Ridley Scott recounts Gladiator II: “I thought a sequel could have been atrocious”

Interview with the director about the sequel to his 2000 epic, Gladiator 3, the reunion with Denzel Washington, and the “evil motherfuckers” that he said were the Romans.

Ridley Scott, him again, already him: we spoke to him exactly a year ago, at the release of his Napoleon with Joaquin Phoenix already very strong. We then made an appointment for next year, for another small series film called Gladiator II. Promise kept: here we are again in zoom with him as the film is released in French theaters this Wednesday, November 13. The director, who will celebrate his 86th birthday on November 30, is in equal form: that of a filmmaker captain of industry, who tackles big projects with astonishing vitality, always thinking of the next challenge. We turn on the computer camera, and off we go.

So how are you?
I'm already working on my next film, so I can't wait for this to be finished…it'll be better after the premiere. We'll do something big, what are we talking about? 20,000 copies? We will go to London, to Spain, to Paris. I try not to go too far – there are only 22 hours in a day, you know. (he smiles)

You do Gladiator II but at the same time you are preparing another film. For other filmmakers, it would have been a lifelong obsession, but for you, it's almost a project like any other…
Yes, and I was preparing Gladiator II when I did Napoleon. Look, my only film school was advertising. When I advertised 1984 for Steve Jobs, I already had quite a bit of experience. I didn't do any social drama in a two-room-kitchen (kitchen sink drama) or soap operas. It was in advertising that I learned the technique, and that I became a very good cinematographer. Finally, above all, I understood that filming is much faster when you are your own operator. God is in the details. I am a fanatic of details – pictorial rather than verbal.

Still, it seems like you're not obsessed with the idea of ​​making a film.
No not at all. It's not that I'm sloppy, but at the end of the day… the only critic who matters is me. I want to be able to look at what I did without feeling ashamed. It's not pretentious. It's a question of speed. Do Napoleon in 48 days, it's really shocking! Normally it would have taken 120 days! And yet the scale of the film is massive. The reason: using 11 cameras makes filming eleven times faster.

At the same time, make a sequel to Gladiator is not innocent. There are not the same expectations as for, say, House of Gucci. It’s one of your most beloved films…
And that’s why it took so long to launch! People kept telling me about it! Look, the great thing about platforms is that the whole planet can see your work, all the time. In Japan, they tell me that my best film is the fucking Duelists…How is this done? Because it's online there. Your movies are digitally preserved, and they look better than ever. Even more beautiful than in the cinema, the blacks and colors are better. Finally, on a good screen. Believe me: put 600 bullets in good equipment and you will be happy with it, whereas on a crappy TV… Anyway, back to Gladiator II. People love the first film, watch it on platforms, and four years ago, people started talking to me about a sequel, I balked… I told myself that a sequel could really be atrocious. I just say, “OK, then write me a script.” Do it blueprint of the film – the plan that traces its foundations. Let's start from scratch: there is one survivor, Lucilla, played by Connie Nielsen, she can come back. And Lucius. What happened to him? Exiled by his mother after the death of Commodus? There we could work. It started like that. Looking at our options. It was the same with Napoleon, only more complicated, because well, Napoleon's life, holy shit…

Gladiator II, the ultimate entertainment from Ridley Scott [critique]

Finding Denzel twenty years later American Gangsterwith Russell Crowe, what was it like?
I wanted a bad guy, that's all. When I made the first GladiatorI asked myself: “where are the old people?” Richard Harris is alive? Okay. Oliver Reed? OK? David Hemmings? A red wig, and damn. Oliver Reed was very eccentric, OK, but what a personality. With him, with them, you have something in front of the camera that you can't schedule or decide. Harris told me: “I’ll give you two takes, then I’ll forget what I’m doing.” I could screw up at any time, but the on-screen value is priceless. And Denzel… filming in Harlem with him, it was great, I loved doing American Gangster. Twenty years later, I needed to Gladiator II of an equally formidable actor, but who can above all be a real bad guy. I said Denzel right away, a bit randomly. (laughs) I sent him a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Editor’s note: French orientalist painter whose painting Pollice Verso was the primary inspiration for Gladiator first of the name), entitled The Moor: the illustration of a spectacular black man, with muscles like that, dressed in orange and blue fabrics. A lord, a rich merchant, obviously. I said to Denzel: there you go, that's your character. He said, “OK, I’ll do it.”

