Gladiator II: fact versus fiction

Fact and fiction inside Gladiator II: Those who are about to lie salute you

Remember when Ridley Scott’s 2023 biopic Napoleon spark a firestorm among picky French historians? How shocked, shocked they were because of the film’s factual inaccuracies (zut alorsBonaparte was never in charge at Waterloo!). Well, it looks like the 86-year-old Oscar-winning director is at it again (see page 56), but this time it’s scholars from ancient Rome who will be storming Scott Free Productions. Although Gladiator II Although the film was warmly received in initial screenings, the 150-minute film, which premieres on November 22, is clearly packed with historical gems – such as that scene in which a flooded Colosseum is filled with sharks. “Total Hollywood bullshit,” Dr. snaps. Shadi Bartsch, a professor of classics at the University of Chicago who has degrees from Princeton, Harvard and UC Berkeley and has written several books on ancient Rome. “I don’t think the Romans knew what a shark was” (although sea battles were held in the arena, she notes). The scene where rhinos rush into the Colosseum is more or less true – “Martial wrote a poem in 80 AD about a rhinoceros throwing a bull into the air,” says Bartsch – but not the two-horned race shown in the film, just the one-horned type, and there is no evidence that gladiators actually rode them, as in Scott’s film. One of the most eyebrow-raising anachronisms involves the scene where a Roman noble drinks tea in a café while reading the morning newspaper… 1,200 years before the invention of the printing press. ‘They had daily news – Acta Diuma – but it was cut out and placed in certain locations,” says Bartsch. “You had to go there, you couldn’t hold it in a café. Besides, they didn’t have any cafes!” As for Scott, the historical nitpicking didn’t bother him Napoleon, and now it doesn’t bother him. “By the time you get to 2024,” he admits, “it’s all speculation.” —Jordan Hofman

South Pole Doc uses AI to bring explorers back to life

More than a century ago, legendary polar explorer Ernest Shackleton understood the Internet age principle of “photos or it didn’t happen.” Staminathe new Nat Geo documentary from Academy Award-winning husband-and-wife filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo, The rescue), shows stunning film footage taken by Shackleton’s men during his 1907 Antarctic expedition – including footage of his ship being crushed by ice, leaving 28 men at the bottom of the world. Not surprisingly, no photographs were taken during Shackleton’s 800-mile lifeboat journey across the South Pacific to find help. To portray that poignant part of the documentary, the filmmakers relied on a combination of re-creations – filmed with actors in Iceland and Los Angeles – and artificial intelligence. Using cutting-edge software to synthesize audio recordings of the survivors, long-deceased crew members posthumously “read” their diary entries aloud. Considering the controversy that arose over the use of AI to bring Anthony Bourdain back from the dead in 2021 RoadrunnerChin and Vasarhelyi took some risks. But like Shackleton, they are explorers themselves. “It’s a great tool, but you have to be thoughtful, thoughtful and ethical about how you use it,” says Vasarhelyi.

How Star Trek‘s Jess Bush became a bee actress

On Star Trek: Strange New WorldsJess Bush plays Nurse Chapel. But here on 21st century Earth, 32-year-old Australian moonshine as an artist – known as ONEJESSA – and her latest exhibition are making waves in New York. Bush buried a thousand dead bees in balls of resin and strung them together in a floating sculpture that hangs in the Glass Atrium lobby of Manhattan West, the new project at Ninth Avenue and 32nd Street. “The inspiration was my own sense of wonder and gratitude for the beauty of the earth,” she says. On where she got her hands on the thousand dead bees: “Unfortunately, it wasn’t that difficult. I have a few beekeepers in Australia that I visit, and I pick up dead bees from the grass around the hive.” THR got an early look at the exhibit, which opened to the public on Oct. 30, and can report that it’s definitely a honey

This story appeared in the Oct. 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.