To the surprise of no one, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II features a lot of historical inaccuracies, at least that’s according to noted scholars who happen to be in the know about such things. That’s not stopping the film from getting rave reviews ahead of its wide release on Nov. 22, though, as early previews had critics praising the performances of Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington, being blown away by the elaborate set pieces, and commenting on how much they loved the battle sequences.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Gladiator II has some scenes which Dr. Shadi Bartsch, a classics professor at the University of Chicago, called “total bullsh*t.” Like the one that features the Colosseum flooded and overrun with sharks. “I don’t think Romans knew what a shark was,” she said. Scott’s follow-up to his epic 2000 masterpiece also features gladiators riding a few rhinos, which is another aspect of the film she cried foul at, because there’s no evidence to support that ever happened, at least when it comes to the two-horned variety seen in the movie.
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Another scene features a Roman noble sitting outside a café reading – of all things – a newspaper, 1,200 years before the world was even introduced to the printing press. Bartsch adds that while that particular time period did have news reported daily, it wasn’t something that was readily available to anyone who wanted to find out the latest gossip, and they certainly wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it over a nice cup of tea.
“They did have daily news — Acta Diuma — but it was carved and placed at certain locations. You had to go to it, you couldn’t hold it at a café. Also, they didn’t have cafés!”
Gladiator II’s Historical Inaccuracies Don’t Really Matter
Obviously, if Roman soldiers were wearing Nike’s and decked out in football helmets, then sure, we could see the film being picked apart for its glaring inaccuracies, but in this case, do these small details really matter? Not really. The same thing happened when Gladiator premiered 24 years ago, and it happened when Scott released Napoleon last year. “By the time you get to 2024, it’s all speculation,” the 86-year-old director said of his epic sequel.
We wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but he’s right in a way: a lot of it is speculation, because while historians and scholars spend their lives studying a subject like ancient Rome, nothing is absolute. They weren’t there, and the historical record is something that’s always changing, so who’s to say that the Romans didn’t know what sharks were, since Bartsch herself pointed out that “naval battles were held in the arena.”
When it comes right down to it, Gladiator II is going to be a fun movie regardless of its inaccuracies. Fans don’t flock to the theater to see something like this and expect every minute detail to be correct, no; they flock to the theater to see Washington command the screen as he always does, Mescal to kick Pedro Pascal’s butt, and the tremendously brutal fight scenes that the series has become known for. At this point, that’s really all we need to be satisfied. Who cares if there’s a newspaper or two? Check out Gladiator II in theaters on Nov. 22 from Paramount Pictures.
- Release Date
- November 22, 2024
- Cast
- Paul Mescal , Pedro Pascal , Denzel Washington , Connie Nielsen , Joseph Quinn , Fred Hechinger , Derek Jacobi , May Calamawy , Peter Mensah , Matt Lucas , Alexander Karim , Tim McInnerny , Lee Charles , Chidi Ajufo , Alfie Tempest , Riana Duce , Chi Lewis Parry , Paul Candelent , Hadrian Howard , Alexander Simkin , Mikhail Basmadjian , Matthew Charlery-Smith , Maxime Durand , Lior Raz