The long-awaited first trailer for Ridley Scott's Gladiator II arrived this week, but not without some controversy over its choice of music.
Starring Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, and Joseph Quinn, the action-packed trailer offers a taste of what to expect when the film hits theaters this November. It's the type of bombast to be anticipated from a big-budget Scott movie, but some have taken issue with the decision to use a remixed version of Jay-Z and Ye's "No Church in the Wild" featuring Frank Ocean at the halfway point of the trailer.
As pointed out by Culture Crave, the trailer has garnered substantially more dislikes on YouTube than likes. Of course, dislikes aren't publicly available without the use of a browser plugin, but that hasn't stopped it from becoming a major talking point.
With 14.385 million views notched by Friday afternoon, there are currently 135,000 likes and 286,000 dislikes.
Looking at the comments you'll immediately be greeted with hundreds of complaints about the use of the song in the trailer.
"When the rap starts playing, I thought Vin Diesel was going to show up with his V8 in the arena," reads one comment with over 11,000 likes, while another suggests the person responsible for choosing the track "needs to be sent to [the] arena with lions."
Other comments include people suggesting the original Gladiator never needed a sequel, and someone lamenting the loss of Hans Zimmer in favor of "freakin' Spotify music," whatever that means. Isn't nearly all music on Spotify? You can call Zimmer "Spotify music" in that case, not that we're being pedantic or anything.
Curiously, there are a lot fewer complaints about the accents in the trailer.
No one speaks Latin, as they did in ancient Rome, and none of the actors appear to be putting on any accent appropriate for the period. Why? Because it doesn't matter. It's a movie, it's supposed to be entertaining first and foremost. Are you not entertained? That's the purpose of the movie, not historical accuracy. Ridley Scott famously does not care about such things. When the four-time Oscar-nominee's Napoleon debuted in theaters last fall, some criticized its lack of accuracy, to which the 86-year-old director replied, "Get a life."
It's also worth pointing out that "No Church in the Wild" probably won't even feature in the movie. It's a trailer; that's how marketing works. A Super Bowl ad for the first film used a Kid Rock song, for instance.
There have also been some racist responses to Denzel Washington's involvement since some people incorrectly believe it's historically inaccurate to depict a Black character in ancient Rome. His character is based on the Roman Emperor Macrinus, who was from the north of Africa. Washington might not look exactly the way Macrinus did, but the historical figure almost certainly wasn't white. On top of that, no one seems to have any complaints about Paul Mescal speaking in his Irish accent, while apparently, Washington's performance is a step too far for some of these chuds.