“Gladiator II” is not a musical, unless you count a couple of ominous poetry recitals from Paul Mescal and Joseph Quinn. But “Saturday Night Live” saw the lack of ballads and rap battles as a missed opportunity, and Mescal stopping by 30 Rockefeller Center for guest host duties this week was a perfect opportunity for some reshoots.
The “SNL” trailer for “Gladiator II” aims to capitalize on the box office success of “Moana 2” by adding 50 minutes of singing, including the central showstopper, “There’s No Place Like Rome.” Mescal himself fully commits to the bit: in fact, he seems more enthused about this musical version of “Gladiator II” than he did in the actual movie. Perhaps all along he was secretly longing to break into song. (“SNL” writer Streeter Seidell confirmed on X that yes, that really is Mescal singing.)
The sketch is also, arguably, even more historically accurate than Ridley Scott’s spectacle-filled epic. There’s no evidence that the Romans captured sharks and brought them to the Colosseum to participate in the staged naval battles, but they did have giraffes. The first was brought back to Rome by Julius Caesar, and the admiring Romans dubbed it a “camelopard” — part camel, part leopard (zoology was not their strong suit). Commodus, the emperor played by Joaquin Phoenix in the first “Gladiator” movie, is said to have personally slaughtered a giraffe in the arena.Â
So, as Bowen Yang sings, there were giraffes in Rome, and you could kill them. The next line in the song? Unfortunately, also true.