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The Duncan & Coe History Show
Gladiator II
00:40:57
Today's episode is brought to you at one (guess who) host's insistence.
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- [00:01]
Mike Duncan
Hello and welcome to the Duncan and Company Show. I'm Mike Duncan.
- [00:04]
Alexis Ko
I'm Alexis Ko. And this is our show today. We are talking about Gladiator 2, which is in theaters now and which Mike felt was really important for him to see and talk about on the podcast. And at first I was reticent because I thought that meant that I would have to go see it. And then he said, no, no, no, I will go see it, and then I will tell you about it and you will decide if you want to see it at the end of the show. And then before I sat down to record, I said, oh, I just want to watch the trailer really quickly. And everything changed for me. You watched it change?
- [00:41]
Mike Duncan
I did. I watched it change in real time.
- [00:42]
Alexis Ko
I had. I was unprepared for the epic casting.
- [00:46]
Mike Duncan
Right. You saw. You saw a number of. You saw a number of actors in.
- [00:49]
Alexis Ko
A row in the first three seconds.
- [00:52]
Mike Duncan
In the first three seconds that took you from, oh, God, does this mean I have to see this movie? To I'm going to go see this.
- [00:59]
Alexis Ko
Movie I'm in, but I still want to hear what you have to say.
- [01:03]
Mike Duncan
I knew that I needed to go see Gladiator 2 because, you know, I got to go see Gladiator 2. I want to go see Gladiator 2. But does that mean that I think that everybody needs to go see Gladiator 2 or should go see Gladiator 2? Well, I didn't know going into it.
- [01:19]
Alexis Ko
Well, but that was the thing. I think I'm going to blame you for my reticence because you didn't really sell it. You were like, it's Ridley Scott. We have a storied past. We've had our issues. We haven't moved past them.
- [01:34]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. Because I went and saw Napoleon and reviewed that for the Nation, and I was really disappointed in Napoleon. I thought Napoleon, it was a aggressively bad movie and panned it in the online pages of the Nation magazine. So when this one comes out, Gladiator 2 comes out, I'm like, okay, I'm going to go see it, and I'll have things to say about it, but I don't really know if it's going to be good. And I certainly could not promise anybody who was at all hesitant about going to see it that they should go see it until I had seen it for myself and could vouch for it or not, which is what I'm here to do. Vouch for it or not.
- [02:11]
Alexis Ko
I feel like I might have misrepresented myself, though, because I'M not opposed to big historical epics. They just don't usually involve war or. War is like a far off concept. Men are coming and going. They're soldiers. I'm really into mostly, you know, like Pride and Prejudice and I don't think this is going to be in Gladiator 2, but let me know. Are there cousin suitors?
- [02:35]
Mike Duncan
No, there are no cousin suitors.
- [02:39]
Alexis Ko
Sure, sure. Promenading turns around the room, you know.
- [02:43]
Mike Duncan
Oh, no. So we're. There's no entails either.
- [02:49]
Alexis Ko
No, no. I mean, this is like, maybe the chronology is not lining up, but there are no, like, classic English hunts. No. No foxes. No hounds.
- [02:58]
Mike Duncan
No, no. There's. There's no shots of lords and ladies on their horses having those little, little tipples of something before they go out on their English fox hunt.
- [03:08]
Alexis Ko
Surely there's like torrential downpour.
- [03:11]
Mike Duncan
Is there any. Are there any torrential downpours that capture the mood of the leading heroine? No, I don't think so.
- [03:18]
Alexis Ko
But we've got to go to a. We have to go to a dance.
- [03:21]
Mike Duncan
There's no dances.
- [03:22]
Alexis Ko
Jesus Christ.
- [03:25]
Mike Duncan
We'Re already backsliding. We went from I'm definitely going to see this movie to like. But now it doesn't have any of the tropes of a classic Regency era romantic miniseries.
- [03:35]
Alexis Ko
This is all very confusing, but there is, like, there are declining positions in society and that's at the center of things that I know must be true.
- [03:42]
Mike Duncan
People having difficulty reconciling themselves to a changing world and they are severely wedded to their traditional past.
- [03:49]
Alexis Ko
Yeah. And I'm gonna guess there's a rake. So I feel like we can move on to the movie, which is made by Ridley Scott, who clearly loves history. And that's the thing. I think that's why I accept sort of any historical creative endeavor because I know that it's coming from a place of love. And they usually just, you know, they're absurd about it. They're not trying to get every detail right.
