‘We have a good relationship … as long as he doesn’t start bitching’: why Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s Gladiator 2 spat has me entertained

By any metric, Gladiator II is a gamble. The original, almost a quarter of a century ago, was the sort of phenomenon that can’t be planned. Not only was it the second highest-grossing film of 2000, and not only did it win best picture at the Oscars, but it launched Russell Crowe into the stratosphere and boosted Ridley Scott back into the A-list after almost a decade of misfires. The thought that its sequel might even come close to achieving that level of commercial and critical success is genuinely inconceivable.

Now, a naysayer might suggest that, no matter how good it is, Gladiator II is destined to only be thought of as an afterthought – a follow-up. However, as a counterpoint, I’d like to posit the argument that any project that allows Scott to do interviews is automatically a spectacular success.

Gladiator II isn’t released for another two and a half months, and yet Scott is already out there, shooting his mouth off like a man with nothing to lose. His latest interview, with Empire, touches on Crowe’s absence from the sequel. It is, conservatively speaking, a doozy.

“I think [Crowe is] still one of the best actors in the world, and I think we have a good relationship,” he told Empire. “I hope we do. As long as he doesn’t start bitching about how he wasn’t consulted. Why would I? He’s dead!”

Do you feel that? Do you feel that cool, crisp sense of calm blowing across you? This is the feeling of knowing that someone on Earth is doing the exact thing they should be doing. If you’re Scott, and you don’t spend the big unveiling of your highly anticipated new movie calling Crowe a bitch, then what’s the point of anything?

Perhaps some context might be necessary. Ever since Gladiator II was announced, Crowe – another man who essentially uses interviews as an opportunity to boot grenades into the atmosphere – has publicly wrestled with his lack of participation. During a podcast appearance recently, he went as far as to suggest that Gladiator II would miss the point of the original completely.

“I’m slightly uncomfortable with the fact they’re making another one – because, of course, I’m dead and I have no say in what gets done,” he said. “But a couple of the things I’ve heard I’m like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not in the moral journey of that particular character.’ But I can’t say anything, it’s not my place, I’m six-foot under. So we’ll see what that is like.”

Perhaps Crowe is sore that, at one point, a version of Gladiator II did exist with him in it. Some years ago, Crowe hired Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave) to write a sequel. The script that Cave turned in had Crowe’s Maximus waking up in the afterlife and is tasked by the Gods to track down and defeat the Greek god of volcanoes. And then he time travels to the present day and a giraffe gets struck by lightning. The BBC called it “the strangest sequel never made”. Spoiler alert: it didn’t get made, and Crowe went on to exclusively make films about different types of exorcists.

And so, in Scott’s Gladiator II, Maximus remains dead throughout, and Crowe seems to be a little put out about it. But even so, what sort of lunatic would dare to goad Scott into a public response. Scott is, as I have said before, the greatest interviewee on the face of the planet, precisely because the connection between his brain and his mouth is so short and slippery.

Look at what he did with Napoleon. The French didn’t like it, to which he responded to the Times: “The French don’t even like themselves.” Historians called it inaccurate, so he rhetorically asked them: “Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.” At one point, for some reason, someone asked him about the existence of aliens. His response was: “How did the Egyptians build the pyramids? Rolling 20-tonne stones on logs? Fuck off!”

This is the man that Crowe has chosen to go up against. This is the nuclear bomb he has decided to kick. So here’s what I want. I don’t care if Gladiator II is any good, even though I’m sure it will be. If Scott spends the entire promotional cycle for the movie engaged in a public spat with Crowe, I’ll be the happiest man alive.