Bonus Episode #1 Preview - Glad2ator and Megalopolis
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Hello Janina. Hello Emma. Hello, a bonus episode. Finally, a bonus episode. Finally, look at us go. We said we'd get here one day and we got here. We did and we are going to talk about some films.

We don't need to tell anyone anything because everyone knows everything. They're our Patreons. They're our experts. You're a Patreon. Oh, they know. We don't have to remember to introduce ourselves. I love that. We just need to say, we're going to talk about Gladiator. We're going to talk about Megalopolis. Yeah. We're going to have some opinions. We're both sober, which is probably for the best. Yeah.

Yeah, so we've both seen Gladiator 2. Have you seen Gladiator 1 recently? Yeah, so I re-watched Gladiator before going to see Gladiator because I had not seen it since it came out. Same. I also hadn't seen it since 2000. Yes, I did not enjoy it in 2000. Same. But I suspected that I was being a little shit because I went to see it on...

on a school trip with my classics class. Ditto. Yes. We have that experience in common. Yeah. I was like, this is nonsense. I love Joaquin Phoenix, but everything else about this is garbage. And then I wondered if maybe I just was being mean and there was a fun, a fun rollicking time to be had.

I found it really boring re-watching it. Like, quite boring. Yeah. I will agree. I also thought that maybe, because I saw it with my Ancient History A-level class, and also thought that maybe I was being a tiny little dickhead. Because the main thing I remember is laughing at the Latin in it.

it because the Latin in Gladiator 1 is very poor there is a big shot it's a big shot of a like advert for some gladiators which where the Latin there's only two words on it and somehow they've still not managed to make them agree and

In Latin. Like they're just, it's a real fuck up. And then there's a big bit where they're going into the Colosseum and the Colosseum has a chunk of Latin over it. And it is like a ugly bit of,

10th century medieval Latin. Like, it's just ugly Latin. I remember being in hysterics over that. I actually think that's fantastic because it's one of those things that happens all the time to non-Western languages. Like, you'll see something somewhere and there'll just be random Urdu on the walls

that makes no sense and I think it's important that we also do it to Latin the language that everyone generates is the most important of all time the reason we can't have fun things in English like split infinitives I think it's good to shit on that language it is and that is precisely what Ridley Scott a man who doesn't give a fuck about anything at all

No man has given less of a fuck about anything than Ridley Scott. I don't think he even gives that much of a fuck about Gladiator 2, a film that he shot in like 50 days. Or Gladiator 1. He did Gladiator 1 on the basis that they showed, like somebody else had obviously written the script and they showed him a painting, like a 19th century neoclassical painting. And he was like, I'll do it.

They're like, okay. Great. The thing about Ridley Scott is that he can make very beautiful films and if the script is good, the film will be good. But he doesn't know when scripts are good. So he, or maybe he just doesn't bother reading them. I don't think he bothers reading them. It's a crapshoot about whether or not the film is going to be good. And notoriously, Gladiator 1 doesn't really have a script. Yeah.

A lot of it, a surprising amount of Gladiator. One was improvised against Russell Crowe's will. And those lines that were in the script were ones that he had to bully them into saying because they were so bad. So there's a lot of... Yeah, I do believe that this one had a script from my understanding. It might come out later that it did not. Yeah.

But as a general rule, this one does seem to have had more of a script. It is not, I would say, more convincing as a film. And the plot makes no sense. No sense. It makes the plot of one look very good indeed. Yes. Yeah. This is my take. I think one is... But it makes sense. Yeah.

2 is more fun, but basically incomprehensible. It is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Yes. Yeah. I will say my... The thing that I can't stop thinking about from Gladiator 2, and I will say at this point there's going to be some quite intense spoilers. Oh, yeah. Spoilers for both Gladiators and Megalopolis in this episode. So, Gator and Caracalla are real people. Yeah. They're real people.

They did not rule at the time that Ridley Scott thinks they ruled, which is not like 14 years after Commodus. They are like a few decades later. I mean, he just rushes through things at a pace as well, because Commodus also ruled for longer than like two weeks. He did. He ruled for 13 years. Yeah. Yeah. So and then there's but so Caracalla and Gator, they're real.

Gator is done real dirty by this film because Caracalla in real life is pretty hot. Yeah.

He is my personal hottest emperor, were I to rank them. Wow. Me and my friend Dan have talked about this extensively, and we think that Caracalla is the hottest. Okay. He is a big, burly man. His father is Libyan. His mother is Syrian. He looks angry all the time, and he loves to be in the army, just throwing stuff about. Great. And what they've turned him into, and this is the very surprising thing, is a titan.

little man yeah with a tiny monkey who has syphilis yeah but he has syphilis not the monkey the monkey does not have syphilis that we know he has syphilis and the monkey might have syphilis for all we know this film has given syphilis to everybody a disease films love to give people syphilis it's their favorite even though syphilis did not exist in europe

But, and all, so when they came on the screen, I was like, okay, I'd seen the trailer, right? There's a big one and a little one. Yeah. Caracalla in real life murdered his brother in his mother's arms, just stormed into a room and stabbed him. Because that's the kind of guy that Caracalla was. He was a can-do guy with a take-charge attitude. Yeah.

And so when I saw the trailer, I was like, okay, there's two of them. There's a big one and a little one. The big one will be Caracalla and the little one will be Gator. Yeah. But the big one is Gator. Yeah. And so for the whole third of the film, I just kept going, the big one is Gator? The big one? Why is the...

Anyway, so that threw me. And it's not just that Caracalla is the little one. It's that Caracalla is useless. Like he's a little mewling child who like just does whatever his brother tells him to do and is constantly on the verge of tears. And then they reveal that he's got syphilis. And I was like, what the fuck? Which I may or may not have said out loud. Yeah.

And then he, with the help of Denzel Washington, the best thing in the film by a million miles, murders Gator. And then he makes his monkey console. Yeah. Did he?

even do that I wanted to ask you about the monkey becoming console that seems like something some imp might have done at some point no one made a monkey a console Janina this is a reference to Caligula right and his horse and his horse who he also didn't make a console and

And they're basically whoever wrote the script for this has just decided to like mix it all together. And like, how do you make a Roman emperor mad? They make an animal a console. Who's he got? He's got a little monkey. The monkey is cute. We like him. Fantastic actor. Also, was the monkey always there? Because I feel like the monkey just appeared one scene very late in and I was like, OK, yes, this guy's got a monkey. But maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to the earlier scenes.

No, the monkey just appears. Okay, great. And then he's, like, well into the monkey for, like, two scenes. Yeah. And then the film ends. That's got reshoots written all over it. Like, like, Dave, we've got to give this guy something else. Let's throw in a monkey. Yeah. Macrinus, also a real person, who did also rule after Caracalla, after...

Well, he didn't kill Caracalla, but somebody else killed Caracalla on the front lines in Parthia over a dispute about a promotion. And so I knew from the beginning that that was kind of where this was going and was quite pleased that he didn't totally change that part of Roman history. And I did enjoy everything that Denzel Washington did. Every decision that was made by Denzel Washington was the best decision. Absolutely. He made it that...

feel electric in a way that nothing else was doing. Yes. Like, absolutely reminds you why he is Denzel Washington. Yes. Why he's just the best. Yeah. Paul Mescal, unconvincing as a gladiator or a man who has ever felt angry about anything.

he was very earnest though he was very earnest and they kept saying rage is radiating out of you or like your rage is like you're so angry like what will sake your anger like where i see just a man going just he's the least angry man i've ever seen he looks like he's had three whiskeys in a joint this was a preview of a history of sexy bonus episode to

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