Coming clean several months ago on why he believes 2024’s Gladiator II failed as a sequel to its 2000 predecessor, actor Russel Crowe uncorked a gutsily insightful statement that has hung with me ever since. His words back then landed with a bit of a jolt, particularly in the glare of today’s dominant libertine vibe. And those ruminations apparently meant enough to the Gladiator star that he repeated them more recently.
In a December 2025 interview with Australia’s Triple J radio, the sixty-two-year-old New Zealander opined about the original epic’s resonance: “It wasn’t the pomp. It wasn’t the circumstance. It wasn’t the action. It was the moral core.”
Six-months later at the Taormina Film Festival, Crowe elaborated: “[‘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.”
Concerning its successor released two years ago? “Rusty” spares few words, insisting Gladiator II painfully faltered because the powers-that-be were clueless concerning the previous movie’s captivating dynamic: It was a “really unfortunate example,” he avers, “of even the people in that engine room not actually understanding what made the first one special.”
For the dozen people on the planet unfamiliar with the plotline of 2000’s Best Picture winner, Fox News’s Lori A. Bashian summarizes: “The original film followed Crowe as Maximus, a once-powerful general who is sold into slavery and trained as a gladiator after the emperor’s son gets jealous of him and kills his family.”
For its part, the follow-up unexpectedly reveals its main character — Lucius — is actually Maximus’ “secret son”, the result of an illicit (adulterous) affair he had with a former love-interest. “Considering much of Maximus’ journey kicks off as a result of the murder of his wife and child,” Michael Cripe notes, Russel Crowe “wasn’t exactly pleased with the decision to retroactively and significantly alter his past.”
The famously feisty thespian doesn’t beat around the bush [Language warning]: “So you’re saying at the same time he had this relationship with his wife he was f**king this other girl? What are you talking about? It’s crazy.”
It turns out, hints of this artistic incongruity were already brewing during Gladiator‘s production a quarter century ago: “[T]he thing is there was a daily fight on that set. … to keep that moral core of the character,” Crowe recounted. “The amount of times they suggested sex scenes and stuff like that for Maximus, it’s like, you’re taking away his power.”
“I just kept pushing back,” he continued.
“I said, ‘This is a story about a man who’s avenging the death of his wife and his child. There cannot be a moment on that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense… that destroys the journey’. … We were shooting for something really, really old fashioned and the studio kind of, at the time, didn’t quite understand why.”
Rusty credits this sensitive, restrained approach with the appeal Gladiator earned with female ticket-buyers; (he claims even more women flocked to the film than men).
Following the arrival of the sequel? … a different outcome. He reports consternated ladies would accost him in public, “What’s going on? It’s like, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!’” (In my case, I only decided to shell out to see the 2000 movie in a theater after a friend told me how moved his wife was by Maximus’s passion for his cherished – and perished — family.)
The box-office haul of the respective releases suggests the three-times Best-Actor nominee’s acerbic analysis is on to something. Adjusting for inflation, 2000’s blockbuster — the second-highest grossing film of that year — earned nearly double what number two brought in.
And, far as I can tell, no one was stumping for Gladiator II as deserving a Best Picture statuette.
I’d go even farther than Crowe, however, in dissecting the first movie’s inspirational merits. Sure, qualities like devotion to family, marital fidelity and self-control are endorsed via the exploits of Maximus Decimus Meridius; but Gladiator reaches well beyond that. Friendship — of the healthy male variety, not it’s ersatz, sexualized counterfeit — is extolled. Virtues of fortitude, loyalty and sacrifice shine. There’s a nod to the necessity – and power — of upright leadership (the erstwhile general’s influence transforms a gaggle of wretched slaves into a disciplined fighting force; “If we stay together, we survive.”
An acknowledgement of the spirit world’s centrality — specifically the “after-life” — additionally plays a front-and-center role in Maximus’s heart-rending narrative (“What we do in life, echoes in eternity!“) More than one figure in Gladiator — its main character among them — is motivated by the conviction there is more to this life than merely this life. (Nota bene: While the movie fails to promote a biblical view of faith, it’s hearty repudiation of brute philosophical materialism, nonetheless, is to be applauded.)
One could do worse than encapsulate Gladiator‘s coruscating strong points by the film’s oft-repeated motto: “Strength and honor“. And too many of these are blindingly absent — or even contravened — in Gladiator II.
True indeed, people are “fallen”, flawed. They’re also decidedly more than crass meat-machines. Men and women, beyond mere flesh and blood, are spiritual beings, ensouled, created in “the image of God” (Genesis 1:26). So, they respond reliably to notions of transcendence. Something is stirred in people when the more elevated aspects of life are put on display.
Twice now, the most visible player of the original Gladiator has paid homage — perhaps inadvertently — to that pressing reality. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t all that inadvertent? It was Russel Crowe who described the film as “old-fashioned”, after all … not I.
It seems God keeps poking at earth-dwellers, reminding us in all manner of ways — often surprising ones — we are fashioned for something far greater than mere comfort, cost-free convenience, fleeting gratification, entertainment. The specter of the everlasting hovers doggedly over the doings of human beings. When we attempt to ignore that indispensable aspect of existence, it’s evident; it’s felt.
Each in its own way, Gladiator and Gladiator II – the former commendably, the latter regrettably — make that clear.
Steve Pauwels is pastor of Church of the King of Derry/Londonderry, NH; managing editor Striker Journal; former radio/podcast host; married, father to three sons, grandfather to four grandkids. Writer, exercise enthusiast, Dunkin’ Donuts and Waffle House fan. Committed to see the Kingdom of God and His Son Jesus Christ impact every part of life.
