Ridley Scott’s upcoming epic Gladiator II has already drawn the scorn of one leading historian.
The film, which stars Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington, is a sequel to the Oscar-winning Russell Crowe-led film from 2000.
The trailer features a number of dramatic sequences, including one scene in which the Colosseum in Rome is flooded and filled with sharks.
Dr Shadi Bartsch, a classics professor at the University of Chicago with degrees from Princeton, Harvard and UC Berkeley told The Hollywood Reporter the idea is “total Hollywood bulls***.”
“I don’t think Romans knew what a shark was,” added Dr Bartsch, although she did acknowledge that the Romans really did fill the Colosseum with water in order to hold naval battles in the arena.
Another scene, which sees rhinos charging into the Colosseum, is partially true. Dr Bartsch explained that the Roman poet Martial “wrote a poem in 80 AD about a rhinoceros tossing a bull up to the sky,” but it would have been a single-horned rhino, rather than the two-horn breed featured in the film, and there is no evidence that gladiators attempted to ride on their backs as the movie depicts.
A more blatant anachronism is the scene in which a Roman noble is depicted reading a morning newspaper while sipping tea in a cafe. The printing press would not be invented for another 1,200 years.
“They did have daily news – Acta Diuma – but it was carved and placed at certain locations,” explained Dr Bartsch. “You had to go to it, you couldn’t hold it at a cafe. Also, they didn’t have cafes!”
Scott has generally given such criticisms of his movies short shrift. When his biopic Napoleon was released last year, historian Dan Snow went viral with a TikTok video pointing out historical inaccuracies.
One of the issues Snow included was the idea that Napoleon “came from nothing,” as is quoted on the poster. “His dad was, in fact, an aristocrat,” Snow remarked.
He also pointed out that “Napoleon didn’t shoot at the pyramids” at the Battle of the Pyramids, and that, despite what’s shown in the teaser clip, Marie-Antoinette “famously had very cropped hair for the execution, and, hey, Napoleon wasn’t there.”
In a profile of Scott for The New Yorker, the matter of Snow’s criticisms was discussed. According to the publication, when Scott was asked for his view on Snow’s qualms with the trailer, his response was succinct and simple: “Get a life.”
Gladiator II arrives in cinemas on November 22.
