d<\/a> noting he believed it was unsuccessful because it was missing the \u201cmoral core\u201d of the original 2000 movie, per\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/global\/russell-crowe-sex-scenes-gladiator-highlander-reboot-1236780557\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Variety<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen 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,\u201d he said of the original film. \u201cThis 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\u2019t make any sense because that destroys the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He explained that director Ridley Scott agreed with him that an intimate scene between him and Connie Nielsen would take away from the \u201cemotional core\u201d of the film and excluded it from the movie.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/entertainment\/taylor-swift-recounts-nightmare-audition-eddie-redmayne-les-miserables\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/a>\u201d star went on to say he found it interesting for executives \u201cto destroy that moral centre\u201d in the 2024 sequel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very interesting because the second movie barely took the same box office that the first movie took. That\u2019s 20 years later,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you apply how much of a change there\u2019s been on the value of a dollar, they failed. They failed because they didn\u2019t understand why [the original movie] was successful \u2014 it had a moral core.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Russell Crowe during a fight scene in \u201cGladiator.\u201d <span class=\"credit\">Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Pedro Pascal, Paul Mescal in a fight scene from \u201cGladiator II.\u201d <span class=\"credit\">\u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The original film brought in about $465.5 million at the global box office in 2000, while the second earned about $462.1 in 2024, but adjusted for inflation, the original film\u2019s gross box office number would have been much more.<\/p>\n<p>Crowe explained that while the studio didn\u2019t know why the film was such a success, he realized that \u201cfrom the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theaters than men.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou think that on the surface \u2018Gladiator\u2019 is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge, but it\u2019s not about revenge. It is a movie for women because it is about vengeance,\u201d he explained. \u201c[\u2018Gladiator\u2019] 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\u2019re a man. And if you\u2019re a woman, we all want a man to love us in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>The cat of \u201cGladiator II\u201d attend the Los Angeles Premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Nov. 18, 2024. <span class=\"credit\">Getty Images for Paramount Pictu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption>Russell Crowe signs a helmet at the conclusion of the Taormina Film Fest in Sicily on June 14, 2026. <span class=\"credit\">Santo Nicolosi \/ SplashNews.com<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The original film followed Crowe as Maximus, a once-powerful general who is sold into slavery and trained as a gladiator after the\u00a0emperor\u2019s son gets jealous\u00a0of him and kills his family.<\/p>\n<p>It went on to become the second-highest grossing film of 2000 and won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Crowe.<\/p>\n<p>The second film stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, the son of Maximus, who returns to Rome as a prisoner and is trained to be a gladiator for Macrinus, a <a href=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/2024\/11\/14\/entertainment\/denzel-washingtons-gay-kissing-scene-in-gladiator-ii-cut\/\">former slave played by Denzel Washington,<\/a> who has plans to overthrow the twin emperors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll we had to do was put the clothes on and start talking,\u201d Washington said at a\u00a0Los Angeles\u00a0screening of the movie in October 2024. \u201cI\u2019m serious. What Ridley did, which was great, is he built Rome\u2026 When we would walk around, you were in Rome [with] 10,000 extras and horses. I mean, it was make-believe, it was play.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pagesix.com\/2026\/06\/20\/entertainment\/russell-crowe-says-gladiator-ii-failed-because-it-lacked-original-films-moral-core\/\" target=\"_blank\">Source link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russell Crowe\u00a0is opening up about his career-defining role and why he thinks efforts to replicate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/newspress-collage-ohfzbxx04-1781928166071.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/login9ja.com\/global\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}