"Gladiator II" is not a musical, unless you count a couple of ominous poetry recitals from Paul Mescal and Joseph Quinn. But "Saturday Night Live" saw the lack of ballads and rap battles as a missed opportunity, and Mescal stopping by 30 Rockefeller Plaza for guest host duties this week was a perfect opportunity for some reshoots.
The "SNL" trailer for "Gladiator II" aims to capitalize on the box office success of "Moana 2" and "Wicked" by adding 50 minutes of singing, including the central showstopper, "There's No Place Like Rome." Mescal himself fully commits to the bit ... in fact, he seems more enthused about this musical version of "Gladiator II" than he did in the actual movie. Perhaps all along he was secretly longing to break into song. ("SNL" writer Streeter Seidell confirmed on X that yes, that's Mescal singing.)
The sketch is also, arguably, even more historically accurate than Ridley Scott's spectacle-filled epic. There's no evidence that the Romans captured sharks and brought them to the Colosseum to participate in the staged naval battles, but they did have giraffes. The first one was brought back to Rome by Julius Caesar, and the admiring Romans dubbed it a "camelopard" — part camel, part leopard (zoology was not their strong suit). Commodus, the emperor played by Joaquin Phoenix in the first "Gladiator" movie, is said to have personally slaughtered a giraffe in the arena.
So, as Bowen Yang sings, there were giraffes in Rome, and you could kill them. The next line in the song? Unfortunately, also true.
Give Paul Mescal (another) musical
NBC
If you're addicted to Paul Mescal's pipes after this short sample, I have good news: there's so much more to explore. At age 16 he starred as the Phantom in his school's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera," and the whole thing is online.
Need even more? How about the 2022 musical drama "Carmen," in which he both sings and plays the acoustic guitar.
Or, if the piano is more your speed, here he is performing a duet cover of Villagers' "Nothing Arrived" with his sister, Nell Mescal.
Having two hugely successful musicals in theaters back-to-back will surely bolster Hollywood's confidence in the genre, even if studios do continue to conceal their musical nature in the trailers. Ridley Scott has already said that he'd like to bring Mescal back for "Gladiator III"; perhaps this is an opportunity for Mescal to leverage some songs into the next sequel.
"Saturday Night Live" returns on December 14 with host Chris Rock and musical guest Gracie Abrams. "Gladiator II" (the non-musical version) is in theaters now.
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