Ridley Scott‘s “Gladiator II” is stuffed with a memorable motion scenes, from a bloody showdown that includes CGI baboons to Paul Mescal outsmarting a charging rhino within the Roman Colosseum. However one sequence that’s certain to depart audiences with probably the most questions is a reasonably insane set piece through which the Colosseum is stuffed with water and sharks. The gladiators enter the sector on a ship as a mock sea battle is staged, a lot to the delight of the sadistic emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).
However did the Colosseum really get flooded with water and sharks in actual life? It’s a query that’s warranted given Scott usually performs quick and unfastened with historical past. As an example, “Gladiator II” includes a character studying a newspaper 1,200 years earlier than the invention of the printing press. And don’t get us began on Scott’s “Napoleon,” which was so suffering from historic inaccuracies that French historians slammed the director and stated he was “spitting within the face of French folks.”
On the subject of the Colosseum sea battle in “Gladiator II,” Scott is surprisingly not deviating too removed from historical past. A type of historic Roman theater was referred to as “naumachia,” through which sea battles have been staged for leisure both in basins the place battles had already taken place or in flooded amphitheaters. Convicts or prisoners of conflict would face off in opposition to troopers till one facet was the winner.
The primary naumachia on file dates again to 46 B.C. and was licensed by Julius Caesar, and a few of them have been ultimately staged within the Colosseum. Roman emperor Domitian is believed to have placed on a sea battle within the Colosseum in 85 AD, for example. The “Gladiator II” naumachia raises the stakes by including sharks, though that’s unlikely to have occurred in actual life.
Chris Epplett, a Greek and Roman historical past professor on the College of Lethbridge, informed Vulture that he’s not conscious of sharks ever being put contained in the Colosseum, though “there was a interval after they might have flooded the ground of the sector. There was principally a interval of, I believe, 10 to twenty years earlier than they put the total basement in, after they might have flooded the ground and had exhibitions with marine animals and that kind of factor.”
Talking to Selection on the “Alien: Romulus” premiere earlier this 12 months, Scott wisecracked in regards to the sharks by saying: “That’s simple. Somebody stated, ‘How do you get sharks within the Colosseum?’ I stated, ‘You possibly can construct the Colosseum — how silly are you?’ I imply, you catch just a few sharks and lob them in. They may do this.”
“Gladiator II” is now enjoying in theaters nationwide from Paramount Photos.
