Originally published at: That Gladiator sequel no one asked for is getting a 2024 release date | Boing Boing
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Because our society has run out of ideas, we’re forced to make more sequels, remakes, franchises, and CGI extravaganzas. I don’t even watch movies anymore. I think I saw the first Gladiator and can’t even remember it. Maybe our movie industry should just take a pause for five years. “We are announcing there will be no new movie production for the next five years, to allow our writing teams, directors, and everyone else, to take a break and let some fresh ideas come to us. Thank you and please be ready for some great fresh movies in 2030!”
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“Gladiator 2 - This time it isn’t actually that personal, really.”
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Gladiator 2, electric boogalo? Both a sequel to the Gladiator AND a pre-quel to breakin’?
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They could also have Maximus try to kill Commodus in the afterlife. I mean, it fits with the original as well as anything, plus then he could team up with a zany cast of other older historical figures.
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Fine, fine… but there needs to be some break dancing elements… so it can be prequel to Breakin’.
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Bite your tongue. Society has not run out of ideas, Hollywood has run out of the capacity to take meaningful risks with the moneys entrusted to it to make entertainment by their investors, who insist on a “sure thing” for their investments. Capitalism ruins everything, including movies, and there are thousands of great stories just begging to be told that the money types just aren’t willing to take a risk on because they only really value money.
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I confess, I did not expect “Gladiator vs. Avatar” (tagline: “Whoever wins, we’re blue”) but I suppose it makes a sort of sense.
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Not that it isn’t true, but that’s not exactly a new phenomenon either. Remember that the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz was something like the 5th(?) time that story had been put to film, in addition to several stage productions.
Sequels and remakes dominating big-budget films is a bit of a drag but I take some solice in the fact that these days it’s easier than ever for creative filmmakers to make low-budget independent movies and shows that are viewable by millions of people.
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2Glad2iator: Circus Maximum Drift (actually a modern made chariot racing movie could be quite cool).
Edit: Dominus Toretti, “I live my life one Stadium at a time.”
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The character poured in to those horses is great. 
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The summary I read was basically the plot of the first God of War game.
I still don’t understand why anyone would pitch a supernatural sequel to a relatively-grounded-in-historical-realism action movie. It would be like making a direct sequel to Clash of the Titans but with no gods or magical beings of any kind.
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Well, but there is also the opposite problem - which is the constant drive for novelty. But that’s not the only way culture works. Culture builds on itself, and certain themes and ideas are constantly being recycled and reused, because it helps us to orient ourselves in the world to each other and sometimes in contrast with others. That’s part of why these debates about culture can get so toxic, because of how culture helps us to understand ourselves and our place in the world. But capitalism takes that organic process and seeks to profit off of it. I think it hardly matters if something is novel or if it’s derivative, as the problem rests in the drive to create profit off of it. Which ever direction is taken, the goal is making money, not forwarding any sort of humane or cultural end.
So, while there is certainly an aversion to trying new things, until a new thing proves successful (I’m thinking of something like LOTR, which for years was thought of as unfilmable, until Peter Jackson filmed it), there is also the problematic idea that culture should be novel to be legitimate. But there is something to be said for comforting and familiar stories that helps us to understand ourselves, each other, and to help us make stronger connections culturally.
Not sure if that made sense…
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Just came to say not, but I’ll leave it by simply saying…
Exactly what @blackanvil said (and did so more succinctly than I would have).
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This Gladiator brought to you by Glad containers.
Seal in the revenge flavor, to be served cold later.
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