Gladiator II: A Rightful Heir

The sword and sandal sequel takes a veer toward hereditarianism.

From my new movie review in Taki’s Magazine:

Gladiator II: A Rightful Heir

Steve Sailer

December 04, 2024

Sir Ridley Scott’s 2000 movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe as the hero Maximus has been one of the more unexpectedly culturally influential films of the 21st century.

Americans had thought endlessly about Ancient Rome until the later 20th century, as my recent visit to Washington, D.C., pointed out. Countless structures in our nation’s capital are modeled on the interior of Hadrian’s Pantheon, from the Capitol rotunda to the Metro stations.

Similarly, sword-and-sandal movies, for instance, had been a huge deal in the 1950s and 1960s, both low-budget Steve Reeves types and colossal epics like Cleopatra. But ancient times fell radically out of fashion during the cultural revolution of the late 1960s.

So, nobody was expecting much from Gladiator three decades later. But it turned out that Crowe was in the middle of a brief but historic hot streak as a leading man (L.A. Confidential, The Insider, Gladiator, Master and Commander, Cinderella Man). So, Gladiator helped return Rome to American masculine consciousness.

For example, the highlight of this year’s World Series was Los Angeles Dodger Freddie Freeman’s last-chance grand slam to beat the New York Yankees in the 10th inning of the first game. Rather than then flinging his bat away contemptuously in the modern style, Freeman instead strode toward first holding his bat skyward in a dignified gesture I instantly recognized, although I haven’t seen the movie in decades, as drawn from the body language of Gladiator.

I only learned later that Freeman had named his son Maximus.

Read the whole thing there.