I liked Gladiator II! And for some reason, that’s not a popular opinion.
In our modern world of entertainment consumption, Hollywood is oversaturated. We are overexposed to content, we know too much with all the press and behind the scenes of every show and movie. We know too many other opinions through Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Letterboxd, every comment section on every Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, Vogue post. We no longer go into a movie knowing nothing and we no longer exit a movie forming our opinion solely on what we think, ignoring all the noise around us. The result is, we are hyper critical. We do not watch movies, nor does Hollywood make movies, for the right reasons.
Let’s get this out of the way before we begin: Gladiator II was not better than the original, nor was it a perfect movie. However, I enjoyed it, it did everything I was hoping it would do, and I would highly recommend it. Yes, both truths – that the original was better and the sequel was still really good – can exist simultaneously!
Gladiator won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Lead Actor, and was nominated for Best Director, Supporting Actor, and Original Screenplay. That list is no joke. Gladiator is one of the most iconic movies of all time and I think we should all admit that at no point did we really think the sequel would be better. I don’t think Sir Ridley Scott and the rest of the team were thinking about making a better movie, but making a good movie. And I think they can rest knowing they achieved that.
Good Stuff
So, what did I love? In my previous Gladiator review, I said that the sequel needed to capitalize on what made the first one so popular (awesome action sequences, a clear and simple emotional core, insights to the Roman Empire) while bringing in a fresh flavor as well. And I think this movie did those things!
We had awesome gladiator duels, with some new touches. My favourite scene was when Lucius had to fight at the wealthy party, in the middle of the pompous elite who consume violence as entertainment. Bringing the whole concept of the colosseum into that closed setting was a brilliant, poetic scene, and very different from anything we saw in the original. And speaking of poetic moments, having Lucius recite poetry wasn’t just a stylistic choice, but it held character and plot relevance. Character-wise, it tells you about who Lucius is, with his royal upbringing (in case you didn’t already know, but that moment is more about the emperor realizing this isn’t just an ordinary slave he’s speaking to). Plot-wise, it’s this poem (along with some other clues) that allows his mother to later identify him as her son.
The poem he recites is an excerpt from Virgil’s The Aeneid, which details the creation of Rome. As nicely outlined by ScreenRant, this poem is actually rebellious, as it questions the foundation of Rome and reminds the reader that just as Rome rose to high heights, it can easily return to ashes. Obviously, these themes tie perfectly into this story, as Lucius (and Maximus before him) hope to create a new Rome free of corruption. But, that future seems impossible without the fall of the empire. Lucius reciting this poem to the emperor’s face was an open act of rebellion, and the emperor’s reaction was partially due to realizing Lucius is more than a slave, and partially due to understanding the threat being thrown his way, encouraging him to suppress this gladiator at all costs.
And, more action! In the first film, we got tigers, and the second film upped the ante with sharks. I’m not here to talk about historical accuracy, I’m here to talk about how awesome it was. A comment I’ve heard across the board is that this movie was entertaining. I’ve heard mixed opinions on whether the emotion landed, on which performances stood out, on how easy the story was to follow. But even in those criticisms, I have heard, at least it was really entertaining. And this brings me to my thesis of my original Gladiator review: sometimes, it’s enough for a movie to just be awesome. Yes, an emotional core needs to be present to make the audience care about what they’re watching. But that emotional core doesn’t have to be too complicated. As long as the sequel had gladiator duels, as long as I was on the edge of my seat, I knew I would leave happy.
As we can all admit, Denzel Washington gave a mic-dropping performance. However, the discourse I have seen online (and heard in person) has used the quality of Denzel’s performance to undermine Paul Mescal’s performance. Many people have stated that there was only so much Paul could have done playing opposite Denzel, and in many scenes, the older, more experienced actor danced circles around the new kid. I don’t think that’s a fair comment to make. Denzel’s performance can be the strongest performance in the film, and Paul can pull an amazing performance as well. Both truths can exist simultaneously.
I’m excited for Paul Mescal. I have seen almost everything he has been in, and each time, he plays a very different character. I love the fun fact that Ridley Scott considered Paul Mescal for this role after seeing him in Normal People. There is something very endearing about the image of Ridley Scott watching Normal People, and I think it speaks to the quality of the actor, when a director can pinpoint the talent from a role very different from the one in question. I believe in all of Mescal’s roles, the realistic emotion portrayed in his physicality has driven the performance. When I started All Of Us Strangers, I had the same thought that many had about Gladiator II. I thought, Paul, why in the world would you agree to play opposite Andrew Scott, one of the greatest living actors? At the end of that movie, Andrew Scott wasn’t making me cry, it was the delivery of a single line from Mescal that started the waterworks. In Gladiator II, I felt Lucius’ pain having been abandoned as a child and having watched his wife die, through his eyes, through the way he carried himself, through the way he fought in the arena. I didn’t feel he was as enraged as Maximus, but I don’t think he had to be the same character. He had his own wounds, and Paul Mescal delivered in every way.
