Gladiator 2: You won’t see this scene with Denzel Washington in the movie! why cut

Denzel Washington has a blast in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II as Macrin, an ambitious and conniving man. The actor develops a charismatic character that we love to hate and he does it well. The star of the film, who won two Oscars for Training Day and Glory, revealed that a crucial scene was cut from the final version.

for the media GateDenzel Washington reveals that the series will feature his character kissing another man.mouth full“.”I think they were scaredhe explains. They weren’t ready to keep it. I’ll kill the same man five minutes later, but still. It was the kiss of death.”

In the final version seen in the cinema, Macrinus does not share intimate moments with the man, but her uncertainty is still palpable when she talks about her past relationships with men. This discovery of Denzel Washington is an example, among many others, of Hollywood’s reluctance to embrace homosexuality in blockbusters.

Homoeroticism in a butterfly

However, the peplum genre, and gladiator films in particular, have been notorious for their homoeroticism for decades. This is even what makes them one of their special features. Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus is the epitome of this. Already at that time, a scene where the character played by Kirk Douglas refers to his homosexual relationship with his slave was cut from the edit. But the era – the film was released in 1960 – was affected by a major censorship policy – called the Hays Code.

Will Denzel Washington’s kiss sequence see the light of day? After all, several Ridley Scott films have already become the subject of extended versions. Anything is still possible for Gladiator II.

You can see Gladiator II in theaters.