- [04:10]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. Ridley Scott makes a lot of historical epics. He made the original Gladiator, he made one about the Crusades. He made Last Duel. So he's always going to history for inspiration and to make these big movies. And his last big one was Napoleon. This one's Gladiator 2. But he does not care about historical facts at all, even a little bit. He just blows it all off. It's not even interesting to him. And when I was writing up the Napoleon Review, I came across this quote in Variety, which is because he was Getting dinged all over the place for Napoleon. There's all kinds of weird stuff. He has Napoleon in the crowd when Marie Antoinette gets her head chopped off. And there's other. Just tons of historical inaccuracies and anachronisms, really.
- [04:58]
Alexis Ko
Wait, but that also just seems like bad writing and bad sort of conception because obviously he wouldn't be in the audience.
- [05:07]
Mike Duncan
I certainly thought so. Okay. But Variety reported, quote, when asked to respond to such historical fact checkers, Scott was blunt in his response. Get a life.
- [05:19]
Alexis Ko
So rude.
- [05:21]
Mike Duncan
So rude. But the thing is, what I also said in that review was like, you know, okay, I kind of get where you're coming from here. Because if you're making a movie or you're making a TV show that is rooted in history, there's a degree to which you have to throw a lot of fidelity to the past out the window because you're trying to tell a story in 90 minutes or 120 minutes or whatever, and some things need to be sacrificed. And I think we've talked about this in a bunch of different times, that if a movie is good, but it's not historically accurate, we will still watch and enjoy that movie. We're still capable of watching and enjoying that movie.
- [06:03]
Alexis Ko
Oh, Mike, I fear you've misunderstood me. If the movie is bad, I will still watch it if it has certain elements. But I think maybe the sort of disrespect that that quote very clearly conveys is the issue, because I think one has to be. You have to know that the person making the film, even if they're not being completely loyal or fastidious about anything, that they have a deep founded respect for the era or they're ensorceled by, it would be great.
- [06:41]
Mike Duncan
When Scott was doing his press tour for Napoleon and he said that thing about get a life, which is like, okay, I can live with that. I can go see Braveheart, which has literally no fidelity whatsoever to the facts, but is a great movie, even if Mel Gibson then became deeply problematic. But then he also, when he was asked about issues that historians had with the movie, he responded, quote, well, I have issues with historians. I ask, excuse me, mate, were you there? No. Well, shut the fuck up then. And so this is like a very different.
- [07:18]
Alexis Ko
I want to fight him, right?
- [07:20]
Mike Duncan
This is what I'm saying. And like, on the one hand you have him saying, like, look, this is a movie. Relax nerds. And I can accept relax nerds with the best of them. But what he's saying here is like, you know, especially in this like sort of media ecosystem that we live in where it's like, who can say who's right, right, who's wrong and who's factual and who's not? That he's like, hey, well, maybe my depiction of Napoleon or in this case his depiction of the ancient Roman world. Like, who's to say whether or not you the historian are more correct than me the filmmaker? Like, none of us were there. And it's like, really, Scott? Like we have, we have records, we have, you know, sources. Like we do know where to put.
- [07:58]
Alexis Ko
And we do a lot of work to reconstruct it. This is all fact. You can have alternate interpretations, fine. You cannot have alternate facts or no facts or say, I don't know if that's true. Well, maybe you should read a book.
- [08:16]
Mike Duncan
I think he read a book possibly. But what he does is he maybe read, he skims like a book, then lets his imagination run wild, then just does whatever he wants using some people that he discovered in this book and then comes back around and when he gets criticized, says either, you know, shut up, nerds, or has this wild notion that what he gleaned from this skim job that he did on some book one time is as equally valid as the opinions and interpretations and factual output of hundreds of years of historiography.
- [08:50]
Alexis Ko
I like that. You just made it sound like he, like he sort of roughed up the book. You're like, skim job he did, yeah.
- [08:58]
Mike Duncan
Just, just flip through it. Just flip through some scams.
- [09:01]
Alexis Ko
He was never the same, right?
- [09:03]
Mike Duncan
And, well, and he certainly never lingered on a page. I think he was just like, he was just turning pages and reading whatever words popped up on the page as he turned them. But like he never stopped flipping pages.
- [09:15]
Alexis Ko
This has also taken a turn I didn't expect to want to see the film. And that changed right before we started recording. And now I'm suddenly having to contemplate the age old question, can you separate the art from the artist?
