Gladiator II: Truth vs. Fiction

Fact and fiction in Gladiator II: You are greeted by those who are going to lie

Remember when the 2023 Ridley Scott biopic Napoleon caused a storm among discerning French historians? what a shock shocked they were due to factual inaccuracies in the film (zut alorsBonaparte never led the attack on Waterloo!). Well, it looks like the 86-year-old Oscar-winning director is at it again (see page 56), only this time the ancient Roman explorers will be storming Scott Free Productions. Although Gladiator II was warmly received in early screenings, the 150-minute film, which opens on November 22, is clearly laden with historical fiction — like that scene in which the flooded Colosseum is filled with sharks. “It’s complete Hollywood bullshit,” dismisses Dr. Shadi Bartsch, a professor of classics at the University of Chicago who holds 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 naval battles were took place in the arena, she notes). The scene with the rhinoceros bursting into the Colosseum seems to be true—”Martial wrote a poem in 80 AD about a rhinoceros throwing a bull into the sky,” says Barch—but not the two-horned breed shown in the film, just the one-horned kind. and there is no evidence that the gladiators actually rode them, as in Scott’s film. One of the more startling anachronisms involves a scene in which a Roman nobleman is drinking tea in a café while reading the morning paper… 1,200 years before the invention of the printing press. “They had daily news— Acta Diuma — but it was carved and placed in certain places,” says Barch. “You had to go for it, you couldn’t spend it in a cafe. Besides, they didn’t have a cafe!” As for Scott, historical nitpicking didn’t bother him Napoleon, and now it doesn’t bother him. “When you get to 2024,” he admits, “it’s all speculation.” — Jordan Hoffman

South Pole Doc uses AI to bring explorers back to life

More than a century ago, the legendary polar explorer Ernest Shackleton understood the principle of the Internet age: “photo or there was no photo.” Endurancea new Nat Geo doc from Academy Award-winning filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarheli (Free solo, Salvation), showcases the stunning footage taken by Shackleton’s men during his 1907 expedition to Antarctica, including footage of his ship being crushed by ice and leaving 28 men stranded at the bottom of the world. Unsurprisingly, there were no photographs taken during Shackleton’s 800-mile journey in a lifeboat across the South Seas to call for help. To depict this terrifying part of the documentary, the filmmakers relied on a combination of re-enactments, filmed with actors in Iceland and Los Angeles, and artificial intelligence. Using state-of-the-art software to synthesize the audio recordings of survivors, long-dead crew members posthumously “read” their journal entries aloud. Given the controversy over using AI to bring Anthony Bourdain back from the dead in 2021 RoadrunnerChin and Vasarheli took a bit of a risk. But like Shackleton, they are explorers in their own right. “It’s a great tool, (but) you have to be careful, considerate and ethical about how you use it,” says Vasarheli.

as star trekJess Bush became a Bee actress

Enabled Star Trek: Brave New WorldsJess Bush plays Nurse Chapel. Here on 21st-century Earth, however, the 32-year-old Australian works as an artist — known as ONEJESSA — and her latest exhibition is causing quite a stir in New York. Bush buried 1,000 dead bees in resin balls and joined them into a floating sculpture that hangs in the lobby of the Glass Atrium in West Manhattan, a new development at Ninth Avenue and 32nd Street. “The inspiration was my own sense of wonder and appreciation for the beauty of the Earth,” she says. On where she got the 1,000 dead bees: “Unfortunately, it wasn’t that hard. I have a few beekeepers in Australia that I visit and I collect dead bees from the grass around the hive.’ THR got an early look at the exhibition, which opened to the public on October 30, and can report that it is definitely honey

This story was published on October 30 in The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe.