Upcoming Blockbuster Gladiator II has received a rather blistering reception from a top historian for a lack of historical authenticity.
Director Ridley Scott is no stranger to these sorts of critiques and told critics of his previous 2023 historical epic, Napoleon, to “get a life”.
Gladiator II is the follow-up to Scott’s Oscar-winning 2000 masterpiece featuring Russell Crowe as the titular warrior.
The sequel stars Hollywood heavyweights Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal.
However, since the first trailer was released in July, the film has received complaints online for historical inaccuracies.
The most damming of these complaints comes from Dr Shadi Bartsch, a professor of classics at the University of Chicago.
Paul Mescal stars in the sequel to 2000’s Oscar winning Gladiator
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Dr Bartsch coarsely condemned what he had seen of Gladiator II as “total Hollywood bulls***”.
She raises several complaints about the film, the chief among them being a Roman nobleman sitting in a cafe appearing to read a newspaper and sipping a cup of tea.
The printing press was still some 1,200 years away and daily news in Roman times, called “Acta Diuma,” was carved and placed at central locations in the city.
The historian fumed: “You had to go to it; you couldn’t hold it at a cafe. Also, they didn’t have cafes!”
Hollywood legend Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal also star
Paramount Pictures
Dr Bartsch also took issue with several particularly spectacular Colosseum sequences in the Gladiator II trailer.
In the teaser, fans see the arena filled with water and man-eating sharks. Later, Mescal wrangles a ferocious rhino.
While she concedes the real-life historical Colosseum was flooded to depict naval battles for the amazed crowd, Dr Bartsch finds Scott’s interpretation fanciful.
“I don’t think Romans knew what a shark was,” the historian snapped.
Dr Bartsch suggests Roman historian Martial did write of “a rhinoceros tossing a bull up to the sky,” in 80AD.
However, she argues it would have been a one-horned rhino – not the two-horned variety featured in the film – and that gladiators almost certainly would not have ridden them.
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One of the alleged inaccuracies is a gladiator riding a rhino
Paramount Pictures
Upon the first trailer’s release, fans were also quick to complain about several other issues in the trailer.
The music choice, No Church In The Wild by rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West, was deemed inappropriate for the film’s ancient setting.
Additionally, Denzel Washington’s commitment to his natural brash Harlem accent raised eyebrows for the voice of a Roman nobleman.