It’s kind of astonishing that Gladiator II is only coming out now, almost 25 years after the first go-around. While the initial film raked in boatloads of cash and an armful of awards, including Best Picture, a sequel was trapped in development hell for years. We almost had a Nick Cave-penned sequel titled “Christ Killer” that saw Maximus (Russell Crowe) leaving purgatory with a mission to kill Jesus Christ. But rights were sold, interest vacillated, and as director Ridley Scott puts it: writer were “afraid” to take the project on.
(Note: spoilers for Gladiator II follow)
It’s stunning, then, that a project that generated such off-the-wall sequel ideas, that took so long to come to fruition, and that scared writers with its scope is now here in the form of a pale photocopy of its predecessor. For all of the handwringing about what to do with a Gladiator sequel, it appears the script has taken the most predictable off-ramp to the problem: Maximus had a kid, and the kid basically repeats the story we saw the first time around.
Lucius (Paul Mescal), the son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), is living a peaceful life after being sent away by his mother as a child for his safety. As an adult, he sees his world crumble when the Romans invade and conquer his home, killing his family and friends in the process. Upon capture, Lucius is bought and sold to Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an arms dealer who dabbles in buying and training gladiators for sport. Inspired by his deceased father, Lucius takes up his cause to survive his trials as a gladiator and bring vengeance on the leaders controlling Rome’s army.
Everything that’s frustrating about Gladiator II resides in the script. It’s so much of the same thing we saw before, but lesser – a similar story, but with less feeling or surprise; the same characters, but with less depth; the same fights, but with less logic. It’s a handful of wooden conversations supposedly leading to massive emotional catharsis. It’s a nepo baby returning to Rome and being crowned a hero. It’s exactly the kind of movie you’d write if you had 5 minutes to create an inoffensive version of a sequel. What’s scaffolded over the trite story is mostly done with competence – solid fight choreography, high caliber actors, etc. – but it’s not enough to overcome the tedium of telling the same story twice.
Not everything about the film is a waste, though. Scott has firmly entered an era of doing whatever the hell he feels like, and the best parts of Gladiator II are in its weirder details. If he feels like filling the Colosseum with water so the gladiators can fight sharks? Fine! Will a monkey play a pivotal role in Rome’s governance? Of course! But the best byproduct of that letting-it-all-hang-out attitude is the way he let’s actors Just Do Their Thing and lean into melodrama when they’re into it. Jared Leto in House of Gucci, Ben Affleck in The Last Duel – these performances were strange and borderline inappropriate for the films they were in, but they were also somehow the best parts of the movie because of that.
We see the same thing happen in Gladiator II with Denzel Washington’s performance as Macrinus. I laughed, sometimes hard, probably more than a dozen times throughout the film. Days later, I can’t tell if Gladiator II was actually a comedy or if Washington is just that funny, but the comedy correlated with Washington’s screentime. He’s over-the-top but in such a deliberate and unique way, from the way he carries himself to the bizarre delivery of basic lines. The fact that Washington wringed such menace and comedy out of the same script as everyone else, while also managing to give his character the most pathos, is incredible. While Pedro Pascal goes through the motions of being a tortured tough guy, while Mescal talks about the days he spent under the hot sun performing brutal physical choreography, Washington does something a little different: he joyously dances around with severed heads and rightly walks away with the most Oscar buzz of the bunch.
I can’t recommend a film solely for one performance, and when it comes to Gladiator II, I might suggest you just watch the original if you’re looking to live in that feeling again. But my curiosity remains piqued for watching Scott as a director find unique flourishes in dull scripts. I’m also here for watching Washington revel in less traditional leading roles. Not a total waste, but this could have been so much more.