Okay, and how do you explain the legacy of Gladiator ?
I think that's the spiritual aspect of the film, actually. I didn't want the sequel to lose sight of that. We had to talk about loss. From the beginning of the film, there is mourning, and he himself finds himself on the threshold of the world of the dead. He comes back, but… how to illustrate this? Thanks Ingmar Bergman, by the way – it's not a football team, you know who that is, I guess… He takes a piece of arrow which will be his talisman throughout the film. Gladiator II is a film about loss, about coming back from it and trying to gain it all back. Including yourself. With that, I'm already playing with the idea of Gladiator 3. No, seriously! I lit the fuse… The end of Gladiator II evokes that of Godfatherwith Michael Corleone finding himself in a job he didn't want, and wondering, “and now, Father, what do I do?” The next Gladiator will therefore talk about a man who does not want to be where he is… He will encounter corruption, you will see. We believe that the Romans are like those in beautiful history books. They were a nice bunch of bastards! (“an evil bunch of motherfuckers”) Just look at what was happening in the Colosseum – well, I made it entertaining by throwing in a rhino or carnivorous baboons… But the Colosseum is really evil incarnate, isn't it? The crowd was really gullible.

Speaking of loss, no Hans Zimmer in the credits even though his score in the first one is legendary. For what ?
Over the years, we have different cameramen, different costume designers, different actors… We must not get stuck. So I'm constantly moving my creative team to keep everyone alert. Repetition must be avoided.

At the same time, the music uses entire themes from Zimmer's soundtrack from the first film…
You have to! If I was making a James Bond movie, I have to use the Bond theme, right? We still found a nice theme for Lucius – very spiritual, in fact.

You talk to me about spiritual, but the film is very brutal, very direct. There's plenty of violence and blood – do you find spirituality in the battle scenes?
Look around you: do you see spirituality? Of course yes. What is happening in Israel? It's about religion. Every war is about religion. The reason fundamental of all war is damn religion. It doesn't change, ever. We don't learn anything. We believe that we evolve – we learn nothing from nothing.

Emperor Caracalla says it in the film: “Let the people feed on war”.
This reminds me of something about the Roman emperors: we learned that they washed and drank water that was passed through lead tubes. The upper, ruling class drank from the lead-polluted fleet. I wonder how crazy that made them – the number of Roman emperors who went crazy can't just be explained by the power they had. They may have been living in poisonous times – literally. Lead is dangerous! And to think that I chewed my toy soldiers when I was little.

Maybe that explains everything – why you're making two films at the same time.
Ahah, maybe! But what do you expect, that's how my head works. She likes to be busy. I started painting again ten years ago – I started like that, with painting, originally… Now, children spend their lives on these fucking machines (he shows his smartphone) Go climb on a fucking tree, there you go! Go swimming, risk drowning, smoke cigarettes, do stupid things – but put the damn things down. Do you have kids?

No.
Ok. My children filmed the Pepsi Cola commercial during Gladiator II. My youngest, Luke, is 55… My daughter is 44 and finished her second film. They did well. These things (smartphone) take away the desire to do anything. I come from the paper-and-pencil generation. Above all, we must not lose the value of teaching – teaching, the most beautiful profession alongside that of doctor. Period. But there comes a time when we no longer want to learn. Good teachers are often good storytellers, they engage you in their story, even in maths and physics. Teachers are not paid enough. It's dramatic. We have to change that. Even if during the war, we hated the teachers, they hated us, haha…

On this subject, Alexander the Great had Aristotle as his teacher.
Exactly ! Do you see where I'm going with this?

I meant that he had a good master and that he still massacred quite a few people.
I believe that the vanity of power is an extraordinary thing, all the same. Especially in the country I'm talking to you about (Editor's note: the USA). Well, we shouldn't talk about this, because it's not the subject, but it's extraordinarily terrifying what's happening. The idea of ​​democracy, of republic – these are two identical things originally, but the vote separated them.

One last question: your next film is about the Bee Gees is written by John Logan, one of the co-writers of Gladiator…
No, we no longer work together on this. There's this guy, Joe Penhall (Editor’s note: screenwriter of The Road by John Hillcoat)who wrote a piece ten years ago about this rock group (Editor’s note: Sunny Afternoona jukebox musical about the Kinks) made up of real thugs, haha! He's the one who rewrites the Bee Gees script for me. Besides, I saw Barry Gibb again three weeks ago. He is very fit. And he is 78 years old. Can you imagine? (Editor's note: Ridley Scott turns 86 on November 30)