It’s been nearly 25 years since “Gladiator” took the world by storm.
“I saw it in the movie theater when it came out,” said actor Pedro Pascal, who played Roman general Marcus Acacius in the film. “Gladiators II.” “I’ve seen him twice.”
in “Gladiator II” The highly anticipated second part, which will be released on Friday, sees Rome led by two emperor brothers. Caracalla is played by Joseph Quinn, who was only 6 years old when the original “Gladiator” movie was released.
“I think there was a legacy from the first film that required reverence and respect,” Quinn told CBS Morning.
To prepare for the film and better understand its setting, Quinn spent two weeks wandering around Rome.
“I think that’s just something very humbling about Rome, and inspiring, and the fact that this civilization that was so ahead of its time collapsed, it’s kind of painful in a way,” he said.
For the actors who played combat roles in the film, they said the training was exhausting because it was not entirely carried out by stunt actors.
Caracalla’s partner in the film is his brother Geta, played by Fred Hechinger, who said he always wanted to work with director Ridley Scott, who also directed the original film.
“I remember finding out that the same person had made all these different movies that I loved. ‘Thelma & Louise’ and ‘Alien’ were made by the same person, and that kind of expanded my sense of what a director could be,” Hechinger said.
Unlike others, Scott will film certain sequences from beginning to end without cuts. On some sets, actors have to react to things off-camera that don’t happen in reality, but not with Scott.
“The action was all there, all off camera. Normally, under any other circumstance, you would look at a tennis ball or two pieces of tape as a crosshair for your eye line and imagine what’s going on, but no, Ridley will put that in front of you and make it play,” Pascal said. “It’s something I’ve never experienced before. I will probably never face this again.
“Gladiator II” opens in theaters on November 22.
