The newest epic from acclaimed director Ridley Scott feels like a sloppier & more contrived rehashing of his previous work.

(SPOILERS BELOW)

“Nobody wants a Gladiator sequel!” was a commonly said phrase when it was announced that director Ridley Scott would be making a sequel to his 2000’s hit starring Russell Crowe & Joaquin Phoenix. Yet, with over 100 million allotted for the budget & an all star cast of Paul Mescal (Aftersun), Pedro Pascal (a bunch of projects) and Denzel Washington (even more projects), people were optimistic. Skeptical, but still optimistic. But instead, we’re left with a film that, while entertaining at some points, feels like we’re watching the original Gladiator in a shinier coat of paint but missing plenty of the aspects that made the original film stand out as a crowd favourite. Sure, it’s a competently made film, but it doesn’t do much to justify existing, let alone being a sequel to one of Ridley Scott’s & cinema’s most iconic films.

Are You Not Entertained?

So what’s the premise? Gladiator follows a notable warrior who, after having his wife & son murdered by the Romans, is sent into slavery & fights in the Colosseum as a means to survive, all while a corrupted figure assumes control over Rome. This leads to a climax where the Gladiator fights & triumphs against the corrupted authority figure & Rome is restored to its rightful glory but at the cost of the Gladiator’s own life. This sounds good until you realize that I just summarized the Russell Crowe Gladiator film instead of the new one.

Gladiator II on the other hand happens 16 years after the first film. In where after having his wife murdered by Pedro Pascal & the Romans, a Roman is sent into slavery & fights in the Colosseum as a means to survive, all while three corrupted figure assumes control over Rome. This leads to a climax where the Gladiator fights & triumphs against the remaining corrupted authority figure & Rome is restored to its rightful glory with him in charge. Oh, and Connie Nielsen from the first film is here but she’s honestly a non factor.

After seeing how blatant Gladiator II is in ripping off it’s predecessor, you slowly realize how little there is that actually warrants a sequel. As a protagonist, Lucius bored me. Paul Mescal gives a decent enough performance, but nothing about his character really clicked with me, especially with how quotable & intense Russel Crowe was 24 years prior. It also doesn’t help that Lucius spends most of the film being a sad sack & only assumes control of the Gladiators when Rome goes to shit near the climax. It also doesn’t help that Lucius is supposed to be related to Maximus (Crowe’s character from the first film), yet outside of a couple moves during the fights, you barely see a resemblance in character or actions. Then he kills the slaver at the end & gives one speech & is handed Rome on a silver platter. It all just happens without rhyme or reason, yet the film makes it up to be something earned. Lucius is fighting for revenge against Pascal (I can’t even remember his character’s name) yet after he kills him, the film continues to meander just because.

Speaking of Pascal, he serves as a Roman General, who’s looking to overthrow the twin emperors driving Rome to the ground, all while consolidating with Lucius’ mom. He feels pointless, as you could scrap his conflict with Lucius and better refine Lucius’ hatred of Rome. Instead of one man, Lucius should hate the Roman System that took his livelihood away, but he mostly focuses his hatred on Pascal & Macrinus (Denzel’s character) who assumes control of Rome near the end. Also he “apparently” was Maximus’ good friend, which felt so shoe horned, I’m surprised it wasn’t brought up every time he was on screen. Then there’s Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, who to me is the MVP of this film. Washington brings out a great performance & is the best character from this film, solely because he’s not as overexposed to the audience. Originally the person in charge of the gladiators, he manages to weasel his way into the emperors good graces & picks them off one by one until he and Lucius fight each other one on one. It’s not a major twist since you see it coming from a mile away but it does a decent enough job of giving the story some weight, if any.

…and the Crowd Goes Mild

I stated prior that there’s a lot of spectacle & care brought into this film, and don’t let my arguments with the story distract from the fact that this film is gorgeous. Like most of Scott’s most recent projects, the film looks & sounds great, ranging from sweeping shots of the large scale battles to the tightly shot Colosseum carnage. The soundtrack, although mostly borrowed from Gladiator, is still phenomenal & helps adds oomph to most action setbacks. I’d also applaud the visuals, but I felt like it could’ve used a bit more colour to help it stand out against the sandy & dry backdrop of Rome. It’s Rome, they knew about colour & had buildings & backdrops made from colours that weren’t monochromatic or beige.

However, I feel that the actual battles are pretty divisive in their execution, mainly with the fights at the end of Act 2 & the final clash with Macrinus. The whole film had been hyping up the one on one clash between Lucius & Acacius (Pascal’s character that I had to look up), the man who had taken his livelihood away from him, yet their clash leaves a lot more to be desired. The end product looking more like a bunch of children pretending to fight with lightsabers. Until it abruptly ends with Acacius giving up & apologizing for killing Lucius’ wife & accepting death & Lucius, for some reason, takes pity on him & lets him live. Other than the fact Lucius had been trying to detach Pascal’s head from his body throughout this whole film, this one scene, to me at least, felt like I had wasted my money & time. Oh, and the guards end up filling Acacius with arrows as the crowd begin to riot. The final clash with Macrinus is also pretty anticlimactic, with a whole army watching on as Lucius sloppily murders the new emperor without any course of action.

Also, for a film about barbaric Gladiators fighting each other, they spend more fighting poorly animated animals like baboons and sharks instead of other slaves & gladiators. Hell, why are there even animals to fight anyways? I could understand the spectacle element of having them exist, yet they feel forced in, and looked like they were still rendering. It felt like a Saturday morning cartoon got injected into my realistic historical epic. And yes, there were animal fights in the previous film, but they were usually fodder that served under the larger threat & helped support the larger challenge to overcome, not simply be the challenge. When Maximus spared the life of a massive Gladiator with the Romans using tigers to pick off weaker enemies, you see his compassion against the innocent & how powerful his drive for true vengeance is. When Lucius kills a horde of angry baboons, it shows us that he’s capable of holding his own, which is something that we saw when Rome attacked Africa at the beginning of the film. It ends up damaging Lucius’ character even more than necessary & makes him out to be nothing more than bloodthirsty from beginning to end until he changes his mind because someone had the decency to say sorry after trying to kill you for half the runtime.

You may also notice that I’m omitting plenty of what happens outside of the Colosseum, and simply put, its not worth a discussion. Pascal’s plan to overthrow the government goes nowhere when Lucius’ mother goes rogue in an attempt to save her son & Macrinus begins to weasel his way in with the Ed Sheeran twins. Speaking of the twins, they’re supposed to be the “Mad Emperors”, the big bad of the story, yet outside of acting cartoonishly evil, they never do much in the way of being massive assholes. The performances don’t even come close to Joaquin Phoenix’s, nor even memorable in the slightest, nor is any of the new & returning characters, who mostly pledge their allegiances to Lucius “just because”.

And I feel like that’s the best way to describe this movie, “just because”. Why does Lucius spare Pascal? Just because. Why doesn’t Macrinus send his newly gained army at Lucius instead of dying in a duel? Just because. Why does Gladiator II exist when it should’ve been a solo film? Just because. That and Paramount wanted money. If you really want something to watch this weekend, you could do better than Gladiator II, just be ready for mindless fun & prepare for loophole after loophole. Technically, the film is competent, but it really needed more time in the oven, either as its own story or just not as a sequel to Gladiator.

4/10

(trying to find images for the Instagram post was a massive pain, because most of them are of Paul Mescal pulling a Colin Kaepernick)