After 20 years of rumors and development, Ridley Scott's sequel to the Best Picture winner Gladiator is finally in cinemas. As if that wasn't enough to make audiences excited, Gladiator II also treats us to some standout supporting performances, including one from Pedro Pascal, who brings depth and humanity to the role of General Acacius. His character is a conflicted anti-hero who reluctantly finds himself as a paternal figure for the story's younger lead. Ring any bells? Of course. In Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin's 2023 TV adaptation of the critically acclaimed video game, The Last of Us, Pascal plays Joel Miller, a smuggler tasked with transporting a young woman named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the US during a fungal zombie pandemic. This theme is not exclusive to The Last of Us, having featured prominently in countless fantasy and sci-fi stories, including The Mandalorian, which also stars Pedro Pascal as a similar archetype.
So, where and when did this career trend start for the Chilean-American actor? The earliest recognized example is Pascal's turn in yet another sci-fi epic, in which a rough-around-the-edges anti-hero must set aside his morally questionable past in order to protect a child in need. This film is one that fans of Gladiator II, The Last of Us, and The Mandalorian alike will be pleased to discover. 2018's Prospect stars Pedro Pascal as Ezra, an intergalactic wild-west bandit in a period of space-age prospectors. Heretic and Yellowstone star Sophie Thatcher features alongside Pascal, as Cee, the daughter of Jay Duplass' planetary pioneer Damon. When Damon dies, Pascal's villain develops a conscience and must protect the young woman from the perils of the strange world.
Ezra, General Acacius, Joel Miller, and The Mandalorian Aren't So Different
Like in Prospect, the story of The Last of Us quickly becomes that of a reluctant father figure who, having lost his own daughter during the outbreak, must learn to let Ellie into his heart despite his pain and attachment issues. In The Mandalorian, Pascal portrays the reluctant bounty hunter Din Djarin, who takes it upon himself to transport a child across the galaxy in spite of fatal threats. It's clear that Pascal has become a paradigm of this archetype, and it wasn't long before the internet dubbed the actor "Daddy" as a result. Despite not having children in real life, the actor addressed his new moniker with humility and humor in a Vanity Fair interview, accepting that, "Daddy is a state of mind, you know what I'm saying?... I'm your Daddy."
Not only does this pattern of post-Prospect roles see Pascal return as a reluctant father, but they also initially establish his character as a bad man in desperate need of redemption. When Gladiator II introduces us to General Acacius, he represents Rome's tyranny, but we quickly learn that, much like the violent smuggler Joel, and the cold killer Din Djarin, Acasius finds hope in the next generation, and endeavors to redeem himself.
What Is 'Prospect' About?
In Prospect, the father-daughter duo (played by Duplass and Thatcher) crash-land on a spore-ridden fungal land not dissimilar to the overgrown world of The Last of Us video game (though the show decided to exclude spores in the adaptation). It's a forest moon with a mote-filled atmosphere so deadly that it requires air filtration pressure suits to explore. To make matters worse, the clock is ticking, and the pair have limited time to harvest organic gems from the surface before the interstellar gantry that brought them here will leave again. They have three "cycles" to extract the valuable substance from alien egg sacs, and it requires steady hands and surgical precision/
Soon after, Cee's father is mortally wounded when ambushed by rival prospectors, including Ezra (Pascal), who then takes it upon himself to grow a conscience in light of his new responsibility towards the girl. As Ezra tells her, "A good partnership is only made so by candid discourse." It could be speculated that the creative team behind The Mandalorian saw Prospect and that Pascal's ability to convey hard-boiled sympathy from under a helmet won him the titular Star Wars role. Sophie Thatcher also joined the franchise's world with a small role in The Book of Boba Fett, which largely crosses over with The Mandalorian.
'Prospect' Explores the Wild West of Space
Star Wars itself, with its seemingly infinite deserts, themes of colonialism, and largely unexplored worlds, has always hearkened back to the Western genre and frontier-based stories. It's understandable why the Star Wars franchise, and others like it relate the space exploration setting to a more familiar style of wild-west movies.The Book of Boba Fett sees its titular hero befriend the native tribal people, much like in Dances with Wolves and Little Big Man. Din Djarin wanders from town to town, putting his own mission aside time after time in order to aid the helpless townsfolk, like a classic Western TV hero. The Western genre itself is often a retelling of stories surrounding Asian frontiers and Samurai warriors, with The Magnificent Seven being a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. The Mandalorian was inspired largely by Lone Wolf and Cub, another story in which a warrior is tasked with caring for a child.
