‘Gladiator II’ misses the commitment to grandiosity that made ‘Gladiator’ great
So… rewatching Gladiator before watching Gladiator II in theaters was a bad idea because it makes it starkly plain how much the sequel pales in grandiosity compared to the original. Despite the grand spectacle that Ridley Scott manages to put up on the screen again, the Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Denzel Washington starrer lacks the juice to hold a candle to Russell Crowe’s rousing original.
Gladiator II isn’t a bad film. It has a stalwart whose act it must follow. And to do so, the sequel works by a checklist of everything that Gladiator did. You’ve got a war to kickstart the film, a loss to springboard the vengeance story, a tyrannical Roman emperor(s) that must be defeated for said vengeance to be complete, a sympathiser in the emperor’s court, and elaborate gladiator fights in the arena. Gladiator II is, for the most part, Gladiator rehashed and should work. Except, it falls short in one very crucial, game-changing way…
Even as Ridley Scott uses the same formula and creates even larger-than-life visuals in the arena (with vicious monkeys and a shark-infested Colosseum) the emotional pull that made Gladiator so effective is conspicuous in its absence from his sequel. Films like Gladiator and Gladiator II are about heroes of legend, from an era of strength and honour that has long gone by. They might make whimsical or tyrannical emperors like Commodus, Geta, and Caracalla (we know they do), but they do not make men like Maximus anymore. He was stoic, but the rage was in his eyes. His voice had command. People wanted to follow him because he led by example and made them believe they could do it.
So when telling stories of such a time, it is the commitment to going big that lends it conviction, and not just with visuals. Big speeches, long monologues, strong men going weak at the memory of lost loved ones, unafraid of crying and indulging in grand, dramatic gestures… The passionate emotionality of it all might feel pompous or exaggerated, but that’s what sells it. There’s a reason Aragorn’s war scenes from The Lord of The Rings or that one Braveheart speech have stayed with us for so long. There’s a reason Russell Crowe’s “My name is Maximum Decimus Meridius…” monologue gives you goosebumps and evokes tears even now, 25 years later.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. And Gladiator II is poorer for not taking the time to establish this connect through grand emotional set pieces that would make us root for its heroes or hate its villains with a colosseum full of vengeance. Barring Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, who is the only one with the juice to pull his character off (and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla because she was in the first film too), every other character’s motivations and who they are as a person remain a threadbare weave and fall flat.
Joaquin Phoenix’s masterful performance as Commodus in the original is a study of an insecure man deprived of his father’s love. He gets scenes where his actions terrorise you, yet evoke a sort of pity for what made him the wretched man he is. But the madness of the twin emperors in Gladiator II feels pre-loaded and superficial, and they are never built up to a point where you are screaming for their blood. And if you don’t care about the villains, what purpose does the hero’s journey then leave you with?
Take the example of the scene where Paul Mescal’s Hanno finally meets the man he holds responsible for his wife’s death, Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius, in the arena. This is what our hero has been waiting for; it’s his price and prize for putting up a show in the arena. However, it falls flat because the exchange between Hanno and Acacius—the man who killed Hanno’s wife but loves is his mother’s love and a good guy—suffers from weak writing.
Where is the rage? The inner turmoil? Where are the scenes before this fight, where Hanno reminisces of his dead wife like Maximus did in the original, that would make us feel his pain? The shift from hating Acacius to feeling sorry for him to the next scene where Lucius finally forgives Lucilla and becomes who he was born to be is so abrupt, that it barely gives you a chance to feel anything. It’s just plot points that are happening one after the other because they must.
When Gladiator II‘s final scene arrives and Lucius kneels in the arena to seek his father’s guidance, it evokes no emotion. I found myself thinking back to the scene from the original then, with Djimon Hounsou as the Numidian gladiator Juba, who performs a similar gesture as he speaks to the memory of the late Maximus. The music is the same, the intent is the same. And yet, it works with Juba because his friendship with Maximus is beautifully developed. In Gladiator II, even as Lucius is repeatedly told he is his father’s son, and there are scenes of his camaraderie with his fellow gladiators and the doctor, there isn’t a strong enough foundation built that would make us care about any of their fates.
A user on X wrote that in the year of Gladiator II, the best arena fight scene was actually from Dune Part 2 when Austin Butler’s Fyed Rautha is first introduced to us. Throughout the film, and even in other titles like Bikeriders, Butler manages to exude that movie star charm that captivated the audience and made them feel above and beyond for his character. There were also reports that Timothée Chalamet was considered to play Lucius at one point before Mescal. And while he would be a miscast too due to his physicality; his astounding turn as the messianic Paul Muad’dib Atreides in Dune Part 2 makes you wonder what he could have done with Lucius’ Prince of Rome speech in the end.
There’s no denying that Paul Mescal is a brilliant actor. But having watched Gladiator II, I’m compelled to agree with those who felt he might’ve been miscast in this part. Gladiator II needed a certain aura, a charisma that a superstar like Russell Crowe gave off in waves in the original, or that Washington is able to evoke with a mere look in this one, and that Mescal simply could not conjure, even though his effort was valiant.
It became evident when a simple dialogue from Denzel’s Macrinus as he tells a senator, “I own… your house” made me chuckle and applaud. But in the scene after defeating Macrinus, when Lucius, the Prince of Rome, gives us his speech, I was barely moved. It says a lot when, in a film like Gladiator II, you’re enjoying the supposed evil mastermind over the hero you should be rooting for. Perhaps, that’s the difference between a movie star and an actor? Sometimes, the former’s larger-than-life persona lends greater conviction than the latter’s sincere performance.
To me, Gladiator II feels like a product of our times—the time of AI; of sanitised, polished, glossier visuals devoid of emotion; of writing that is afraid to sound overly dramatic or passionate because that would feel dated; and of actors that are better than anything we’ve ever seen but few exude the movie star aura. It’s no surprise, then, that despite all the advancement that 25 years might’ve lent to filmmaking, Gladiator II looks fantastic, but feels empty.
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