Roman’s Revenge

My thoughts on Gladiator II

Look, I liked Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s audacious 2000 attempt to revive the long-moribund sword-and-sandals historical epic by deploying both the latest advances in visual technologies and the old-school movie star charisma of Russell Crowe (in the performance that would win him the Best Actor Oscar, even if many people misremember him actually wining it for A Beautiful Mind), as much as the millions of moviegoers who caught it back in the day. (Possibly even a little more, to judge by the amount of information-free listsicles every spring that try to proclaim it one of the worst films to ever win the Best Picture Oscar.) However, after it was all over, I did not come away from it champing at the bit to discover what would happen to the characters in the future. Part of this was because the most interesting characters in the story—the general-turned gladiatorial hero Maximus (Crowe), the vile Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and the garrulous gladiator trainer Proximo (Oliver Reed in what would prove to be the final role of his career)—were dead by the time that the end credits began rolling and part of it was because, for all of its undeniable deficiencies and moments of clumsiness, it told viewers a full and complete story with the kind of dramatic arc that ended at just the right point and any extensions would only serve to dilute the power of what had already been presented.

Of course, others, no doubt attracted by Gladiator’s half-billion worldwide gross and five Oscars, felt differently and practically from the moment that it proved to be a success, the notion of a follow-up has been bandied about. Perhaps the weirdest of these potential sequels was one allegedly devised by musician-turned-screenwriter Nick Cave that would have focused on the late Maximus being reclaimed from purgatory to serve as a warrior for the Roman gods charged with killing Jesus and his disciples and crushing Christianity—to make things ever stranger, Maximus would be cursed to live forever and we would supposedly see him at various times fighting in the Crusades, World War II and Vietnam and eventually turning up behind a desk at the Pentagon. Although that undeniably audacious concept inevitably fell apart (and while I cannot imagine it working, I would have loved to have seen it at least try), the idea of doing a sequel didn’t and so now, nearly a quarter-century after the first one, Gladiator II has arrived, complete with Scott returning to the director’s seat. Alas, like too many of the recent entries in Scott’s filmography, the result is a curiously slapdash affair that is undeniably impressive on a technical level but fairly tedious from a story perspective and ultimately enlivened, if only to a point, by the sheer nuttiness of some of the imagery presented and the sight of Denzel Washington cheerfully chewing much of the scenery in a supporting turn.

Set roughly 20 years after the events of the first film, Gladiator II opens with the once-mighty Rome stuck in a power vacuum currently being filled by twins Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), whose approach to rule is about as steadfast and sure as Caligula’s. Far away from Rome, Lucius (Paul Mescal), who was sent away from Rome as a young child by his powerful mother Lucilla (a returning Connie Nielsen) to protect him from those who would kill him if they know he was of royal blood, is living a quiet life in North Africa with his wife, Arishat (Yuval Gonen). Before long, however, Roman troops led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) invade and in the ensuing battle, Arishat is killed and the grieving Lucas is enslaved and but up for sale as a potential gladiator, proving himself worthy in a mock battle in which he manages to slaughter a number of giant killer baboons and win the love of the fickle-but-bloodthirsty crown. For his part, Lucius doesn’t care much about what happens—he just wants to stay alive long enough to murder Acacius to avenge Arishat’s death at his hands.

Among those impressed by Lucius’s abilities in the arena is Macrinus, who purchases him as part of his stable of gladiators and promises him that if his new hire will continue to fight and win for him, he will arrange it so that Lucius can get his revenge against Acacius. As it happens, Macrinus has ambitions to outmaneuver the current leaders and take over Rome for himself, using Lucius’s growing popularity and his own innate ability to find and exploit the weaknesses of other to rise through the ranks of the elite in order to satisfy his own desire for power. Complicating matters is that Acacius is himself growing disenchanted with the direction Rome is heading and both he and Lucia, who is his lover, are part of a clandestine plan to overthrow the co-emperors and restore the land to its former glory. Whether or not all of this builds to a moment where Lucius and Acacius indeed find themselves facing each other in the arena, I leave up to you to discover, other to note that if it didn’t build to such a moment, the film would no doubt irritate viewers so much that it might as well be retitled Gladiator: Folie a Deux.

