Gladiator II
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) is one of those films everyone seems to admire. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Best Actor for Russell Crowe’s performance as Maximus, the tragic general who took on the might of Rome. Twenty-four years is a long time to wait for a sequel. Although it may seem reasonable alongside the 36 years separating the Top Gun films, it’s time enough to induce a sense of trepidation.
Sequels are rarely as good as the original movie, the outstanding exception being Godfather 2 (1974), but in that case there were only two years separating the first and second installments. After 24 years it’s hard to imagine Rusty taking on all comers in the Colosseum, he’s no longer so svelte or soulful. If we could freeze frame an actor’s career at its highest point of achievement, Gladiator would be Crowe’s Mt. Everest moment.
That made it more complicated to anoint a successor for the lead role. Scott’s choice was the young Irish actor, Paul Mescal, whose career has skyrocketed following his role as a depressed father in Aftersun (2022), one of the most overrated movies of recent years. As someone who has struggled to see Mescal as a megastar in the making, I never expected he would match up against Crowe in the first film. He doesn’t. Where Crowe’s Maximus was distinguished by his sombre nobility, Mescal’s Hanno is always snarling and pulling faces.
For Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a scheming entrepreneur with his eye on the throne, Hanno’s greatest asset is his “rage”. It is this anger which propels him onward to one savage victory after another – anger over the wife he loses in the first scenes of the film, anger over the mother who sent him away as a child and seemingly abandoned him. Given the chance, he would massacre the entire army of Rome. Where Maximus was driven by a cold, single-minded need for revenge, Hanno often comes across as a sneering hothead, spoiling to put someone or something to the sword.
These unsympathetic tendencies are characteristic of a general descent into caricature, as Scott and his writers have beefed up the Roman decadence and special effects. If you thought Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus was over-the-top in the first film, brace yourself for the camp, deranged brothers, Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger), who rule as dual emperors. The psycho siblings appear to have made a careful study of Malcolm McDowell’s demented performance in Tito Brass’s Caligula (1979) or perhaps John Hurt’s take on the same emperor, in the tele-series, I, Claudius (1976).
As the wackiest, most bloodthirsty Roman emperors seem to have lodged themselves in the public imagination, Scott gives the people what they want. He also defies credibility in having a gladiator ride an angry rhinoceros into combat, and having sharks brought in for a sea battle in a flooded Colosseum. Unlikely as it seems, the Romans did manage to fill the arena with water and stage mock sea battles, although it didn’t happen very often, and there were no sharks involved. Neither is there any evidence that prisoners were made to fight furious baboons.
In terms of historical accuracy, the second Gladiator is more reckless than the first, which featured fictional characters such as Maximus and took liberties with the lives of real people such as Marcus Aurelius and his children, Lucilla, and Commodus. The second film is roughly based in 193 AD, which historians refer to as the Year of the Five Emperors. It was a notoriously unstable interregnum in Roman history but bore no relation to the events depicted.
It's an open secret with the viewer that Hanno, who begins the film fighting for the Nubians against the Roman invaders, is actually Lucius Verus, the love child of Lucilla and Maximus. The character is based on the real Lucius Verus II, who died at the age of eight. At this point, all ties with history are abandoned – a process continued by the treatment of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), who met with a very different fate in real life.
This may trouble the amateur historians, but it is of no great importance to the casual viewer who is expected to be absorbed into the action and intrigue of the story, which roughly echoes the plot of the first movie. Like his dad, Hanno/Lucius is sold as a slave, and becomes a champion gladiator whose victories rock the foundations of Imperial power. This time, the slave-owner who seeks to profit from the gladiator’s success is Macrinus (Washington), whose ambitions and villainy go far beyond those of his predecessor, Proximus (played by Oliver Reed, who died during the making of the film).
Washington’s assured performance is one of the highlights of the movie, as is Pedro Pascal’s work as Marcus Acacius, a loyal general in the Maximus mould, weary of war and eager to return Rome to stable government. What is a “dream” for Acacius is pure “fiction” for Macrinus, the kind of evil genius usually found in a James Bond flick. As with all good super-villains, we feel pretty confident that Macrinus will push his luck too far.
One could say the same about Ridley Scott, still making movies at the age of 86, still just as hungry for box office success. In recent years he has made some quality films, such as The Last Duel (2021) that didn’t capture the attention of audiences or critics. Napoleon (2023) was a folly, but a glorious one, that left out whole decades of Bonaparte’s life to concentrate on the twin themes of love and war. One thing that remains constant, between these films and Gladiator II, is Scott’s ability to orchestrate large-scale battle scenes. When it comes to capturing the atmosphere of a clash between two great armies, there’s no-one better. Arrows thwack into bodies, swords and spears clang against armour, blood spurts as limbs, heads and torsos are hacked.
In Gladiator II Scott has made a typically vivid, entertaining action film, with a portentous but ridiculous plot. The introductory scenes which were so masterful in the first Gladiator, are a weakness in the sequel. We are made aware, almost at once, that Hanno is not quite what he seems, but never learn how he travelled from Rome to Nubia in the first place, or who were the people that protected him. One suspects these details ended on the cutting room floor, as Scott strove to keep the running time under three hours.
This missing information may also explain our hero’s “rage” and the irrational anger he shows for Lucilla, which is just as quickly jettisoned. Such details may not be as important as the crazy battles in the Colosseum, but the fractured story-telling detracts from the overall feel of the film. There was a sense of grandeur in the first Gladiator that has gone missing in the sequel. The fights are still thrilling, the intrigues engaging, the cinematography is excellent, but one suspects that in twenty years time there will be few people who look back on Gladiator II as one of their memorable experiences at the cinema.
Gladiator II
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Davd Scarpa & Peter Craig, using characters by David Franzoni
Starring: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen, Pedro Pascal, Fred Hechinger, Joseph Quinn, Derek Jacobi, Lior Raz, Peter Mensah, Tim McInnerny, Matt Lucas, Alexander Karim, Yuval Gonen
USA/UK/Morocco/Canada, MA 15+, 148 mins