BACK WITH A VENGEANCE

Sir Ridley Scott returns to the Colosseum with Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel to the greatest historical epic of this century. Total Film meets the director and cast to discover how Maximus' legacy is echoing in eternity.

- MATT MAYTUM

Ridley Scott is not a filmmaker to repeat himself. It's a trait that's all the more remarkable when you consider how prolific he's been over the nearly five decades since his feature debut, 1977's The Duellists. Alien prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are the only times he's gone back to the same world, and those films are radical departures from the original.

While Scott has expressed disappointment at not being able to direct the first sequels to Alien and Blade Runner, there wasn't a chance he was going to miss out on Gladiator II, and a return to the amphitheatres of imperial Rome. 'I thought, "You know, I'm not going to let this go...' Scott tells Total Film, speaking from his LA home a couple of months ahead. 'The first movie really definitely touched the imagination in a way I didn't quite expect. Because when they heard that Ridley is doing a Roman epic - a sword-and-spear-and-sandal 'movie there was a lot of sniggering. Because up to that date, they'd always been very, you know, old-style Hollywood. And I knew what to do.'

That he knew what to do is an understatement of colossal proportions. Gladiator (2000) picked up the Best Picture Oscar, cemented Russell Crowe as a bona-fide star (and Oscar winner), and delivered reams of iconic dialogue that would echo in eternity. 'And from that, I, in a funny kind of way, modernised Roman-epic kind of films,' continues Scott. 'Then, you know, it spawns a lot of other guys in leather skirts and stuff.' On the big screen at least, none of the pretenders could hold a (Roman) candle to the legacy. Gladiator sequels were mooted over the years (including a bonkers-sounding, Nick Cave-scripted Maximus-in-purgatory curio), without any ever coming to fruition.