The like-to-dislike ratio for the “Gladiator II” trailer is wild.
As much as I was underwhelmed by the trailer, I did not expect over 127k fans to “dislike” it on the official Paramount Pictures YouTube channel. Only 99k “liked” the video.
In the 24 hours since the trailer dropped, it has received a whopping 11 million views. By all accounts, it went viral, and people are definitely talking about it. So, why the backlash?
There seems to be an assortment of reasons. Firstly, fans aren’t happy with the music choices. “‘This Jay Z song mentions a colosseum,'” says the comment with 1000 likes. “‘Yeah, stick that in there.'”
This comment has nearly 20k likes:
“The producers: We got Denzel, let’s throw a rap song in there to emphasize the roman empire.”
A comment with nearly 7k likes:
“We only have one black guy in the movie, boss.” “Blast a rap song over the trailer!”
There are also fans of the original who don’t believe it warranted a continuation. “A movie that never ever needed a sequel,” adds another commenter, with 5.3k likes. This person should check out Nick Cave’s original script, which had Russell Crowe’s Maximus entering a time portal.
Another qualm, which parallels my own, has the trailer spoiling too much, “it’s practically the whole movie in 3 minutes.” I’m not quite sure what Paramount was thinking when they assembled this trailer, and someone needs to answer for it because the film is an immense $300M+ risk for them.
‘Gladiator II’ will be in theaters on November 22.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.