Russell Crowe says 'Gladiator II' failed because it lacked original film's 'moral core'

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.

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The "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, he realized that "from the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theaters than men."

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"You think that on the surface ‘Gladiator’ is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge, but it’s not about revenge. It is a movie for women because it is about vengeance," he explained. "[‘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."

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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.

It went on to become the second-highest grossing film of 2000 and won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Crowe.

The second film stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, the son of Maximus, who returns to Rome as a prisoner and is trained to be a gladiator for Macrinus, a former slave played by Denzel Washington, who has plans to overthrow the twin emperors.

"All we had to do was put the clothes on and start talking," Washington said at a Los Angeles screening of the movie in October 2024. "I’m serious. What Ridley did, which was great, is he built Rome… When we would walk around, you were in Rome [with] 10,000 extras and horses. I mean, it was make-believe, it was play."