Oscar winner Christopher Nolan has named Gladiator 2 as his favourite film of 2024, calling Ridley Scott’s historical epic “jaw-dropping” and “masterful”.
Gladiator 2, starring Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington, was a huge success at the box office and is now being tipped for awards, having already been nominated for two Golden Globes.
Ridley Scott’s film is a direct sequel to his 2000 hit Gladiator, which won five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe.
Nolan, who won multiple Oscars this year for Oppenheimer, has now told Variety that Scott’s latest film is the best that he has seen in 2024.
As part of an article for the outlet where other directors, including Andrew Haigh and Alexander Payne, spoke about their favourite films of the year, Nolan was full of praise for Ridley Scott.
The 54-year-old said that Scott is “far too experienced a director to get caught making parallels with our time. He lets the world of Gladiator 2 speak for itself, once again showing us who we are simply by inviting us to enjoy the crazy inflationary ride.”
“Why are there sharks in the coliseum?” he asked. “Because we demand them, and Scott masterfully gives them to us. As he reveals how the games are used to manipulate public opinion, we can’t help but see shadows of our own public arena projected onto the sand.”
Nolan then highlighted Scott’s “brilliance” as he “raises the game with the staging of his action – his incredible, hyper-observant, multi-camera mise-en-scène (so different to the original) masterfully wrestles the action into clear and jaw-dropping sequence after sequence.”
“In films from Blade Runner to Thelma and Louise to Gladiator 2, the visual density of Scott’s art serves as foil for his underlying thematic clarity,” he added.
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Nolan concluded his praise for the filmby claiming that Scott has never gotten the proper acknowledgement he deserved, declaring that “he and fellow directors from the British adland of the 1970s brought to cinema were often dismissed as superficial”.
He praised them for bringing “new depth to the visual language of movies, mise-en-scène that could tell us what the worlds they portrayed might feel like.”
“This has never been as clear as in the masterful opening shot of Gladiator 2, where Paul Mescal’s hand gently cradles the grain harvested from the original movie’s swaying wheat,” Nolan said.
The Inception director formally received a knighthood on Wednesday (18 December) while his wife, Emma Thomas, who has produced all his films, received a damehood.
Their partnership has led to major blockbusters including The Dark Knight trilogy and their most recent venture, the epic biopic Oppenheimer, which swept the 2024 award ceremonies.
Discussing their conversation with the King, Nolan, 54, told the PA news agency: “It was very nice that he knew our work and was aware of it, and, yes, he was hoping that I would take this as encouragement to do more of it.”
Speaking at Buckingham Palace, Thomas, 53, added: “He’d seen Oppenheimer, and he liked it, so that was very gratifying to hear.”