Onto Denzel. I loved the character of Macrinus because he showed a dimension to the Roman Empire that we didn’t get in the original. He added nuance to this tale of good and evil, as a slave turned royalty turned political insurgence leader. The standout moment for me through the entire movie was when Macrinus showed Lucilla the branding of Marcus Aurelius on his chest. Up until that moment, I believe audiences were confidently cheering for Lucius, Lucilla, and Acacius to overthrow the emperors and build a new Rome. The branding on Macrinus’ chest flipped the script, reminding the audience that the people we have been cheering for are still royalty, and the dream of a new Rome is a fool’s errand. It made you think: will a Lucius/Lucilla victory just continue the royal bloodline, allowing corruption to flourish? And Denzel’s performance capitalized on that nuance, through his facial expressions, body language, and the delivery of each line. He brought this character to life, and constantly flipped how the audience felt.
A complaint I’ve heard is that the twin emperors fell a little short, and I agree, especially following Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the original. But by the end of the movie, I realized the emperors were just decoy villains, shielding the true corruption represented in Macrinus. I feel like in every scene, Macrinus added another dimension to his character. You only begin to accept that he may not be the correct underdog to cheer for when he helps the one emperor kill his brother (another great scene). When the surviving emperor first appoints his pet monkey into the senate, and then gives the next position to Macrinus, you get the uneasy feeling of the chaos that Lucius’ presence has sparked. And then, Macrinus shows the senators the emperor’s head, and the theatre falls quiet. This is not a hero. But, he is not exactly a villain. This character was meant to encourage the audience to question good and evil, right and wrong, heroes and villains. Because, he is both, which is terrifying and wholly realistic. When Lucius finally kills Macrinus, and commands both armies to lower their weapons and build a new Rome together, it was a nice sentiment. But similarly to the first film, this story ends with a pang of hope, along with the harsh reality that in order to fix corrupt systems, they do indeed need to fall.
What could have been improved
In the first film, Maximus was motivated by the deaths of Marcus Aurelius – his mentor, leader, father-figure – and his wife and child, who were sitting ducks and mercilessly killed before Maximus could save them. The result was a man who was so angry, so hellbent on exacting his revenge on the new emperor, Commodus, who had his own demons to conquer.
In the second film, Lucius is initially motivated by the death of his wife, who also served in the African army and was killed in battle. Upon being brought to Rome and into the Colosseum to fight as a gladiator, it is revealed that Lucius is the son of Maximus and Lucilla (the daughter of Marcus Aurelius), and was sent off by his mother following the sequence of events in the first movie that left Rome in a dire state. At that point in the film, Lucius is motivated by the death of his wife, and by the pain of being abandoned by a child. He points both origins of anger at General Acacius, who is married to his mother and whose army is responsible for his wife’s death.
Here’s what the sequel could have learned from the original: sometimes, less is more. I found those two motivations often competed for Lucius’ attention. In some scenes – like when he was speaking to Macrinus, and told him that he wants to kill General Acacius – he seemed fuelled solely by his wife’s death. In other scenes – like whenever he spoke to his mother – he seemed fuelled by childhood abandonment. And once the audience learned of Lucius being given away as a child, it oddly felt like that was also when Lucius found out, since that is when that pain was visible on him. By simplifying the motivations of the character, space would have opened for quiet, still, emotional moments, like Maximus kissing his wife’s hanging feet, which remains an image that the sequel could not surpass.
Since there was a dead wife plotline in the first, I would cut that and just go with the childhood abandonment. The only gap in that case would be that Lucius wouldn’t have a direct reason to hate General Acacius. But in that scenario, I would spin an extra little moment to show that he may be blaming Acacius for corrupting his mother, and that is why she never came back for him. And an addition like that would also strengthen the childhood abandonment motivation, which at times also did not feel entirely clear. And, we would have more to play with in scenes between Lucius and Lucilla, which I also felt could have been more hostile, more explosive.
