There are legacy sequels and then there is Gladiator II. Ridley Scott returns as director, as do several clips from the Best Picture winner of 2000, in case you were wondering about the connection. Scott’s own legacy as one of Hollywood’s most enduring directors comes intact, and he directs this sequel with a virility of someone much younger than eighty-six. If anything, Gladiator II is the much more action-packed film, setting up massive (and impressive) set pieces that are difficult to ignore. The spectacle has always been easy for Ridley, who has a workmanlike approach to studio epics that recalls legends like George Stevens or William Wyler. But this isn’t Giant or The Best Years of Our Lives, this is a movie that scoffs at anything like a functioning story, and hopes the audience will settle for wholesale plot-lifting of the first film.
And many will. The reason why Scott endures is because he can make something wholly unoriginal and still make it look and feel kinetic enough to distract you. It’s a solid recipe for success, and occasionally you get a contemporary classic like Alien, Blade Runner, or more recently, The Last Duel. I don’t feel like you can question his skill as a filmmaker, but his judgment as a storyteller has always been up for dispute. He’s always at the mercy of the quality of his scripts, and he’s seemingly always directing films to be four hours long before being forced to cut them to a reasonable feature length. Zack Snyder wishes he could get the kind of Director’s Cut lineup that Ridley manages to frequently pull off. Say what you will about the studio system, but Stevens and Wyler knew when to make a four hour movie and when to be efficient.
With Russell Crowe famously dying at the end of Gladiator, this new film drafts young star hopeful Paul Mescal. The Irish actor has been a darling of indie film and television. His soft-spoken sensitivity and devastating good looks has made him very beloved on the internet, but he’s also a pretty terrific actor. In film’s like God’s Creatures and All of Us Strangers, he showcases a charm and a fearlessness that few of his peers can claim, and while it felt strange to see him play a adolescent’s father as a twenty-five year old, Aftersun is a triumph that got him a Best Actor nomination. With all this success, the final frontier appears to be bonafide movie stardom, which is what Gladiator II offers. He plays Lucius, the son of Crowe’s Maximus. Sent away as a child, he has grown up in Numidia, and fights against the growing expanse of the Roman Empire.
The film opens as General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) leads his navy to the gates of Numidia, the latest conquest of Rome. The empire has fallen into disrepair since the death of Marcus Aurelius, and it is now reigned over by twin brothers, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Geta has something approaching an analytical mind, but Caracalla is pure, bloodthirsty id. Neither has much interest in true leadership, just for continued power accumulation, which requires Acacius to continue his travels conquering any nation that dares to stand in defiance of Rome. Acacius and his men make relatively quick work of Numidia, but the battle is deadly for both sides. Lucius fights valiantly but he witnesses his wife, Arishat (Yuval Gonen), get killed under Acacius’s direct order. His life is spared but he’s collected as a prisoner and sold into slavery, where he will compete for his life as a gladiator.
His first battle is a particularly gnarly one: thrown in to fight against rabid, angry baboons. The monstrous way he manages to escape death catches the eye of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a wealthy arms dealer and gladiator handler. He brings Lucius (or “Hanno” as he calls himself) into his stable. Macrinus himself is a former slave, but he’s scrapped his way to influence. He wishes to turn that influence into power, and he sees Hanno as his golden ticket. Hanno only asks for one thing as compensation for his gladiatorial achievements: a chance to kill Acacius. Macrinus promises him the opportunity will arise if he continues to win. As Hanno rises through the ranks, impressing crowd and royalty alike, he catches the eye of Lucilla (a returning Connie Nielson), who thinks it may be her returned son.
With Lucius’s true identity known, he becomes an even more important piece to Macrinus’s scheme. All the while, Lucius cedes fealty to no one, refuses to accept or respect the power he confronts, and begins to win a large fanbase amongst the Roman people. It’s obvious that he can achieve the power most of the characters covet, and the games of chess kick into high gear, attempting to wrestle the Roman throne before Lucius has a chance to attain it. Much like the first Gladiator, this film’s script (by David Scarpa) gets bogged down in political intrigue and insurrection plotting. In both films, this is the least interesting aspect but is also the main narrative thrust. It’s almost by accident that these scenes of machiavellian machinations are surrounded by some of the most charged, visceral action sequences you’ll ever see.
Will all respect to Paul Mescal – which I mean sincerely, he’s good in this movie – Gladiator II‘s truest movie star is Denzel Washington, who proves that forty years into his career, he’s still usually the best part of any movie that he’s in. Macrinus steals his scenes in the film’s first half, before stealing the entire movie in the second half, setting in motion his own vicious quest for power that is the main narrative difference between this sequel and the original. Apart from that, there is high variance in the quality of the performances. Nielson wilts is under the burden of more narrative importance, while Pascal believes that the exhaustion central to Acacius’s character should apparently translate to his performance. Quinn and Hechinger sometimes spark as the murderous twins, and sometimes they flounder.
The movie is at its best when it embraces the silliness of its story. This probably crescendoes with a sequence where they fill the Coliseum with enough water that they’re able to scale a naval battle within it. It’s completely preposterous – though many claim it’s rooted in fact – but it’s fascinating to watch, and it gives hope to viewers who still wish to see Hollywood take their films as far as they can go. By comparison, the 2000 Gladiator feels quaint, modest. That movie was filmed in the 90s and it possesses a lot of that era’s lo-fi grittiness. Gladiator II is a big step in scale if a lateral move in emotional storytelling. I’ll confess here for feeling more or less neutral on the Russell Crowe film, and more or less neutral here. It feels like it’s going to make loads of money. That may be because of the burgeoning star of Mescal, or the residual love of the first movie. It may be because of Denzel Washington. The last reason is the most legitimate.
Directed by Ridley Scott