The like-to-dislike ratio for this summer’s “Gladiator II” trailer definitely told a story. As much as I was underwhelmed by what I saw, I did not expect almost 1M fans hitting the “dislike” button on it.
Denzel Washington is now telling Variety that a brand-new trailer will be released on September 23. Denzel didn’t have to mention it, he wasn’t even asked about it, but I’m sure Paramount is hoping that this new trailer will be better received than the previous one.
In the two months since the trailer dropped, it has received 17 million views on Paramount’s official homepage. By all accounts, it went viral, and people were definitely talking about it. So, why the backlash?
There seemed to be an assortment of reasons. Firstly, fans weren’t happy with the choice of including a rap song. “‘This Jay Z song mentions a colosseum,'” said one comment. “‘Yeah, stick that in there.'”
There are also fans of the original who don’t believe the 2000 Best Picture winner warranted a continuation. “A movie that never ever needed a sequel,” added another commenter, with 5.3k likes. That 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 the trailer, but hopefully they’ll be fixing previous hiccups for the new one, set for release in two weeks.