Four-time Oscar nominee Ridley Scott is evidently not here for people picking apart his new Gladiator film – especially before it’s even hit cinemas.
Scott recently picked up the Gladiator story more than 20 years on from the original movie’s release, with Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington and Joseph Quinn joining the cast this time around.
But while many film fans are already counting down the days until Gladiator II’s release, some have already taken issue with it.
One prominent historian has already branded the movie “total Hollywood bullshit”, pointing out certain inaccuracies that have been reported since the film’s first screening last month.
These gripes, according to The Hollywood Reporter, include the fact that only one-horned rhinos would have appeared at the Colosseum, rather than the two-horned ones featured in the film, and while there were “naval battles” at the iconic arena, these probably wouldn’t have included sharks.
For his part, Scott seems unfazed by anyone poking holes in his work.
As part of an interview in the latest issue of Filmhounds, the director was asked how he would respond to anyone saying the sequel was unnecessary, “a cash grab” or “historically inaccurate”.
“Get a life,” he responded, in an excerpt shared by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jasmine Valentine.
Scott previously gave the same answer last year, when asked about supposed inaccuracies of his historical epic Napoleon.
“Were you there? Oh you weren’t there. Then how do you know?” he later claimed.
He added: “When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.’”
Ridley Scott’s full interview with Filmhounds will be published in the magazine’s latest issue, out on 30 November.