It’s the End of an Era for Ridley Scott’s Answer to ’The Godfather’

Ridley Scott has extracted some of the best performances of both Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington's careers, and he reunited the two Oscar-winners in one of his most ambitious movies. In the mid-2000s, Scott worked almost exclusively with Crowe, who won an Oscar for his lead performance in the epic blockbuster Gladiator. They worked together on a string of movies across a variety of genres, but none captured the magic of Gladiator, either critically or commercially. After the 2010 epic Robin Hood, Scott and Crowe stopped collaborating entirely, and even took jabs at each other around the release of Gladiator II, which, incidentally, features Washington as the villain. While Crowe hasn't commented on Washington's performance, he has certainly made his negative opinion of Gladiator II known.