- [09:28]
Mike Duncan
No, I think that in this case, you know, just knowing what Ridley Scott is about when it comes to history is important to know. Going into watching this movie and I went and saw it with my son who's 12, and his friend, who's also 12 and his buddy is a huge. Is a very precocious history lover. And so that's why we went and saw it together. And going into it, I was like, you know, look, man, this is not going to be at all an accurate depiction of Roman history. I know from where Ridley Scott comes and he does not come from a place that is going to satisfy your little. Your little brain of wanting. Of wanting history to be depicted accurately on screen.
- [10:09]
Alexis Ko
So. So then let's start with the basic question. You saw the movie. Does it work as a movie? Did you enjoy however long you spent in the movie theater? Did you felt. Did you feel like it was money well spent?
- [10:21]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, I actually do think that Gladiator 2 works as a movie. Yeah, it's a big relief, I will say that. I know we've been gearing up for this for me to say that, but yeah, it does work as a movie in a way that Napoleon kind of didn't, and we can talk about that. But Gladiator 2 is a very straightforward story of an exiled prince who is returning to claim his birthright. That's a very standard hero's journey narrative that we're all very used to. And it hits those beats competently. The action and adventure is all pretty entertaining. There's lots of neat, interesting, cool fight scenes that happen along the way. And it's a sword and sandal action adventure movie, so you gotta have that kind of like violent spectacle included in it. And I think that all the character motivations are mostly legible. Like, we know why people are doing things, why they're going after things, and the plot works to propel the story forward. So it's not a great movie by any sense of the imagination, any stretch of the imagination, you know. Gladiator, the first Gladiator, won best picture. Gladiator 2 is not in the running for Best Picture at all. But if you want to just. If you, if you want to turn your brain off and just watch, you know, two and a half hours of, of. Of people fighting each other in the ancient world. Yeah, there's. There are worse ways you could spend two and a half hours of your life if you like this kind of thing.
- [11:56]
Alexis Ko
So give us sort of like an overview of why Napoleon is so bad.
- [12:00]
Mike Duncan
Napoleon doesn't work first and foremost because the characters never change. They never undergo any kind of transformation. They are simply, you know, when we meet Napoleon and we meet Josephine in the first scenes of the movie, they are set up as a certain. As certain characters at the end of the movie, they have lived these entire lives. They have gone through all of these events. You know, some of them of world, earth shattering, important. Some of them like, deeply personal, just inside their own family. And none of it seems to touch the characters at all. They're just moving from scene to scene. So they're the same people at the end of the movie that they were at the beginning. Which is like, you know, one of those, like, basic cardinal rules of storytelling. You. You gotta have your character undergo some kind of transformation. And then the thing I remember saying in the. In the review that I did is that there's no real plot that is propelling the story forward. The viewer, us in the audience, never understands, like, why any of these wars are happening, why he's in a certain place at a certain time, why this battle is happening, why he's talking to these people over here. It's just. I said that it really felt like we're just moving from historical diorama to historical diorama without any kind of plot or connective tissue that's driving us from one scene to the next. It's just. And then this happens. And then this happens. And then at the end, it's Waterloo, and then he gets exiled. And that's the course of Napoleon's life. So that's the course of the movie. But there's nothing internal to the movie. There's no engine to the movie that is sort of driving things forward. It's just moving at its own pace. Gladiator 2, I think, really does have, like, an internally energized plot that's propelling all the characters forward.
- [13:44]
Alexis Ko
When you work on a movie, or in my case, a documentary, so I worked on this History Channel documentary and I was a producer and I was in it. But a part of my job was sort of overseeing all things history. And there were these really elaborate reenactments. So I had to find the right person to. Who was an expert in material culture from the era to make sure that everything that they were wearing was right. Different uniforms for different battles and horses. And I. I then I say this, and I completely lost the battle for Washington. He ended up being this sort of, like, skinny guy. Didn't make any sense. So everything else was right, but Washington was wrong. Anyway, my point is there's usually a good amount of effort, even if you can't necessarily see it to be historically accurate. It's somewhat important to someone somewhere. And it's not that expensive to hire historians to make sure things are kind of right. So Ridley Scott probably hired some people even if he didn't want to. Did they win any battles?
- [14:58]
Mike Duncan
Maybe. It sure doesn't seem like it.
- [15:00]
Alexis Ko
You hope so.
