‘Gladiator II’ Delivers Friends, Romans and Sharks

When “Gladiator” was released in 2000, fans and critics applauded its visual effects and production design, from the towering Colosseum to the detailed costumes and prowling tigers.

More than two decades later, the architects of that film reassembled for a daunting task: building a sequel that captured what people loved about the first film’s visuals, while also finding fresh ways to surprise viewers.

“Gladiator II” (in theaters Nov. 22) includes familiar elements — tightly choreographed sword fighting and lofty speeches about the Roman Empire — but it adds combat scenes in the Colosseum that include a rhino in one sequence and sharks in another.

“It’s epic, beyond epic,” said Arthur Max, the production designer who, along with the director Ridley Scott and the producer Douglas Wick, is part of the brain trust behind the two films. “Everything we did on the first one was amplified to a much greater size and scale.”

Much of the movie’s production design draws on meticulous research, with Max traveling to the Museum of the Roman Ships of Fiumicino, to conservation laboratories in Pompeii and to museums in Athens, among other locations. They also examined models of warships at the British Museum in London and studied illustrations from military history books.

But the film also takes some creative license, since many of the images and scenes sprang from Scott’s imagination. Eschewing a computer for pen and paper, Scott would often envision scenes and then draw them out for his team to re-create onscreen.