Directed by Ridley Scott, the Russell Crowe-led movie sees the star playing Maximus Decimus Meridius, a former Roman general who seeks vengeance for the deaths of his wife (Giannina Facio) and son (Giorgio Cantarini). Maximus' journey from general to gladiator led to Crowe winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and 26 years after being released, it is still widely considered to be one of the actor's all-time greatest performances.
Now, at the 2026 Taormina Film Festival (via Variety), Crowe explained that he fought against Maximus having a sex scene after his wife's death, as he felt that it would destroy the journey of vengeance the character was on and the love he had for his wife. The Academy Award winner "stuck to his guns" and is grateful that Scott did not move forward with any such scenes. Check out Crowe's comments below:
When we were shooting that film, there was a lot of pressure. The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters. I kept pushing back.
This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child. There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because that destroys the journey.
Luckily for me, Ridley, even though he’d love a sex scene between me and Connie Nielsen, agreed with me back then that that was the emotional core of the film.
While Gladiator doesn't have any sex scenes with Maximus, the sequel does reveal that Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal) is the son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Crowe does not approve of this, nor is he a fan of Gladiator II as a whole, noting that it lacks the "moral core" that the original movie possesses, and he believes this is why the follow-up did not perform as well at the box office. He also breaks down the reasons why he thinks the first movie appeals to both men and women and why he thinks the latter were particularly drawn to it.
For them, in a second movie to destroy that moral centre… it’s very interesting because the second movie barely took the same box office that the first movie took. That’s 20 years later… When you apply how much of a change there’s been on the value of a dollar, they failed. They failed because they didn’t understand why it was successful — it had a moral core.
The studio at the time didn’t quite understand why. That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize: from the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theaters than men. You think that on the surface Gladiator is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge, but it’s not about revenge. It is a movie for women because it is about vengeance.
[Gladiator] was successful because it had a moral core. In a way, we all want to be that guy who can stay that strong, if you’re a man. And if you’re a woman, we all want a man to love us in that way.
Gladiator was a massive box office hit that grossed $465 million worldwide against a $103 million budget. With $462 million globally, Gladiator II ended up with a similar total, but with a reported budget between $250 and $300 million, it did not hit the break-even point, let alone reach the financial success of its predecessor.
The first movie also had better reception, as it has an 80% critics' score and 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, while the sequel has a 70% Tomatometer score and 80% Popcornmeter score. In ScreenRant's Gladiator II review, Graeme Guttmann gave the movie eight out of 10 stars, praising how "Scott is still fully in control of this massive undertaking, letting his contemporary sensibilities bleed into the gravity of the past" while acknowledging that Lucius "is a bit of a cipher, his every decision made in the shadow of Russell Crowe's character."
Along with a better commercial and critical performance, the original movie fared better when it comes to awards recognition. Gladiator received 12 Academy Award nominations and won five of them, including Best Actor, Best Picture, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects. Gladiator II was only nominated for Best Costume Design and did not win this category.
Despite the sequel not living up to some of the heights of what came before, Ridley Scott plans to make Gladiator 3. Maximus dies at the end of Gladiator, but Lucius survives the sequel and is poised to be the new leader of Rome. If the third installment comes to fruition, it has the potential to take the franchise in a different direction, as the protagonist will no longer be on a quest for revenge against the powerful authorities who killed their loved ones.
Release Date
May 5, 2000
Runtime
155 minutes
Writers
David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson
©DreamWorks/Courtesy Everett Collection
English (US) ·