- [15:02]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. I don't know what battles they could have won because I've read some other stuff and listened some other people who know more about, like, sort of that material culture stuff. Than I do. And this is actually. Brett Devereaux said this. He's a. He's a Roman military historian who did. Who did a spot on historians at the movies. And he's talking about how like the Romans are just this like anachronistic stew of helmets and breastplates and uniforms, like just kind of grabbed from about 350 years of equipment that they could use was kind of just all there at the same time. And like, you know, you're wearing a hat from 150 years ago, you've got a sword that it doesn't even show up for another 200.
- [15:41]
Alexis Ko
It's like a child who sort of dressed themselves and has like a Peter Pan style.
- [15:48]
Mike Duncan
The script itself is just never going to like. It just doesn't even make sense on a basic level. And like, so there's this crazy thing where like even internally in the movie, because it opens up by saying that these events are taking place 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. And if you are not intimately familiar with the timeline of Roman history, Marcus Aurelius died in 180.
- [16:13]
Alexis Ko
Was that an accusation? Did you just accuse me of not being intimately familiar?
- [16:17]
Mike Duncan
No, no. You or any member of the audience who. I do not want to condescend, but I also don't want to assume that you know that Marcus Aurelius died in 180. Great.
- [16:27]
Alexis Ko
I didn't.
- [16:28]
Mike Duncan
You didn't. So he did and now he's dead. And that was in fact depicted in the movie Gladiator, which Ridley Scott also made. So we know that Marcus Rallis 180. And then it says 16 years later. These events take place 16 years later. And then there's a battle scene. And then it flashes on the title card what year we're in. And it says 200 A.D. oh, not good. So right now we're like, okay, well, you said it was 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, but then you immediately contradicted that by saying it's actually four years after that. And then the main, sort of our main bad guys in this movie, who are Caracalla and Geta, who are these young emperors who we will be talking about here? They didn't even become emperors until Septimius Severus died in 211. Right. So their reigns haven't even started yet. So it's like this taking place 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. Then we're calling it 200 A.D. but also our emperors are from 211. So again, this is just like anachronistic stew is the word to use.
- [17:31]
Alexis Ko
That's not even something. I mean, historians are there for the planning process. And then there are a lot of people who are supposed to catch things like that later. Like people. This seems like basic films.
- [17:43]
Mike Duncan
This seems like basic proofreading.
- [17:45]
Alexis Ko
Yeah, like that's not a historian. That's just right.
- [17:47]
Mike Duncan
This. Yeah.
- [17:48]
Alexis Ko
Fact, you know, just some copy editing.
- [17:51]
Mike Duncan
Yeah. You said here it was 16 years later. Then you said here it's 20 years later. Shut up, nerd.
- [17:56]
Alexis Ko
Yeah, I mean, maybe that's what happened because so many people have to see that and miss it and it just doesn't seem possible.
- [18:04]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, that's. And that's clearly what happened and they did not care. But then the other. But then the other thing is like it opens with this battle to conquer Numidia from these like rebels who were trying to revisit the resist Roman rule. And like Numidia and North Africa was one of the very first parts of the Mediterranean brought into the Roman fold. They fell into the Roman under the hegemony of rome in the 200-bc like during the Punic War. So this is like 400 years before the events taking place, before events of this movie that are depicting like the Numidians as these like rebellious Africans trying to hold off like the Roman. The Roman advance. But it's like you guys have been incorporated into the Roman Empire for like four centuries, which is even crazier because the Severn Dynasty during which this movie is set and from whom Caracalla and Guetta come from, like Septimius Severus, the founder of this dynasty, comes from North Africa. The reason why he is rich enough and powerful enough and influential enough to come from North Africa and become emperor is because North Africa has been a part of the Roman Empire for so dang long. And we just ignore all of that and have them trying to conquer North Africa in the 2003 AD CE.
- [19:15]
Alexis Ko
All right, so there. There are issues.
- [19:18]
Mike Duncan
There are issues.
- [19:19]
Alexis Ko
So I'm guessing there are missed opportunities. And that's one of the things that does frustrate me if I know that they are doing a cursory job covering the history. And I don't feel. I don't know about reverence, but, you know, just. Just a real joy at engagement with the material. Then I feel like they miss the characters who I feel are very important or scenes, sort of a greater depth of information. Something that's pretty common now, but maybe wasn't 20 years ago as far as information. So was There anything that you felt like, oh, I can't believe when you were walking out of the theater, I cannot believe he glossed over that, or he just completely omitted it. Just. This sin of omission is intolerable.
