Twenty Four years later the arena is welcoming audiences back for Gladiator II. The visionary himself Ridley Scott has assembled quite a team of frequent collaborators to continue his version of Ancient Rome on a more bloody and brutal scale than ever before. With a scale more epic than the first, Offscreen Central had the opportunity to chat with editors Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo about the challenge of revisiting the world of Gladiator, the emotional depth of the characters in relation to the audience, and the balance between action and intimacy.

Jillian Chilingerian: Hi. I’m excited to speak with both of you today. It’s been quite some time since the last Gladiator. How was it to bring this world back to audiences?
Sam Restivo: Well, for me, I was in college when the first movie came out. I saw it the day came out, May 5, 2000, at the Cinerama Dome here in LA, and I was an obnoxious film student who was excited. I didn’t even remember what my expectations of the first film were going to be at that time., but it certainly blew me away, even from the first shot of the hand on the wheat I was like, this is something special. It became this cultural touchstone for people in the 20-plus years since and ironically enough, the first movie is my mom’s favorite movie of all time. When the opportunity came up to work on this, are you kidding? Of course, I’m going to be a part of this. I’m just super lucky.

Jillian Chilingerian:That’s so cute that your mom loves it and then now you get to work on that opportunity. This ensemble of characters we get to see them fleshed out. Most of the time, ensembles, you always are like, Oh, I wish, like, we had more of this character, or I want to see them interact so I’m curious of tackling those different arcs of these characters and their storylines that all interweave so beautifully together.
Claire Simpson: We were fortunate that we had such a fabulous cast of actors. Connie Nielsen is a very, very sympathetic actor, and I think in some ways she had the hardest role, because she’s sort of the emotional core of the movie, in a very masculine movie. I think that’s a very difficult role to pull off. I thought she did it wonderfully and with enormous grace. Paul Mescal has an incredible range. I mean, you’ve probably seen his earlier films where he’s very sensitive, but he’s also got this incredible masculinity and force as well. I believe, in college, he was a rugby player, but he’s got this soft heart. He’s a dear sweet man and so he can draw on these different strengths that he has for such a young actor, he has immense skill. The others speak for themselves. I mean, they’re very very, very experienced so when you’re working with actors who are at the top of their game, it’s not that difficult. It’s when the material is weak that you have to struggle and work hard to try and make it something, but we didn’t struggle to make this work, because we had such rich material.

Jillian Chilingerian: There’s such a softness to these characters, but also in this world of like vengeance and the corruption of Rome from the last time that we’ve seen it. There are these intimate moments amongst insane battle sequences that pull you in. What was it like working with those sequences with heart in this that I was, like, not expecting amid the thrill?
Sam Restivo: Well, that’s the fun stuff, the action scenes, because Ridley Scott shoots with 10 to 12 cameras all the time, which is an overwhelming thing to consider logistically, oh my god. How is this movie so big? There’s all these different things, but us as editors, we’re sitting there and it’s like, oh man, wouldn’t it be great if there was, like, a front shot and that rhino is charging right at us? Well, guess what? We have it. They’ve got all of the shots. It’s an embarrassment of riches every single time with these sequences. It’s so much fun to have all the options to cut to the various things, all in the service of Ridley’s vision, but then be like, just carrying the story forward and keeping the arc of these characters alive.
Jillian Chilingerian: It places you where you feel like you’re in the arena with when all the different coverage of it. It is all visceral with the sound and the way everything is moving. Then as you are watching them in the arena and moving up to the royal box to see them processing what is happening in front of them. The perspectives that we get to see from the gladiators, and then also like the people up top.
Sam Restivo: So with scenes like that in the arena, when we’ve got the royal box and then we’ve got all the stuff that’s going on on the floor, these are some seriously professional actors in the row box between Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, and then, of course, Denzel Washington and Connie, where we could always use their footage as important character moments within these big battle scenes. We’re always with Macrinus trying to figure out who this person is, and he’s always watching what Lucilla is doing, and her reaction to the things going on on the floor. We could always count on cutting back to the box to get these intricate little things, these nonverbal moments between the actors, to help carry the mystery of what’s going on, but then carry the emotion as well.
Claire Simpson: This is a very rich canvas for Ridley. It’s what he does best, that very immersive experience, and also as Sam was saying to be able to juxtapose those moments with the more tender scenes. It’s something that he does well in many of his films, that kind of intimacy comes across really well.

