How accurate is Gladiator 2? Breaking down the Historical facts vs. Hollywood fiction

Ridley Scott's Gladiator 2 begins with a similar note as his 2000 movie, where Hanno (Paul Mescal), who is the son of the legendary gladiator Maximus (Russell Crowe) and Lucille (Connie Nielsen), loses his wife to some murderers.

And like the first one, it borrows elements from the gladiatorial history from which characters and stories stood the test of time and reached us. It isn't really an accurate depiction of some real story, but it does hold some accuracy for some events and characters that became stories. That's a mesh of fact and fiction.

Other than Paul Mesca, we have Denzel Washington in the film, who was singled out by the critics who praised his performance as Macrinus. He is one hell of a manipulative man in there. Pedro Pascal joined the crew as General Acacius, who is now Lucilla's husband in the film.

Now, without further ado, we will take a look at how accurate Gladiator 2 is to the likes of original gladiatorial history.

Which of the characters in Gladiator 2 are real?

While we have a fair few characters based on real life in Gladiator 2, Denzel Washington's Macrinus is the major one among them all. He is the master of puppets pulling the strings in the entire story and conspires to overthrow the emperors to become one himself.

Macrinus did serve Caracalla in real life too, but this real-life version lived through to become an emperor. Also, he wasn't involved in Geta's murder. Interestingly, Denzel Washington himself confirmed to The Times that the original one was never a man of color.

Then we have emperors Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn), who were not twins, and the former was the older of the two, and yes, he had his younger brother murdered.

Additionally, Gladiator 2 protagonist Lucius and his mother Lucilla are based on real-life figures of the same name; however, the former died at a young age, unlike the version from the film.

What facts does the film take and tweak?

Numidia was already part of Rome when Caracalla reigned. (Image via Paramount Pictures)

One of the most chaotic scenes in the film is Numidia's invasion of the Romans through the sea. For those who have seen 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), this scene, for a brief moment, will take them back there. However, they didn't need that, as in reality, the region was already a part of the Roman empire during Caracalla's reign.

Also, we see gladiators being marked with this hot branding iron; that's something available in both films. This concept is real but applied to just slaves in reality. It was done to let others know, in case a slave is a runner, that he is the property of someone else already.

All of these are the elements Gladiator 2 borrows but it has its fiction. For one, we have this monkey called Dondus as a consul. That's proper fiction and it never happened in Roman history. And then there's Acacius, whom Pedro Pascal plays; he never existed.

It isn't exactly Nolan's Interstellar (2014) that goes deep in its topic; Gladiator 2 does have a range of accuracies and inaccuracies that cannot be covered in a few words. Maybe things are inaccurate as a major part of the narrative is borrowed, but that inaccuracy will lead a viewer to original history indeed, should they choose to.