So when I first heard of this plan for a Gladiator sequel I was a little disappointed that it never came to fruition. I mean, the original was a fantastic movie, full of violence, blood and gore and awesome special effects. Oh, and it had a storyline of some description attached to all of the fun. It was just simply a marvelous movie. But in reality, how could there be a Gladiator sequel if the main character had died, unless they planned on using another character, which they didn’t? So how was this all going to be played out?
Now before you go and get all excited at the prospect of seeing Russel Crowe don some leathers to reprise his buff role as a zombie Maximus, the plot made about as much sense as using a match to see if your gas tank is empty, maybe even less. To be brutally honest, it would seem like the writers were ingesting some of this product when they were working on the project.
Hollywood has had a history of creating sequels from movies which seem a little far fetched. One of the weirdest was this sequel which proved to be immensely successful. You can’t really blame the Hollywood companies for wanting to capitalize on a successful movie. But really, Maximus was dead, and the really messed up in the head Emperor Commodus was also dead. This really required some creative writing to get any kind of a script together.
Realizing that Maximus was obviously dead, the movie was supposed to be a prequel to the 2000 blockbuster. I mean what another way could they possibly go? But choosing to ignore common sense, the writers soon changed their mind and wrote a Gladiator sequel that was really messed up. Would you like to know how stupid it was?
Alrighty then, here we go. The sequel to Gladiator was set 15 years after the events of the tremendously successful movie that they intended to tarnish with this prodigy. The idea was to have Maximus resurrected from the dead. As far as Roman culture and superstition are concerned this wouldn’t have been all too weird a plot. Apparently they believed in reincarnation. But don’t worry. A reincarnated Maximus was just the beginning of this weird rollercoaster of a ride.
The plot saw Maximus being reincarnated by the Roman gods and transported back to Rome to defend the Christians in the Colosseum. See, I told you it was weird, but it just keeps getting weirder. It’s like the writers were high or something. Their next idea for the plot was to have Maximus transported to different periods of history, such as WWII, the Vietnam War and even the modern day Pentagon where he was going to be a general.
The script was rejected for being too far-fetched (well, duh), and not keeping with the spirit of the original film. Thank heaven for that. You can read the script below.
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