Gladiator II, director Ridley Scott’s sequel to the acclaimed original film, Gladiator (2000), hits theaters on November 22. Although critics who’ve attended advanced screenings largely adore the film, starring Paul Mescal, not everyone is thrilled. University of Chicago classics professor Dr. Shadi Bartsch, for instance, took to the media this week to decry Scott’s epic as “total Hollywood bullshit.”
It’s not the first time that Scott has faced outcry from the academic community. His 2023 biopic Napoleon drew criticism last year for perpetuating the fake news that Napoleon blew off the Great Sphinx’s nose, alongside the myth that the French emperor was self-made. “Get a life,” Scott later responded to his scholarly detractors.
Pedro Pascal as Marcus Acacius. Image: Paramount Pictures.
Bartsch’s gripes with Scott’s latest flick start with a scene that appears just 40 seconds into the film’s first trailer, which debuted three months ago, depicting a flooded Coliseum teeming with sharks. Although Bartsch admitted the Coliseum was sometimes flooded for Naval battles, she noted, “I don’t think Romans knew what a shark was.”
Scott’s sequel echoes his original, chronicling again the crusade of a disgruntled Roman—Lucius (Paul Mescal), who appears to be the son of the first film’s protagonist—against the empire. At 90 seconds in, that same trailer features Lucius facing off against a rhinoceros. Bartsch has diagnosed this bit partially true. “Martial wrote a poem in 80 A.D. about a rhinoceros tossing a bull up to the sky,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. But, the poet was specifically referencing the single-horned Indian rhino, whose Roman appearances the writers Stabo and Pliny also recorded, rather than the two-horned species that features in Gladiator II. Plus, there’s no proof gladiators rode them.
Paul Mescal as Lucius in Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures. Image: Paramount Pictures.
Critics are already hailing Denzel Washington’s portrayal of the sly, lighthearted arms dealer Macrinus as perhaps his greatest performance yet. One scene that features in the first trailer (as well as the second one released just last month) depicts Macrinus in a cafe. Such spaces didn’t start popping up in Roman territory until the 18th century, well after the empire fell. And while Bartsch hasn’t seen the movie herself, her Hollywood Reporter interviewer did. He mentioned the presence of a Roman nobleman reading a newspaper, about 1,200 years before the printing press arrived. “They did have daily news,” Bartsch told him, “but it was carved and placed at certain locations.”
Denzel Washington as Macrinus in Gladiator II. Image: Paramount Pictures.
Will a few inaccuracies harm society? “It depends on whether the changes lead us to misconstrue the nature of the past,” Bartsch told me over email. “The Roman emperors put on all sorts of bloodthirsty entertainment in the arena, so a few extra sharks don’t matter.”
But Bartsch also wonders whether dramatization is truly necessary for good cinema. “Wouldn’t it be just as interesting to know that Domitian had criminals dressed up as famous mythological characters (for example, Prometheus or Orpheus) so that they could be killed in the arena according to the legend?” she continued. “Or better yet, to inquire into what it was about the Romans that would let them enjoy people being torn to pieces in front of their eyes?” Later this month, the box office will decide.