Gladiator II (Scott, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

Now feels like the perfect time for Gladiator II. A year or so after the strikes that shut down Hollywood, the amount of massive tentpoles on hand to soak up a spectacle-hungry crowd have slowed to a crawl, and Gladiator occupies the same respected, but not over-saturated, space that Top Gun did previously, resulting in the grand slam that was Top Gun Maverick. On a more philosophical level, Gladiator is the kind of handsome, masculine drama that caters to a market of male movie-goers who are a demographic at-times hard to pin down. The swords’n’sandals genre that briefly dominated in the post-Gladiator cinescape is now a distant, well-regarded memory, with affectionate followings for the likes of Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, 300 and the like (as for Oliver Stone’s Alexander… let’s not look too deeply into that one). Gladiator, and by extension its sequel Gladiator II is also the type of slyly malleable work that could be made to fit the worldview of a viewer on either side of the divide, it’s story of violent retribution and small-folk revolt apt to be seen as a reflection of the audiences of a range of political persuasions, whether they’re stoked by Trumpian resentment or simmering, wounded leftist sentiment, with the same conception of an enemy – the bloated, ruinous, all-powerful elite. 

A lot has changed in the years since that first Gladiator, including the output of its director, Ridley Scott. Arguably the auteur with the most varied quality of output alive today, Scott is an exceptionally rare beast in the cinemascape, capable of wielding enormous budgets and drawing massive audiences (most of the time) for an eclectic range of subjects, a director who almost seems to operate outside of a cinema ecosystem that is far less friendly to other late-era filmmakers. Even Martin Scorsese, perhaps the greatest living director at a similar stage of life, does not enjoy the consistency and availability of budget that Scott does. Perhaps that’s because Scott is so much more of a crowd-pleaser at heart – not that Scott isn’t capable of turning in remarkable works of art, which he has, but that his films are consistent in their bang-for-your-buck value. His films certainly have scale, and ambition, but it’s of a palatable sort for a casual moviegoer. For whatever reason, audiences are more likely to roll the dice on a Scott than a Scorsese, maybe because they are unlikely to be watching the greatest film ever made, but merely a solidly good one. Scott is also pretty consistent in being hard to pin down ideologically, famously going where the story tells him to, rather than pay heed to any higher-minded motivations. Even great, genuinely progressive films like Thelma & Louise or the more recent The Last Duel feel like they came upon their feminism coincidentally, rather than because of any larger intention on the filmmaker’s part (kudos must be paid to the team making The Last Duel, however, for bringing in writer Nicole Holofcener to bring a much needed female voice to the script by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck).  

This take-all-comers approach invariably leads to an output that has nearly as many duds as winners. For every Blade Runner, Alien, Alien Covenant, The Counsellor, there’s a House of Gucci, Robin Hood, Exodus: Gods and Kings or A Good Year. Last year’s Joaquin Phoenix-starring Napoleon had its moments, but was by-and-large a lacklustre affair. It brings me no pleasure to report that Gladiator II is more of column B than column A, a film of promising parts that ultimately fails to coalesce into a moving whole in the way its predecessor Gladiator did. Rising star Paul Mescal is Lucius, son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the original film. The target of political assassination attempts, the heir to Rome has been an exile on the run for much of his life, finding himself defending against Roman attacks by diseased twin rulers Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) on African cities. When the sack of a city results in the death of his wife (Yuval Gonen, in a ‘dead wife’ role so obligatory and shallow that it barely registers), Lucius finds himself in chains and headed back to Rome, to fight in the Colosseum that took the life of his father. He’s overseen by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave himself with designs on the highest offices of the empire. Also in the mix are Lucius’ mother Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, one of the few returning stars) who bears tremendous guilt for having sent him away, and her husband Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the general of Rome’s armies who Lucius blames for his wife’s death.

Twenty-four years on, Ridley Scott returns to the historical epic that rocked the world at the turn of the Millennium. For better and for worse, Gladiator II is a film eclipsed by that film’s shadow, struggling valiantly but failing to define itself beyond more of the same.

At 86, one could probably forgive Scott for the recycling of much of Gladiator II’s plot, particularly in the way it divides its story between high-voltage gladiatorial action and behind-the-scenes palace intrigue. What does prove irksome is just how hollow-seeming so much of it feels, as though Scott was content to go through the motions with a story that rarely does much to raise a pulse, much less forge an emotional connection with the plight of Lucius. I’ve read elsewhere accusations of miscasting on the part of Paul Mescal, but I think a lot of it comes down to the directorial execution of the story. Mescal has less gravitas than Russell Crowe, and falters when it comes to playing the convincing leader-of-the-people type. He’s better in intimate moments, suggesting a boy trapped in the hulking body of a man who has never been able to step out of the shadow of his father. There’s a softness to Mescal that makes him an interesting pick for this kind of story, but too often Scott is content to push him into territory that he isn’t suited to. At multiple points Mescal makes speeches to gathered soldiers and later slaves with the obvious intention of being rousing, but which barely make a mark at all. Throughout, because of the way the film is angled, we’re waiting for Lucius’ ‘Are you not entertained’ moment, and it never comes. Ultimately, it ensures that Gladiator II is lacking the same intense emotional core that Gladiator had, in which so much could be expressed by Crowe’s soulful stoicism alone. 

That slightness echoes outward, thinly sketching both drama and the characters, rather than deepening them. So much of the plotting is perfunctory here, so little of the drama having any real sense of momentum. Scott seems torn between the instinct to create an epic that matches the immensity of the original and to indulge in the trashier, B-movie antics he seems so enamoured with in his later films. Few of the characters make an impact – Quinn is quite good as the (slightly) wiser of the two Emperors, and Alexander Karim is strong as an ex-gladiator turned doctor who becomes Lucius’ closest advisor. On the other end of the spectrum, Pascal’s character is so undercooked that the fateful clash between him and Lucius feels mostly devoid of suspense. Even Washington, arguably America’s greatest living actor, struggles to take flight in the meatiest role in the piece. His Macrinus is a duplicitous, effortlessly charming Machiavelli with a cockroach’s instinct for survival, and is arguably the best thing about Gladiator II – and yet we’re left wanting more, both in character arc and execution. That Gladiator II is frequently, hilariously ahistorical is a feature, rather than a bug – and a glimpse of the B-movie instincts that Scott similarly loaded Napoleon and House of Gucci with – but with the added capabilities that disregarding historical fact should provide you, why does so much of Gladiator II feel so half-assed? 

Where Scott has always excelled is in his action set-pieces. An avid servant to grandiose visual maximalism, even his weaker efforts have moments of conflict worth remembering (the frozen Arctic centrepiece of Napoleon, for one). Here there are a range of battle sequences that make their mark – at one point the Colosseum is filled with water and sharks, a pleasingly goofy conceit – with Scott thankfully retaining the same brutality as the first. Best are an early pair of battles – the initial Africa-set conflict that begins the story and Lucius’ first gladiatorial encounter, in which he must do battle with a legion of rabid baboons. A later setpiece involving a shakily-rendered CGI rhino would likely have been more impactful, but Scott’s replacing of the real thing with computer effects does him no favours. It all amounts to a fitfully enjoyable, entirely serviceable time at the movies – but with the potential revitalisation of an intensely cinematic subgenre on the line, and a legacy defined by a widely-loved Oscar winner to uphold, it’s fair to level a bit of frustration that this Gladiator feels hopelessly unable to bring anything new to the table.

Gladiator II is in cinemas now.

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