Prospect takes the idea of the sci-fi planetary Western to the extreme. As would naturally occur with the advent of public space travel, Prospect sees ambitious and desperate people alike exploring newly discovered territories in search of riches. Much like the real-life gold rush of the Americas, this movie witnesses several prospectors taking their chances in brutal and unforgiving terrain in the hopes of discovering a fortune. Inevitably, these lawless lands give way to bandits and robbers, desperate enough to take lives in order to survive and thrive. Pedro Pascal's ability to play this brand of morally grey anti-hero is so well exemplified in Prospect that it's no surprise he's been hired in similar roles since. Unlike The Mandalorian, which covers his face for its majority (a feat in showcasing physical performance no less), Prospect puts Pascal on full display.
We Have Pedro Pascal and 'Prospect' To Thank For Sophie Thatcher
It should be mentioned that the true lead performance in Prospect belongs to the then-16-year-old Sophie Thatcher, who is fantastic as Cee. Prospect marks the young actor's debut. The actor is now mostly known for her standout role in Yellowjackets, a series worth watching if you haven't already, as the teenage version of Juliette Lewis' Natalie. Thatcher has since starred in the 2023 adaptation of Stephen King's The Boogeyman, and more recently held her own against Hugh Grant in the psychological thriller Heretic. According to Thatcher, she credits her career to her movie debut, not only for getting her seen but for reigniting her love for the craft.
In a recent interview with Collider, Thatcher recalls, "I was, like, 16 and just very angsty. Just like, 'Fuck my life', but then I finally did [Prospect], and it just brought back this passion that I guess I had when I was younger when I was doing theater." Not only do we have to thank Prospect for Thatcher's growing ensemble of performances, but it was down to her Prospect co-stars in particular. "Pedro Pascal is fantastic, and watching him, I was always in awe of how quickly he could go to such great emotions, and such heightened emotions. I loved how Jay Duplass would improvise with me beforehand, and then we would get into the scene, and he was very keen on world-building and character-building and asking questions."
'Prospect' A Gold Rush Both in Front of and Behind the Camera
Without having seen the movie, it might be hard to imagine that Prospect is a low-budget film. Upon viewing, however, its minimal sets, costumes, and props do make it more apparent, but it only makes the final result more impressive. In fact, it's the film's minuscule budget of less than $4m that elevates this film to even greater heights. Prospect's reliance on natural wildlife and woodland landscapes offers an ingenious charm to the film, and despite its limitations, the movie's scope cannot be commended enough. The fact that this film, which cost less than 2% of the budget of Gladiator II, can be compared so closely to such an enormous epic is no small feat, and directors Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell were able to achieve this with very few prior credits to their names.
The small production was able to make waves, having premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and creating a convincing interplanetary environment with next to no money. This is largely due to the fact that, despite its otherworldly setting and clever world-building, it isn't a story about space or laser guns, but rather a story of a bad man and a young girl. The relationship between Pascal's Ezra and Thatcher's Cee is the movie's most compelling aspect. This reluctant father figure is only pushed into the responsibility of caring for this girl due to the repercussions of his own actions, calling into question everything that led him to be the man he has become by the time we meet him. It's precisely this kind of human story that allows alien settings and sci-fi action to work so well, and Prospect's writing and performances deserve praise for this achievement.
While we wait to witness Pascal as the head of Marvel's "First Family" in Fantastic Four: First Steps, his unique ability to portray endearing scoundrels in positions of parental responsibility can be traced back to this lesser-known gem. Fans should seek out Prospect and support smaller, independent films like it. This character's journey across a vast and untameable wasteland gives audiences more of what they saw in Gladiator II, a taste of what to expect from The Last of Us's second season, and the upcoming feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, all the while showing us how Pascal mastered the art of playing the reluctant father figure.
