Russell Crowe On ‘Gladiator 2’, Playing Fathers In Both The DCU And The MCU, And Why Comic-Book Movies Have Come Of Age: “The Audience Has Grown Up” — Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Damon Wise
·4 min read
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Given the stories that Russell Crowe was still celebrating his open-air concert at Karlovy Vary’s Thermal Hotel until the small hours of the morning, there was little surprise that the actor was late for his meeting with a group of international journalists. However, the 59-year-old showed no signs of wear and tear, and even graciously insisted the press conference go on past its strict 30-minute cut-off time.

Crowe was in reflective mood, reserving his famous snark for those who claimed to be unfamiliar with his parallel career as a musician, dropping collaborative names as eclectic as the Wu-Tang’s RZA, Dua Lipa and Michael Bublé as evidence of the not-exactly-underground nature of his non-film career. He spoke thoughtfully and intelligently about his acting career, and even sprang to the defense of the comic-book movie industry, where he has, quite by chance, become something of an institution. “Something came out the other day,” he said. “Somebody finally twigged, that, in DC, I’m Superman’s dad; in Disney-Marvel I’m Thor, which is Hercules’ father; and in Sony-Marvel I’m Kraven the Hunter’s father.” Crowe laughed when he recalled his reply on Twitter: “Fertile. Across space and time … ”

Asked how comic-book movies compare with his usual types of movies, the actor suggested that the marketplace was maturing. “You know, the filmmakers that they’re using, and the assets they’re giving those filmmakers, are getting better and better and better,” he said. “And it is now probably simpler to give more nuance to the characters, because the audience has grown [with them]. Maybe the first few of these comic-book movies had to be very simple, but now the audience has grown up with them and they want that nuance, you know? I think at first there might have been a misconception about the way comic-book films were made and [having to work] against blue-screen. But now they’ve changed.”

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They’ve certainly changed since Russell Crowe became a huge international star after his commanding performance in Gladiator. Asked about Ridley Scott’s upcoming sequel, Crowe simply said he was in no position to comment, not least because his character died in the original. “I was in Malta recently,” he said, “because we did a concert there, and I looked across to Fort Ricasoli, and the Colosseum’s been built there again, just like it was in 1999. I tell you, man, it was like a time warp — for a couple of seconds there, I was like, What year is this? Where are we?” He laughed. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting that that they would rebuild the Colosseum in the exact same place.”

As for anything else, however, he maintained that he was completely out of the loop. “I don’t know anything about the cast, I don’t know anything about the plot. Well, I wouldn’t, would I? ‘Cause I’m dead! But I just know that whoever’s involved in that movie, if Ridley has decided to do a second part of that story 24 years later, he will have really strong reasons to do so. And it’s very typical of him, really, to rethink everything that he’s done and know how to make it better. So, I would say that, now, I couldn’t think of that movie being anything less than absolutely spectacular.”

Asked if he and Scott had plans to reunite, Crowe seemed genuinely caught off-guard. “We haven’t made a movie together for quite a while now,” he reflected. “That’s not intentional, it’s just the way it’s worked out. But we’ve made — what is it? — five moves together. I’ve said this many times over the years, but there’s no better set for an actor like me to be on that one of Ridley Scott’s. He has the intellect that allows you to fully collaborate. He has the true, pure spirit of an artist.

“Funnily enough,” he continued, “on the last film we did together, we had a conversation. We were in a valley looking up at a castle that he’d had built, and we both knew that, with the advent of the comic-book tentpole movies, it was highly likely to be the last time that we were going to be on a set together with that level of physical production. And that’s the way it actually worked out. But given the look of the sets that they’ve built again in Malta, he’s now getting to go back into that same level of physical production one more time. So that’s fantastic. We have a similar energy, really, Ridley and I. We know it’s all about the movie — everything that we do on a daily basis is just about making the movie — and one of these days we’ll get to do another one. Hopefully. We’ll see.”

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