- [20:07]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, there's some. There are some intolerable sins of omission. It's very true. And this is, this is the curse of, like, knowing things about the period. If I. If I just walked in blank and didn't know anything, I'd be like, oh, that was a pretty entertaining movie. But walking in knowing who isn't in this movie did drive me a little batty because this is set during the Severin dynasty, and the severance kind of controlled rome between about 193 and about 235 common era. And the thing that makes the Severins really interesting in terms of their position in Roman history is that the women in their family were incredibly powerful. Right. There's a few times during Roman history where you get some really powerful women who show up as characters. And I think the Julio Claudians sort of have that with Livia, with Agrippina, with those types of people, with those women. And then the other, like, really, like, major women who show up with real, actual fundamental influence and political powers during the Severin period. And Septimius Severus wife, Julia Domna, is incredibly important, powerful, influential. Her sister, Julia Misa, becomes, you know, after Severus died, she kind of takes over and becomes this great presiding matriarch over the family who engineers like a reverse coup after they get tossed out of power briefly. And then her daughter, Julia Mamia, who is actually will show up in the first chapter of the book that I'm writing right now because she was enormously influential during the reign of her son, Alexander Severus. And so the men who are nominally serving as emperors during this period are at least in cooperative power sharing with the women in their family. And then at other times when younger people are serving as emperors, know they're the dominant power in Rome. And so you come in. So you, you. So somebody like me finds out that this movie is being set during the Severin period and that we're going to. Then we're going to get to see the Severin in action. You're like, and it's, it's 2024. So this is like, great. We have really strong, influential, nuanced, sophisticated women characters who can show up in one of these big Roman epics. And they just like, not even a mention, right?
- [22:23]
Alexis Ko
They are not Even a mention.
- [22:25]
Mike Duncan
Not even a mention there. It's not even. It's not even like, oh, Mom's off somewhere else. It is just Caracalla and Guetta are the emperors. That's all you need to know. That's the only people who are going to show up. So you're just sitting there like, you know, look, I do want to adhere to the principle that I should be watching and reviewing the movie that I'm watching and reviewing, not the movie that I would like to watch and review. But it just seems insane to me that you would sit down and write a movie about the severance and just completely ignore the narrative possibilities of those women being in your movie.
- [22:58]
Alexis Ko
All right, Ridley, not good. Well, that also just sounds like it's to the detriment of the story. Was this particular to the family or were there just an abundance of Julias?
- [23:13]
Mike Duncan
Well, in Roman history, there are always an abundance of Julias. There are Julias everywhere. But I think it is something that is particular to how the sever sovereign family dynasty operated and some of the contingencies of history about who was becoming Emperor Wen. There were periods like of Regency, basically, where the. Where the women were serving as regents for underage. For the underage boys who were nominally emperor. And because of those opportunities and because of their own sort of abilities that they were able to brush aside, you know, praetorian prefects or other kinds of chamberlains who might step into those roles, they were there and wielding actual real.
- [23:53]
Alexis Ko
Dominant power, like the patsies of the 18th century. Okay, so that's not great. But then the people who were obviously at the center of the story, how did you feel about them? Caracalla and Geta.
- [24:07]
Mike Duncan
Right. So Caracalla and Geta are brothers who became emperors in 211 after the death of their father, Septimius severus, not in 200 or 196 or whenever it is that they show up. Yeah, and the. And the. Very sloppy. And then the depiction of them is just completely from Ridley Scott's own imagination.
- [24:31]
Alexis Ko
There was a lot of makeup and not very good blending with the blush.
- [24:35]
Mike Duncan
Right. And so they're very. They're very much depicted as these, like, sort of crazed aristocrats. And there is this.
- [24:44]
Alexis Ko
It's like Versailles.
- [24:45]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, yeah, very much. And you kind of get that sort of French old aristocracy right before the French Revolution vibe from them. And they are depicted as being very effeminate and depraved. They're. They're like sexual deviants. They're like car collus syphilitic. They, they mention at one point and then when, when we see them early on, no.
- [25:10]
Alexis Ko
Oh, these were real people.
