Russell Crowe is opening up about his career-defining role and why he thinks efforts to replicate the magic of the film with a sequel failed.During a panel at the Taormina Film Festival, the 62-year-old actor spoke about the sequel to "Gladiator," noting he believed it was unsuccessful because it was missing the "moral core" of the original 2000 movie, per Variety."When 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," he said of the original film."This 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’t make any sense because that destroys the journey."He explained that director Ridley Scott agreed with him that an intimate scene between him and Connie Nielsen would take away from the "emotional core" of the film and excluded it from the movie.Crowe thinks "Gladiator II" wasn't a success because it lacked a "moral code." (Aitor Rosas Sune/WWD via Getty Images; Universal/Getty Images)'GLADIATOR' STAR RUSSELL CROWE DONATES THOUSANDS TO HELP SAVE STUNTMAN'S LEGThe "Les Misérables" star went on to say he found it interesting for executives "to destroy that moral centre" in the 2024 sequel."It’s very interesting because the second movie barely took the same box office that the first movie took.
That’s 20 years later," he said."When you apply how much of a change there’s been on the value of a dollar, they failed.
They failed because they didn’t understand why [the original movie] was successful — it had a moral core."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's gross box office number would have been much more.Crowe explained that while the studio didn't know why the film was such a success,...