Paramount Pictures
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II is one of the most anticipated movies of the year, as it looks set to be both a box office behemoth and an awards season contender.
Despite this, though, the film has seemingly rattled a particular section of movie fans (*cough racists cough*), as the trailer for Gladiator II has more dislikes than likes on YouTube, with many of the comments pointing to the use of the Jay-Z and Kanye West song “No Church In The Wild.”
“Interesting how every comment is throwing a fit over a Jay-Z song in the trailer while there are zero comments on the Napoleon trailer complaining about the Black Sabbath song,” one viral tweet pointed out.
“We don’t have to tiptoe around any of this, this is 100% unambiguously due to racism,” said a tweet with over 100,000 likes.
“Culture war nonsense has always been obvious and easy to wave away but this one has been depressing,” another movie fan said.
Gladiator II, hitting theaters on November 22, stars Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi, Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington.
The film is a sequel to the 2000 film Gladiator, which won a bevy of Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe. It also won the Oscars for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Best Costume Design.
Set about 20 years after the events of Gladiator, Mescal stars in the sequel as Lucius, the son of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla who idolizes Crowe’s Maximus in the original movie.