- [25:12]
Mike Duncan
Not nothing. Nothing is true. And then surrounding them are the. Is this, like these, like this like gender fluid entourage, right? Where it's all, it's all very sort of feminized and effeminate and queer essentially, is what they're presenting to us as proof that these two emperors are corrupt. They're terrible tyrants. They are, you know, degrading the morality and the virility of Rome, like all of these things. And this is stuff that comes from both, I think from the ancient sources. Because the Romans do have a tendency to talk about like, you know, this Eastern orientalism and you know, the effeminate corruption of certain emperors as causing the fall of the empire. And then that gets picked up by people like Edward Gibbon, which is. That's. It plays a huge role in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's always going back to sort of comparing and contrasting effeminate luxury and wealth with sort of the martial and manly virtues of the old Republicans. And so what Ridley Scott is doing here is. And you can see it, you saw it in the trailer, right? The heroes are all these like muscle bound manly men who are soldiers and fighters and they are simple men of simple virtue who are going to. Who are going to fight for the honor and glory and idea that is Rome. And pitting them both here in Gladiator 2 and then also in the first Gladiator with Commodus, who's also portrayed as being this like twisted, weak little sexual deviant, is that it's like, you know, it's these manly virtues overcoming these feminine vices is the story that we want to be telling here. And what is then the crowning irony of all of this is that Caracalla was, you know, he was one of the despots of Roman history. He's one of the quote, unquote bad guys of Roman history. But Caracalla's whole thing, literally his whole thing was that he was a soldier and he was.
- [27:25]
Alexis Ko
Wait, what?
- [27:26]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, exactly. This is the crazy thing is his name, the name Caracalla comes from a certain kind of military cloak that he wore, and he wore it all the time. And this was one of the turning points in Roman history here at the beginning of the third century. And if you come along and read my book when it comes out, you know, in a couple years here, we'll talk all about this, which is turning the. Turning Rome's political system into something that is truly just by the army and for the army. And Caracalla is a huge driver of that because he says, you know, the Severin mentalities, the only thing that matters is the troops, paying the troops, serving with the troops and the armies. And so to take this guy who's most well known for being this soldier emperor, maybe the proto soldier emperor, that sets the mold for another hundred years, to then have him be displayed as this, like, effeminate party boy is a real choice. That's a real choice to be making.
- [28:28]
Alexis Ko
Oh, but it's also. It feels so disrespectful. The thing about being a historian or working with history or even just enjoying history is you feel that they're real people and we're mining their lives already. So we're already being pretty exploitative and looking at things that we wouldn't want anyone to look at in our own lives. You have to be true. You have to hue closely to who they were. So that seems really offensive to me.
- [28:59]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, it wasn't even that it didn't hit the mark. It was that it is 180 degrees.
- [29:05]
Alexis Ko
Right?
- [29:06]
Mike Duncan
The truth of the thing. And there's a. And the thing is, like, if you want to tell this story about. Right, Even if it's a silly story from some sort of fantasy alternate history where you like, you want to restore the Republic from the hand of an evil despotism, like a military dictator is a pretty good evil despot to have in sort of our stock canon of characters. So he. So it's really.
- [29:30]
Alexis Ko
So then more men. More manly men.
- [29:32]
Mike Duncan
More manly men doing manly man things. But it really speaks to the fact that Ridley Scott really wanted to make a movie with certain themes that if Caracalla wasn't going to fit with that them theme of sort of degenerate luxurious vice being a thing that needs to be overthrown by these manly men, then he'll just change who Caracall was fundamentally in order to tell that story.
- [29:58]
Alexis Ko
I'm on the fence now. I'm sure that one more viewing of.
- [30:01]
Mike Duncan
The trailer, we'll bring you back.
- [30:04]
Alexis Ko
I'm gonna be over the fence. But right now, I'm on it. So what is the point of all this? Why did he make this movie? Why did he want to tell this story?
- [30:15]
Mike Duncan
The big overarching thing that he's trying to convey here, and one of the things that the movie keeps going back to over and over again is that there's this idea of Rome that needs to be restored. It needs to be something has been lost, you know, in the turn towards this, like, corrupt imperialism. And Rome needs to be restored by our heroes. The idea of Rome. And he keeps going back to this notion that is first brought out in Gladiator, that Marcus Aurelius wanted to make Rome a republic again, that it had become an empire ruled by, you know, single individuals who were. Who were bad and corrupt and Rome needed to be returned to the people. And this was the idea of Rome from Marcus Aurelius, which is, again, fundamentally not true. Marcus Aurelius did not care about restoring the Republic. There's not a single hint in any record that Marcus Aurelius was ever interested in restoring the Republic. And then also, like a lot of what Ridley Scott is dwelling on is especially like, the restoration of the Senate as the institution that really should have power in Rome is the Senate. And when I listen to people like Commodus or Karakawa and Guetta, the characters in these movies, who are like the Senate, but that's just a bunch of rich old oligarchs, nobody cares about them. And they don't speak for the people at all. They only speak for themselves. And in those moments, I'm like, oh, yeah, well, you're right. I mean, communists and Caracalla and Guetta are right to say that just restoring the Senate is not going to create some kind of free society, which is what Scott is kind of gesturing at. And then explicitly at the end, he has Lucius, who's the main hero describing Rome. What it's meant to be is this multiethnic haven for the peoples of the world who are yearning to breathe free, and that. That what Rome is bringing is kind of like freedom and liberty wherever they go. And that's what it was meant to be all about from the beginning, which is, like, wildly not true. Just wildly not true. You know, they were interested in conquest and enriching, you know, their own imperial center, not liberating the peoples of the world from their own chains of oppression, which is then sort of what is being put into the mouths of the heroes at the end. So, like, this idea of Rome, all of this is just. You have to take Gladiator 2 as a complete alt history fantasy world.