Jillian Chilingerian:The relationship we see between Lucius and his mother, and then also, like, her relationship with Pedro Pascal’s character, there’s such like duality to these characters, from how they’re seen publicly, and then in these private spheres. As the audience, you are rethinking, like, oh, like, maybe I was rooting for him to have bad faith, but like, maybe I want to see how this like relationship plays out because there’s just something that’s like connecting them all through, like, they’re love for each other, and just like in the Mother-Son relationship. How was that to build, making sure that that aspect had enough time to flourish,
Sam Restivo: Well, yeah, that’s the tricky thing about a lot of the dramatic scenes. So obviously, when we’re cutting battle scenes, it’s like, frenetic, shot to shot to shot to shot. We have to take the time to let the characters experience these emotions and let the audience sit with these characters so it’s not just a blink and it’s over. Claire’s right, Connie had probably one of the hardest jobs in the movie because she is the beating heart of the movie. Her scenes with Pedro when the emotion that she’s playing in the scene where she tells him that she knows Lucius is still alive, is a complicated one because she has feelings of regret, and then joy that her son is still alive. The two of them play that so well because Pedro as General Acacius is sympathetic to his wife at that moment, but he’s also like, wait, I can’t help him, but we’re all going to die if we do this. It is just, modulating that exact right kind of tension to the scene is what’s so fun. Lucilla had it with Acacius there, and then also when she gives the ring to Lucius, to, you know, to start the third act of the film, it’s, it’s really quite a performance.
Jillian Chilingerian:Seeing her be able to navigate as a woman going through these different alliances that she has, and just like looking out for herself, but also like her son. Everyone utilizes and weaponizes each other to make it to the end, in a way. I love that you both touched upon those moments of people calculating because it plays so much like a chess game amid this very epic of what’s going on behind the scenes.
Claire Simpson: Well, I think there’s a lot of manipulation going on with certainly with the Macrinus character, and I think that makes his character very juicy. It’s very it’s very fun to watch him working through all this stuff. He’s the one who figures out who Lucius is. All the various clues he’s constantly watching and manipulating people.

Jillian Chilingerian: It is so fun to watch Denzel get that transformation and you start to catch on to what he’s doing, and you’re like, oh, maybe he makes a turn or something, and how he uses others to get to where he eventually wants to be.
Claire Simpson: Yes, and you’re right. It’s a very, very hard world. It’s violent and it’s dangerous and, there’s no sense of personal security. So it’s a very different world and what we now live in.

Jillian Chilingerian:The opening sequence, which I think just really sets the tone of we’re back, it’s 20 years like this is the state of how everything is and just how everything plays so kinetically. What was the process of putting that together to get us up to pace and branch between the two films with both of those aspects? Everyone also just has such good character introductions, when Pedro comes on the ship and we see, Paul and his wife.
Sam Restivo: Yeah, it’s all Ridley. So we knew that it’s been almost 25 years since the first movie, and it was his idea that came up with the animated sequence at the beginning because his Scottfree logo has this really beautiful, magical thing with the bird flying off. They came up with a bunch of the frames that they were going to use as baselines from the first movie and so we got an early version of animation for us to kind of cut that too, and then give to the sound department and music as well, to make it this kind of this sequence before the movie begins. We didn’t want it to be too long, because there’s still, like, a lot of movies to get to, so that by the time you get to Numidia, you’re ready to be invested in the new characters. We started right off with Lucius and Arashat and their relationship together, and because we wanted to build this emotional thing between the two of them. Then like you said, then you see the other movie star, Pedro Pascal, on there, and you know that these people are going to go head to head. It’s a pretty awesome thing and that’s all Ridley,

Jillian Chilingerian: Does it feel daunting when there are new characters and this is such a beloved world, and you’re like, Okay, we want to make sure, from what the script has and the material we have, that we give that enough breathing room to make you care, as well as, just to me, like they already felt like these people existed in this realm, whether they were, mentioned in the first film or not like it just felt like we were picking up and we were continuing.
Claire Simpson: The relationship between Lucius and his wife we were very concerned that there wasn’t enough time invested in her, and so you didn’t care when she died but I think that Paul, he’s such a good actor, that he was able to pull that off. The rage that drove him and motivated him, came out of his his terrible grief for losing the love of his life. So I think he pulled that one off, but it is complicated to figure out how much time you’re investing in these intimate moments, as opposed to the action material because what’s interesting is that men and women in the audience have very different reactions. We found that in the first screening, the men were really into the action, the thrilling stuff, and weren’t so interested in the relationships, but the women were very invested in the relationships. It’s always a delicate balance, really.
Sam Restivo: Usually, as editors on movies, it’s always real. It’s just the one all the energy is focused on, because it’s like, how are we going to start the movie? Have we introduced enough of the characters for long enough? How long is this thing? How long is that? Every single cut, every single shot we had to weigh constantly throughout the making of the movie and it’s a very delicate balance, like Claire was saying, to get it just right.

Jillian Chilingerian:This is already an epic with the scope, and then diving into all these different characters and how they’re so interconnected. I love that we get to see more of Lucius in his journey, especially with his father, because I feel like that’s so important, and how this character transforms, but thank you so much for both of you for this time, I really enjoyed the movie.
Sam Restivo: Cool, thank you.
Claire Simpson: Pleasure, thank you.

Gladiator II is available to watch in theaters
You can read our review of the film here.