“Raises the game”: why ‘Gladiator II’ was Christopher Nolan’s favourite movie of 2024
Christopher Nolan has been continuously praised for his high concept and immersive stories that use mind-bending logic to create unique worlds, with trippy rules that allow characters to move backwards in time and travel through the dreams of their enemies. The scope of his films has been compared to the likes of Ridley Scott, and given that Nolan has listed Scott as one of his favourite filmmakers, it is unsurprising that we can see traces of his style in movies like Tenet and Inception.
After the release of Scott’s most recent project, Gladiator II, Nolan shared his many thoughts on the highly-anticipated sequel.
The first Gladiator film was released in 2000, starring Russel Crowe in the historical epic as it follows Maximus in his fight to the death after being demoted by Commodus. The film was commercially successful with a global box office of $465million, as well as winning five Academy Awards, with Crowe winning for ‘Best Actor’.
The sequel released this year stars Paul Mescal as Lucius, who is forced to defend Rome and restore glory to his people against the tyranny of a new conqueror. The film has garnered mixed responses from both fans of the original and critics, with some questioning the director’s knack for visual storytelling but feeble characters that lack depth, as well as the film’s cinematographer critiquing Scott’s directing style and describing it as ‘lazy’. But there are still some fans who have greatly appreciated the addition to the Gladiator universe despite its many flaws and historical inaccuracies (the inclusion of sharks within the Colosseum is one that cannot be excused).
Among the fans of the film is none other than Christopher Nolan, who wrote extensive praise of the movie in an article for Variety about the best films of the year, saying, “Like the best long-awaited sequels, Gladiator II must be a remake and sequel in one, and it’s testament to Scott’s brilliance that he manages to balance the individual pathos of the original with the expansionist demands of the sequel’s central theme, bringing a lifetime of experience in controlling tone. Scott raises the game with the staging of his action — his incredible, hyper-observant, multi-camera mise-en-scène (so different to the original) masterfully wrestles the action into clear and jaw-dropping sequence after sequence.”
One of the key aspects within Scott’s work that has always been recognised is his knack for visual storytelling and immersive world-building, a quality that has inspired Nolan’s personal style and translated across his own body of work.
The director expanded on this aspect of Scott’s work, saying, “The effect is not just to entertain, but to drive us towards awareness of the movie’s themes. Few filmmakers have ever worked so invisibly on multiple levels. In films from Blade Runner to Thelma and Louise to Gladiator II, the visual density of Scott’s art serves as foil for his underlying thematic clarity.”
Scott intended to use the visual aspect of the movie to enhance the thematic undercurrent, something that is lost on me but all too clear to Nolan. Both directors are very similar in that aspect, and it doesn’t surprise me that they find comfort in their mutual quest to create a one-sided art form defined by style over substance.
