Here are some interesting facts about my household:
-When we bought our first DVD player, which was probably in 2002 when they became mainstream, Gladiator (2000) was the very first DVD we purchased.
-When a social media poll recently asked, “what movie do you think you’ve watched the most,” my answer was, not surprisingly, Star Wars, and my wife’s answer was Gladiator.
-The Gladiator score was composed by Hans Zimmer and featured memorable vocals by Lisa Gerrard, who is one half of an Australian duo named Dead Can Dance, who is one of our household’s most favorite bands. Gerrard’s work on the Gladiator score is, in my opinion, what makes it so unique and memorable. Zimmer and Gerrard share the credit for composing the score and they both were officially nominated when the score was one of the film’s twelve Oscar nominations in 2001. It is, in my opinion, one of the best film scores of all time, despite having lost the Oscar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Dun Tan).
-Whenever we want to have fun, we love to re-create Elizabeth Taylor’s seemingly drunken announcement of Gladiator’s Best Picture win at the 2001 Golden Globes.
So, needless to say, Gladiator has had a large presence in my life. Since it came out in 2000, it has been in seemingly constant rotation on cable, so, like Godfather or Ocean’s Eleven, it’s one of those films that we are never able to scroll by when we see it’s on. If Gladiator is on, no matter where it is in the movie, we stop and watch. It is a film that is the perfect combination of action and art, of sentiment and brutality, of heart and heroism, of beauty and violence. It is Ridley Scott’s finest film and that’s saying a LOT, considering he also made Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner and Alien. It delivered Russell Crowe’s finest performance, features the best score in cinema history, and, as previously noted, was nominated for twelve Oscars, winning five, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Oh, and it also was a huge hit, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2000.
With that sort of resume and, well, you know, Hollywood, you would have assumed a sequel would have been churned out long ago. But, between the way the movie ended [spoiler alert], with the hero dying and the fact that there was no easy set-up for a sequel, Gladiator was thankfully spared the Hollywood treatment for the past twenty-four years and has been able to live in its cocoon of one-off perfection, allowed to exist in it own world of creative bliss, unspoiled by attempts to reboot, recreate or redefine it.
Until now.
I had no idea there was even an appetite for a Gladiator sequel. As I said, my wife and I are two of the film’s biggest fans and the thought had never even crossed our minds. But when we stood in a line seemingly a mile long this past Saturday, on a blustery and cold Los Angeles morning in the heart of Hollywood for an industry and press screening, it was clear that people want this movie. Maybe it’s more about a love of the original, or maybe adults are happy to see a movie made for the big screen that’s not about superheroes or toys, but there was a visceral excitement in the air, enough to make jaded industry folk stand over an hour in a line on a cold, windy Saturday morning. And did we all cheer and boo and clap during the movie, this packed audience of press, insiders and industry types who have seen it all and are difficult to impress? You bet we did. There was a lot of love in the room. So, clearly, this movie will find an audience and don’t be surprised if it makes a lot of money.
But, for me, the film is not much more than glorified fan service, Ridley Scott trying to recapture the same glory from the original film by essentially remaking it– the same song, but with different singers. The problem is, when you just take the same structure and plot and practically keep all the same beats from the first film, there is no originality, no spark, no inventiveness, no heart—none of what made Gladiator so memorable.
Gladiator II probably took so long to happen because there was no natural reason for a sequel. Which means it probably was a good idea to not force one, unless someone could come up with a really inventive, creative and new approach to the original story. Well, instead of that, the writers of Gladiator II decided to invent a plot point that could have been there in the original, if you really strained your imagination, and used that to justify the sequel. But here’s the problem. If you’re going to shoehorn in a plot point, you have to commit to it. Don’t just invent a bombshell, drop it and then never detonate it. But that’s essentially what screenwriter David Scarpa does here. He invents the reason for the movie to exist but then makes the entire movie about something else.
I am being intentionally vague here because I don’t want to spoil anything. But let me just say that the film pretends to be much deeper than it actually is, and I don’t want you to be fooled into thinking that it’s anything more than a spectacle action movie. If you are hoping for a film as deeply sentimental, nuanced, emotional and humanistic as Gladiator was, you will be sorely disappointed. Here’s the cold, hard truth: Gladiator II has no spiritual or emotional connective tissue to its predecessor, other than some key props and the sad eyes of Derek Jacobi and Connie Nielsen.
But, in 2024, maybe nobody is interested in plumbing the emotional depths of a slave warrior’s soul—we just want to see him fight a drug-fueled monkey to the death in an ancient Roman arena. Am I right? The most famous line from Gladiator was “Are you not entertained?” Ridley Scott has never lacked the ability to entertain. And, despite all of Gladiator II’s failures as a narrative, it certainly scores high marks as a spectacle.
Most of the fight-to-the-death action sequences in the Roman Colosseum are over-the-top and preposterous, to be sure, but still they are tremendously fun to watch, the special effects technology having come so far in the years since the first film. Much more realistic and enjoyable are the scenes on the battlefield, notably the significant sequence that opens the film, which introduces us to Lucius, played by Paul Mescal, the leader of the North African army who is fighting against the Roman army, led by General Marcus Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal. The battle sequence is impressive, and Scott’s direction is superb, it is popcorn moviemaking at its absolute best.
From there, the film pretty much follows, beat for beat, the structure of the original film, following Lucius as he becomes a slave and then a gladiator, fighting to earn his freedom after having been captured during battle. Denzel Washington plays Lucius’ mentor and chief conniver who cheats, lies and spies on whoever and whenever best benefits him. Washington’s performance is the one thing that stands out in Gladiator II, not because it’s so good, but because it feels like it’s in a different movie. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Washington’s performance is dialed up like an operatic aria, while the rest of the film feels like auto-tune. There are moments when it’s really good but other moments when it feels just too strange and out of place. But mostly, I was bothered by the fact that I had no idea what his outsized character’s motivations were. For me, that’s a problem with writing more than performance, so I’ll give Denzel a pass, but the character is a mess, nonetheless.
As for everyone else, Paul Mescal is serviceable as the star of the film, but he comes nowhere close to being the magnetic screen presence that Russell Crowe was in his absolute prime. Plus, he’s given far less to do as an actor. Because the plot of Gladiator II never ventures into any serious emotional territory, Mescal really just spends all his time fighting or seething. Mescal is a great actor, he’s great with nuance and delicacy, but here he is nothing more than a grunting bull, a real disservice to an actor with so much more to offer.
Ditto Pedro Pascal, who is given more of a range of a character to play, but not much of a story. Something is really wrong when you forget Pedro Pascal is in a movie. Connie Nielsen is here for not much more than just to connect to the original film, as is Derek Jacobi, although it was great to see them both.
What we could have done without is the amping up of the offensive, overly exaggerated, campily hyper-feminine, gay and super evil twin emperors who sit on Rome’s throne. It’s as if they took Joaquin Phoenix’s weak, creepy and effeminate emperor from the first Gladiator and said, how can we make him even worse…and let’s double him. The two emperors, played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, are a real drag on the patience and endanger whatever self-respect the film had, if it weren’t for Washington being able to actually play off of whatever they are doing and elevate the camp and bring the film back from the brink.
In the end, the question remains, would I have enjoyed Gladiator II more if I hadn’t constantly been comparing it to the original? It’s impossible to know. Still, it is fair to say that Gladiator II is a spectacle, a visual effects wonder with sensational action sequences (if not laughable at times) and an epic popcorn flick worthy of being seen on a big screen. Just don’t expect too much from its story or performances and you very likely will be entertained.
Gladiator II opens November 22, only in theaters.