00:00Writing is the most important entity you can possibly have before beginning anything.
00:08When I started to think about a sequel, I met with David Scarborough and we sat and talked because I had certain parts in my head.
00:16He said, essentially, I'd like you to start writing Gladiator 2, and of course I was really excited.
00:22There was a lot of wrestling with all the specific challenges that go with having a movie that's 25 years later,
00:29having a movie where both the hero and the villain die at the very end.
00:33But the first movie, in its wisdom, teed up this character of Lucius,
00:38and that created the idea of telling the story almost like the Odyssey, in a sense.
00:43The Odyssey takes place many years after the end of the Iliad,
00:47so it's the idea of picking up these characters much further down the road and telling a story from a very different point of view.
00:55The story they came up with, it was brilliant. It speaks to a deep human experience.
01:02The idea that struck me as most interesting is the idea of somebody who has been cast to the wind
01:08and has fled from Rome and been cut off from everything.
01:12We wanted to create this kind of Shakespearean rage within Lucius,
01:16which is the idea that the most bitter thing that he could possibly find upon returning to Rome
01:21is that his mother is with the guy who killed his wife and destroyed his city.
01:26Use your rage in my service, and you will have his head.
01:31It drives him further from Rome, and so it gives him much further to go
01:36when he finally does this 180 over the course of the movie.
01:39The gates of hell are open night and day. We are amused.
01:45We knew we wanted to have these sort of emperor characters that were from history,
01:49but we didn't want to be so direct as to simply redo the first narrative,
01:54and so we chose instead the idea of setting up a bunch of possible nemeses.
01:59Politics follows power.
02:01So a lot of it was about these sort of red herrings or morally ambiguous characters
02:06that might go one way or the other, and then weaving our way towards realizing
02:11that Macrinus is the greatest danger.
02:13Rome must fall. You will be my instrument.
02:17I will never be your instrument in this life or the next.
02:21Mozilla was always the emotional center of it.
02:24It's about these two people are torn apart from one another and how they become reunited.
02:29I think that's a really powerful driver in movies is this idea of having two people
02:35that you know belong together and yet seeing them split apart.
02:39Now that I've found you, I am not afraid.
02:44One of the big questions was how are we going to manifest Maximus in the movie
02:49because even if he's not there on screen, he's there dramatically,
02:53and how do you create his spirit within the movie without actually having him
02:58walking around whispering in Lucia's ear?
03:00Take your father's strength. His name is Maximus, and I see him in you.
03:05Ultimately, we wanted to deliver something that is not the same
03:10and yet is worthy of standing next to the First General.
Comments