Like many of Scott’s recent films, Gladiator II is kind of a mess, the kind of film that expends so much energy and inspiration in just getting all of the complicated pieces together in order to put it all in front of the camera that precious little was left once those cameras started rolling. Much of the screenplay by David Scarpa is little more than a rehash of the events of the first film that lack the things that made that one so distinctive. Even if Crowe’s performance there was not among his best, he had the kind of raw screen-commanding charisma that the role required and as a result, his work was genuinely magnetic. By comparison, Mescal, for all of his skills as an actor that he has demonstrated in such projects as Aftersun and All of Us Strangers, does not quite conjure up that same aura of command and as a result, when he hacks his way through his various battles, his victories seem more like contrivances. Likewise, as the evil Commodus, Joaquin Phoenix delivered a defiantly oddball performance that kept you watching that, while Quinn and Hechinger, as his equivalents, literally pale by comparison. Even the big battle sequences come up short here. Even the usually magnetic Pascal fails to make much of an impression here, either when we are meant to read him simply as a bad guy or when we are asked to look at him more sympathetically. As for the battle scenes that are pretty much the reason for the film’s existence, lthough lavishly staged and filled with wild and outrageous touches throughout, the over reliance on CGI technology throughout means that the visceral element on display in the first film is lost and these set pieces feel more like cartoons, which is what they are, in a sense.

For most of its running time, Gladiator II is just like most legacy sequels of late—a rehash of tried-and-true elements that is mostly content with simply giving viewers more of the same. However, despite the vague sense of laziness that permeates most of the storytelling here, the film does offer up a couple of offbeat touches that prove to be the most compelling things on hand. For one thing, the film is just plain goofy at certain points and not just because of the historical anachronisms that people have already been commenting on, as if the original was some kind of slave to accuracy—in what is sure to go down as the most notorious such moment (not counting the one in which a character is seen reading what appears to be the ancient Roman version of USA Today), one of the big gladiator contests consists of flooding the coliseum and filling it with full-sized warships and sharks in order to recreate legendary naval battles. The result is ridiculous, of course, but it is the fun kind of ridiculousness that only the most churlish of viewers will be unable to resist, if only for a few minutes.

The other highlight is the performance by Washington, one of the wildest that the great actor has delivered though the course of his career. While most of his co-stars doggedly go through their paces, damping down their natural charisma and charm as they struggle to speak the often flat-footed dialogue while standing around in outfits that always seem to be about 2 inches away from a serious malfunction, he is ultimately too canny to allow that to happen. Recognizing that a performance of quiet restraint is not going to cut it in a spectacle of this size, he goes the other way with a cheerfully grandiose turn that is pretty much unlike anything that he has really done before in film—outside of maybe Training Day—and which fits the overscaled nature of the whole project to a T. Considering that the part is essentially a supporting turn, I cannot quite explain what might have compelled Washington to choose it—perhaps he realized that there were probably very few opportunities to appear in a film featuring a naval battle recreated in a shark-filled coliseum heading his way and that he had better seize the chance while he could. Whatever the reason, he is a blast and while it probably won’t rank among his most powerful and significant performances, the glee with which he tears into the material ensures that the juiciest moments will play a prominent role in any future career highlight reels.

For the most part, however, Gladiator II is a film that, while mildly diverting as long as Washington is holding court, never quite demonstrates any real reason for existing other than to hopefully bring in a big chunk of change to Paramount’s coffers. While certainly an improvement over his mostly disastrous biopic Napoleon, it mostly finds Scott going through the motions in exchange for a huge paycheck and while his ability to Marshall together the technical resources to put together a project of this size remains a singular one, it lacks the kind of storytelling skill and compelling characters that have made his best films more than mere exercises in style. Like too many would-be blockbusters these days, Gladiator II is a largely empty experience—the kind that may do well in the never-ending box-office derby for a weekend or two, even up against the formidable likes of Wicked, but which, aside from Washington, is destined to be largely forgotten in due time.