And one more note on the dead wife plotline, when she died and we got a mythological-inspired scene of Lucius watching her board the raft to the underworld, I got very excited. Incorporating Roman mythology was a bold choice that was not present in the first movie. But then…it didn’t really go anywhere. We got one, maybe two more appearances of the same scene, and that was it. It did not develop, it didn’t really do anything other than eat up some screen time, and unlike the addition of poetry expressing how people lived in this time period and shedding some light on deeper themes in the world, this did not tie in any way to Roman society. This idea may be a little out there but after a few showings of that mythology scene, themes from mythology could have spilled into the real world. Or in these “visions,” Lucius could have chased after the raft after his mother died to show how he was not ready to let go of that relationship that felt cut so short, and he could have found himself in the underworld, foreshadowing a young death for him as well. I felt like something was needed here because in their current form, I would have just cut these little scenes.
Lucilla was a little confusing in this film for me. I liked her from the first one, as she had more of a moral compass than her brother and was helping Maximus in an Ariadne-Theseus manner. In the second film, I had questions: did she plan on ever retrieving her son after abandoning him? Why exactly did she give him up in the first place? She held her royal position and married a powerful general, was the child really doomed if he had stayed in Rome? What did everyone think happened to this child when she gave him away? He just disappeared, did they think he was dead? Also, was it part of her plan with Acacius to eventually find her son? These confusions made Lucilla less redeemable for me, diluting the emotional drive of the film, being the relationship between mother and son.
Finally, there are some things you should copy from the first movie. Music can be carried through franchises, and it becomes musical themes that make the films recognizable and capitalize on the emotion because you already have a built-in emotion. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones – they all use the same musical themes. I think Gladiator II would have only benefited by using some score from the original, because it was so good, and its absence was definitely felt. This film was clearly not afraid of callbacks, and I loved them all. And, they were plot or character-driven every time. When Lucius gathered the gravel in the Colosseum, it was that moment that clued Lucilla in on that being her son. And it made sense when Lucius put on Maximus’ armor because this is his father and armor is like family heirlooms that are passed down. I felt like all of the callbacks were appropriate and not forced because the story itself is directly tied to the first; Lucius is Maximus’ son, the empire is still feeling the deaths of Maximus and Commodus, they’re still trying to eliminate corruption. The callbacks also felt like the filmmakers acknowledging that it’s been 24 years since the original, and some moviegoers may need the visual reminders of where we are in the story, and why certain things matter. Using parts of the original score didn’t need such a direct plot tie, it would have just been beneficial to use so you got the emotion of your audience and did them a little extra fan service, almost like a thank you for waiting a quarter century to see the sequel. It would have also sneakily stolen some of the emotion audiences felt in the first movie, and strategically placed it on the sequel.
Conclusion
Don’t be critical for the sake of being critical.
I write movie reviews and sometimes, I have harsh criticisms. But I try my best not to be critical just for the sake of riling people up. I try not to go into movies expecting to hate them, letting what I have seen on social media fuel my feelings. I did not start this blog because I wanted to be critical of movies, nor do I have a quota of how many positive reviews and negative reviews I post. As you can see, most are actually positive! So, you shouldn’t be going into movies as such harsh critics, that actually defeats the whole point of consuming art.
With this film, I feel like everyone is searching for mistakes. And I wouldn’t totally fault you for that because it comes with the nature of making a sequel to a beloved, iconic, Oscar-winning movie. Of course people are going to put the new one under a microscope. You’re allowed to compare to the original, I did that too. But don’t hate this movie because it isn’t as good, or because they repeated some iconic moments. Acknowledge what you would have changed if you were Sir Ridley Scott, and acknowledge all the other moments that got you hooked.
In a time of constant entertainment, of more TV shows than we can digest being released every year, of so much information about the making of every work, I believe that it’s more important than ever to try to go into the theatre open-minded and with the expectation of being entertained. The purpose of art is not to ignite arbitrary criticisms; the purpose of art is to encourage you to think, to feel, to wonder, and to dream.
I’m going to end with a quote by Paul Mescal, via The Sunday Times: “Over the last few years people have been talking about films as content. That’s a filthy word. It’s not ‘content,’ it’s f— work. I’m not being snobby, but there are two concurrent industries. One that works with lack of care, artistic integrity, go nuts, make stuff with Instagram followers as a factor, whatever…but the other is what has always been there – the craft of film – making, directing, lighting and production design. That keeps artists alive.”
This is art, not content. Art is meant to be explored, appreciated, and most importantly, felt. We need to try our best to not be critical for the sake of being critical, and pin down what we actually think, without all the noise of social media making that decision for us.
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