getaapologist

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( gladiator ii bonus content: in the arena - filmmakers )

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( gladiator ii bonus content: in the arena - filmmakers )

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( gladiator ii bonus content - official shots )

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( gladiator ii bonus content - making of )

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Vaguely trying to explain the self-contradiction of delusion, that the twins can be both 100% convinced of their total and complete power, AND deeply, deeply insecure, terrified, paranoid. At the same time.

It is the fear that causes a desperate and unstoppable need to rebuild one’s reality to protect oneself. To look into the eye of your own fear is to allow it to break you. Instead, you build walls around it and lock it behind a dozen. a hundred, a thousand doors, you sit and you stare at the keyhole and you hope that the hurt never finds you.

You may sit brave in front of the labyrinth you’ve built to cage the bull, triumphant, but you always, always know that the bull is in there.

Caracalla has lost his mind to sickness, and can’t quite remember what’s locked behind all of those doors. Sometimes he hears the sound of something moving behind those thousand doors, and it frightens him so deeply that the very core of himself cracks further and further. His desperation to be more than the terror swings doors open, bashes holes in walls, and his clumsy attempts to rebuild his barriers leave him stumbling clueless in a world where he doesn’t know his own purpose.

Geta knows the weakness rustling around inside himself, smothers it, tries to kill it, but ends up placing his hands to the walls he’s built and whispering prayers. To take it away, to kill the beast peacefully. He pounds at the doors, screaming, trying to quiet what is already silent. What’s worse, Caracalla reminds him. Forces him to look into the eyes of what he’s hidden away. He is terrified. He is terrified, and then he takes a breath and turns his back, putting away the pain for just long enough to convince everyone of his power.

The thing hidden away plagues him. He believes himself better than it. He believes himself to be nothing.

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( gladiator ii bonus content: in the arena - filmmakers )

[getaapologist]

( gladiator ii bonus content: in the arena - filmmakers )

[getaapologist]

( gladiator ii bonus content: in the arena - filmmakers )

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Right before Macrinus grabs that blade and ruins my entire life, you can see Geta rubbing his thumb on Caracalla’s cheek and my little heart can’t take much more of this.

His tiny gentle acts of love, even though his brother has just charged at him with a blade. I’m crying.

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( gladiator ii bonus content: what we do in life echoes in eternity - cast )

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( gladiator ii bonus content: what we do in life echoes in eternity - cast )

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blink twice if you need help, sincerely.

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Joe Quinn doing things with his mouth in docu shots, series and go.

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you would kiss the hand of your prisoner? you are a guest of the emperors, my lady.

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"One of favourite scenes is the one with Joe in the kind of Emperor's Palace after the kind of hand to hand combat scene when the emperor is asking Lucius to answer a question. He asks a question like, 'Do you not understand English?' because he hasn't spoken, but Lucius is like the wherewithal to go, like, 'No, I understand English.' So he recites Virgil to him, which is like to me one of the performance moments and writing and all where I'm like this is a really interesting decision for a character to make, because it's like he could be decapitated within a second, and it's so charged, and like it's the benefit of shooting multiple cameras because you're not picking that up, like you're out of breath, you feel feral, and like you can see it in all of the performances and that it's a continuous beat. I love that section in the film.

"I think that's where the film to me and from my end operates at its best is when it's like it's everything dialed up to 110, like violence, drama, and you have Denzel Washington in the room, you have Joe Quinn, you have Fred Hechinger. You've an amazing stunt team and you've Ridley watching it, and you also have that kind of poetic element to it. That's kind of to me that moment of defiance for Lucius when Denzel says like, 'He's from the provinces. He doesn't understand', and that's when Lucius decides to recite Virgil to them, and it's him going, "No, I understand you perfectly. I'm just choosing not to respond to your question", which is a very very dangerous thing, like he could've easily just had his head chopped off there and then, but thankfully for the rest of the film that didn't happen."

I love that scene. Yeah, that was two takes. What’s great about it, though, is that you don’t pick that up. You don’t go, ‘Let’s pick up the Virgil.’ You run the fight, and the camera’s rolling, and the adrenaline’s coming out of you, and I think that was a real opportunity… I love characters who stay silent, because it allows an audience to project onto them. They’re willing him to speak. And what’s amazing about Lucius in that moment is that he’s speaking on his own terms. He’s not answering any questions. He’s making a defiant gesture of saying, ‘I’m not answering any of your questions, but I’m letting you know that I understand you. Take me on at your will.’ I think that’s when Macrinus sees, ‘Okay, there’s something in this boy.’ I just love it because you can’t fake the adrenaline. Because you can feel it. When I watch the film, I can see the heartbeat in my eye going, ‘duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum.’ I’m also very proud of that scene."

Paul Mescal on Lucius reciting Virgil to Emperor Geta: Awards Tour Podcast / SBIFF / FilmStories

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the twin tyrants of rome two weird pests vs. lucilla