Sumith Prasad
In Ridley Scott’s historical film ‘Gladiator II,’ Paul Mescal’s protagonist, Lucius Verus Aurelius, becomes a gladiator in Rome after he is captured as a prisoner of war in North Africa. He displays his strength and resilience in the Colosseum when he faces various threats, including a powerful rhino and a group of monkey-like, terrifying animals. These creatures infuriate Lucius not only with their strength but also with their ruthless aggression. One of the animals even kills his mentor, Jugurtha, making him exact vengeance on the creatures and showcase his might before the emperors and high-ranking officials of the Roman Empire!
The Creatures That Fight Lucius Verus Aurelius Are Baboons
Even though the creatures that terrorize Lucius Verus Aurelius and his compatriots may seem exaggerated or outrightly fictional, they are vicious baboons. The primates are part of the Old-World monkeys belonging to the Cercopithecidae family. The strength they display in ‘Gladiator II’ is not completely an exaggeration since they are one of the largest non-hominoid primates. The baboons became a highlight of the period drama film after Ridley Scott encountered one while filming Max’s science fiction series ‘Raised by Wolves’ in South Africa. During the production of the show in a safari park, he saw a tourist trying to pat a baboon, only for the animal to attack the man.
This unfortunate baboon attack left an impression on Scott, who found the incident funny. Beyond the amusement, he realized that baboons have incredible physicality and the instincts to “defend, kill, and attack.” “Baboons are carnivorous animals, and a big baboon could be 40 or 50 pounds. Try and wrestle a 20-pound Jack Russell and you’ll lose. A 50-pound baboon? You’ll lose your arm and your head. Can you hang from a beam by one arm for two hours? No, but they can,” the filmmaker told Deadline. The impression the creature left on Scott gave birth to the remarkable fight scene in the film.
Scott relied on the vicious baboons to bring out the strength of his protagonist, Lucius Verus Aurelius. The idea of the gladiator dominating not one but several of these mighty creatures all at once captivated the filmmaker, who used the same to showcase how powerful Paul Mescal’s character is. The fight sequences were shot using twelve stuntmen, who wore black tights and took part in a “brawl of savagery.” Once their physicality and movements were recorded, keyframe animation was relied on by Mark Bakowski, the VFX supervisor of the movie, to design the baboons.
Baboons With Alopecia Exist Even Today
What makes the baboons in ‘Gladiator II’ strange is their appearance with no hair. They even appear as a cross between a monkey and a black panther. However, the truth is that such baboons exist even among us. The real-life animals may not be as vicious and muscular as the ones we see in the period drama, but the creature hasn’t gone extinct. In fact, the baboons appear strange because of a condition called alopecia, which is, in other words, hair loss. Even Ridley Scott faced questions concerning the believability of the baboons in the movie.
“Some guy says to me, ‘I’ve never seen a baboon like that before.’ I said, ‘Well, he’s got alopecia, you know what that is? It’s when you lose all your f–king hair,’” Scott said in the same Deadline interview. “I copied this baboon from that park. It had alopecia, so everything was sinew and tendon with no fat, like muscular steel. I said, ‘That’s my monster,’” the filmmaker added. Mark Bakowski, the VFX supervisor, designed the creatures based on a documentary footage Scott watched that highlighted the muscle tone of a hairless baboon. “Most people have never seen a baboon without hair, so it’s a bit of an interesting sell on those grounds,” Bakowski told IndieWire.
Read More: Was Macrinus Black in Real Life? Were There Black Lords in the Roman Empire?
