Ridley Scott has delivered some epic battle scenes in his films, from the Battle of Kerak in 2005's “Kingdom of Heaven” to the Battle of Austerlitz in 2023's “Napoleon.” But the upcoming “Gladiator” sequel features a bigger action sequence than anything he's done in the past, according to the legendary director.
“We start the movie with the biggest action scene I've ever done, probably bigger than anything in 'Napoleon,'” Scott said in a recent interview with Empire magazine.
“Gladiator 2” stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and nephew of Commodus, the antagonist of the original film played by Joaquin Phoenix. The sequel takes place years after the 2000 film “Gladiator,” with Lucius as a young adult living in the North African region of Numidia, where his mother sent him as a child. The events take Lucius back to Rome as a gladiator, where he encounters new enemies and reunites with his mother.
Although Scott didn't share many details about the opening action sequence in “Gladiator 2,” he did tease a moment where Mescal's Lucius confronts a rhinoceros in the colosseum.
“You have to embrace computing and AI,” Scott said of the scene’s computer-generated rhino build. “I can have the computer read every molecule and every wrinkle in the rhino and then cut it out on a thick piece of plastic, just like a rhino’s body, which is then modeled as a skeleton.”
“I have this thing that can go 40 miles an hour, spin around, move its head and roar. It's a two-ton rhinoceros with a man on its back! I mean, it's so much fun,” he added.
Gladiator 2 is scheduled to hit theaters on November 22.