- [32:47]
Alexis Ko
All right, all right. So still on the fence, but we haven't talked about Denzel Washington, who has played a president three times. I looked this up recently because I was just convinced he had played a president, like, 10 times, but it was only a few times. He's good in leadership roles. He usually. He brings a lot to the Table.
- [33:08]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, he's got gravitas, for sure.
- [33:10]
Alexis Ko
I think he does his research. I want to believe that he had, like, a stack of books. He wanted to see the conversation. He wanted to know the different opinions and then make his own.
- [33:22]
Mike Duncan
Right. And that a rising Roman politico would speak with a flagrant New York accent.
- [33:30]
Alexis Ko
Yeah. I don't know if he can. I don't know if he can help that. I don't think he cares to.
- [33:35]
Mike Duncan
No. And I. And I wouldn't want him to, because. To go all the way back to, like, you know, so we've said all these things about what an atrocious work of history this is. Does it work as a movie? Yeah, like, yeah, it works as a movie. And one of the reasons it works as a movie is because Denzel Washington is doing Denzel Washington things through the entire flick. And, you know, one of my criticisms of the movie as a movie would be that it's a little heavy. There's not a lot of, like, levity. There's not a lot of, like, jokes in it. For all of how bad it is. That history, it takes itself very seriously. But Denzel Washington is very clearly having just the time of his life playing Macronus. And every scene he's in, he's chewing up scenery, he's hamming it up really, really maxing out the potential of this character. And, you know, the script isn't great, but Denzel Washington is floating around doing amazing and entertaining things. So anytime Denzel Washington is on the screen, you're like, yeah, this is fantastic. And he's an interesting character, like, a legitimately interesting person.
- [34:40]
Alexis Ko
I think Denzel Washington, when it comes to scripts, is like, some are good, some are bad. You know, you do what you can, all right?
- [34:46]
Mike Duncan
And he got to. You know, he got to dress up in awesome clothes and do crazy things. And so I'm sure that was a. I'm sure that was a great time for him.
- [34:53]
Alexis Ko
Yeah. And I'm sure he had a lovely time getting to know his co stars.
- [34:58]
Mike Duncan
Oh, there was. There was one other thing I meant to say about this, which is getting back to why this is all bad, is that when Denzel Washington was first announced that he was in the movie, you know, people are tweeting this at me, and they were like, who do you think Denzel Washington's character is going to be based on? And having just come out of, like, the Napoleon Experience and some of other Ridley Scott's historical movies, I was like, this character is going to be based on Ridley Scott's unencumbered imagination. He's just going to. He just doesn't matter. And then when it was announced that he was playing Macronuts, who is. Who is a real figure in Roman history, he did actually overthrow Caracalla and briefly succeed him before he himself was. Was overthrown by. By Julia Misa. Right. This great, powerful, severe woman. But, yeah, like. Like, so Macronus is a real person, but literally nothing about the character Macronus aligns with the historical Macronus that we know. Like, the name is there and sort of his situation, but other than that, it's all just made up. So when people came around to be like, oh, see, he really is based on a historical figure. Like, no, but not really. It's a name. That's it.
- [36:02]
Alexis Ko
Well, aside from the New York accent, do you feel like Denzel Washington was trying to do what he could to stay true to the character, or do you think he was thwarted by Ridley?
- [36:13]
Mike Duncan
I think that Denzel Washington was doing his best to give the most entertaining performance that he could possibly give with this character in this script. And I think he knocked it out of the park.
- [36:22]
Alexis Ko
We want to think the best of Denzel Washington.
- [36:25]
Mike Duncan
Yeah, I think very highly of Denzel Washington.
- [36:27]
Alexis Ko
I do, too.
- [36:28]
Mike Duncan
Yep. So he was great. So he was. He was. He was far and away the best part of the movie.
