The best idea for a Gladiator sequel is not doing one. The second best idea is bringing Russell Crowe back as a zombie Roman warrior and letting him go full The Pope’s Exorcist up in it. The third best idea is letting Denzel Washington treat the unnecessary film as a mash-up between Training Day and The Tragedy of Macbeth. “Ok. Alright. Double, double toil and trouble.” Yes, the witches say that line, but you get the point.
Merely having a point would be helpful for Gladiator II, a thoroughly entertaining, colossally stupid endeavor that seems to have worked backwards from assured box office success. Someone saw the “how often dudes think about the Roman empire” TikTok shenanigans and said “Get Ridley on the phone.” And Ridley said, “I’ll only do it if we can fill the colosseum with water and have the gladiators fight sharks.” Then screenwriter David Scarpa wrote some loose notes around the shark fight, other goofy spectacles, and Denzel staging a monkey-centric coup.
Here are those loose notes: Lucius (Paul Mescal) is the son of Maximus (Crowe) and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). He may or may not remember his youth, it’s kind of unclear. But when we rejoin him here, he’s an adult fighting against invading Romans. His wife dies, which isn’t a spoiler because this is a movie in which a man needs motivation, and that is the only trope legally allowed for motivation in testosterone cinema.
Lucius gets captured and taken back to Rome as a gladiator by Macrinus (Washington), who is an all-time great character only by virtue of who is playing him. He has pretty clear and open designs on the throne currently held by Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), who run around acting like people on Twitter think all young people today act. General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and Lucilla have designs on giving power in the kingdom back to the people. But there’s a reason we’re not all speaking Latin these days.
If it seems like Lucius doesn’t really factor much into this, that’s because he is useless. Whether Mescal is limited by the role or the role is limited by Mescal is for thirsty people to decide, as that man has a real following. Regardless of your affinity for Mescal’s charms, Lucius has none, and that’s a problem for a movie that is supposed to be about him.
Thankfully, it’s not really. It’s about Macrinus, sharks, and lots of people getting stabbed. The first two are worth the price of admission, and the last one is honestly pretty exhausting by the end. Despite being wildly overpraised, the first Gladiator also really wasn’t “about” anything, in the sense that it had something meaningful to say. And there’s a reason the rule isn’t, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, say it twice.”
If you see one film this year set in the immediate vicinity of Rome, see Conclave, which is a far better movie about scheming and politics. But it does have 100% less Denzel and shark content, so it really depends on your mood.
Grade = B-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Josie Meléndez at Screen Speck says “The grand scale of the moving pieces may flutter the hearts of a few who miss the adventure that films such as Pirates of the Caribbean command on the screen. Gladiator II whisks its audience away to the past while reflecting on the present and future. Could it have improved what we’ve witnessed before beyond simply tweaking parts here and there? Yes. But it’s one hell of an entertaining show.”
Sarah Gopaul at Digital Journal says “There’s a sense that everyone is acting independently, using those around them to achieve their goals regardless of the cost, which makes it difficult to separate the heroes from the villains.”
Sarah G. Vincent says “While embracing its B movie gimmick, Gladiator II is very meta. Scott critiques and revels in bread and circuses. Basically moviegoers are just as mindless and blood thirsty as the Roman spectators, but instead of being like Joker: Folie a Deux by moralizing and wagging his finger at the audience for ever having a good time at the movies, Scott owns it. He is as messed up as we are, and he wants to see what a sequence would look like if Planet of the Apes occurred during his interpretation of ancient times.”