- [36:33]
Alexis Ko
Okay, good.
- [36:34]
Mike Duncan
That's definitely true.
- [36:35]
Alexis Ko
Good. All right. So, I mean, like, the time has come.
- [36:38]
Mike Duncan
Yeah.
- [36:39]
Alexis Ko
What's the verdict? Should I. Do I need to see this movie? Follow up? Do I need to see this movie in the theaters?
- [36:46]
Mike Duncan
Okay, you do not need to see this movie at all.
- [36:51]
Alexis Ko
Oh, there's full stop in this telegram.
- [36:54]
Mike Duncan
There's no need to see this movie. This is not a movie that is going to win any awards. It is not changing the cultural trajectory. It will not in the future be a touchstone of anything. You know, the first Gladiator. You know, if you. If you're at all interested in Roman history or ancient history in general, I would honestly say that you do need to see the first Gladiator because that movie has done. And I say the same thing about, like, the I, Claudius miniseries from the 70s that those. Like Gladiator, I, Claudius, those are important things to watch, to understand how our culture depicts Roman history and how people's own ideas about Roman history have been influenced by these movies. Because lots of young people like Gladiator came out when I was 20. Like, I can't. There are many ways that I can't separate Gladiator from what my Imagination of Roman history is. Gladiator 2 is not in that category at all.
- [37:56]
Alexis Ko
I have a confession, which is the last thing I watched that was even vaguely similar to this was a TV show called Spartacus.
- [38:09]
Mike Duncan
Oh, yes.
- [38:10]
Alexis Ko
Spartacus was so ridiculous though.
- [38:12]
Mike Duncan
Spartacus is ridiculous. Insanely ridiculous.
- [38:16]
Alexis Ko
There was very weird sex. I just remember, like, the memories are rushing back. It was a lot. It was excessive. Yes.
- [38:26]
Mike Duncan
It was graphically violent as well.
- [38:28]
Alexis Ko
Yes.
- [38:28]
Mike Duncan
Like they took both the sex and the violence knobs and turned them up to 11. And I think, like, I'm mostly pro Spartacus in the sense that that kind of schlock can be highly entertaining. Yes. But then it's like. And then you compare and contrast Spartacus, which is pure schlock, to something like HBO's Rome, which is much more serious. And they did take it all much more seriously. And even though I can nitpick the hell out of Rome too, you know, if somebody was to ask me, like, you know, should I sit down and watch Spartacus or should I sit down and watch HBO's Rome, like you should watch HBO's Rome, which also has a fair amount of sex, but it's more tasteful and less weird.
- [39:13]
Alexis Ko
I'll watch Rome too.
- [39:15]
Mike Duncan
All right. So the follow up question though was so you don't need to see it, but you absolutely can see it. Like if you're, if you want to go see it, you should go see it. And this is a movie that is well served, I think, by seeing it on the big screen because there is a lot of spectacle to it and that kind of like large scale spectacle. All the big battle scenes and action sequences in the, in the coliseum are all going to hit a lot harder if you're watching them on a giant screen than just on an iPad or, God forbid, an iPhone.
- [39:50]
Alexis Ko
Was that a dig? Because I don't have a tv.
- [39:53]
Mike Duncan
No, it's a dig on some friends of mine who watch all the movies that they watch on their iPhone. Yeah. On their phone.
- [40:00]
Alexis Ko
Oh, that's terrible. I have like a very. I have a large iPad.
- [40:03]
Mike Duncan
I mean, I watch most movies at home on my laptop. You know, I have a tv, but I don't use it that much. But I haven't gone all the way down to, you know, watching 2001 A Space Odyssey on my phone.
- [40:16]
Alexis Ko
No. On my iPhone 12. No.
- [40:18]
Mike Duncan
Thank you. Yeah. Oh, this is so spectacular. It's, you know, over 2 inches tall.
- [40:25]
Alexis Ko
What I like about this conclusion is you said two different things within five minutes and I appreciate that. So I think I will see it in the theater because I want to see. I want to support those actors.
- [40:39]
Mike Duncan
Right.
- [40:40]
Alexis Ko
And their art.
- [40:41]
Mike Duncan
And their art and their commitment to the craft of being chiseled.
- [40:45]
Alexis Ko
All right, I will go see it. Maybe.
- [40:49]
Mike Duncan
That was the Duncan and Co History Show. I'm Mike Duncan.
- [40:53]
Alexis Ko
I'm Alexis Co. And that was our show.