Ridley Scott is back at it again for the second time, trying to make an entertaining, long-awaited sequel. The announcement of Gladiator II was an interesting case to me, because for the current state of movies, we see a ton of classic movies getting revived, such as Blade Runner 2049 and Top Gun : Maverick. These movies have been pretty successful at the box office, and there is all the more reason to keep making them. We have seen the good and bad sides of these franchises, such as the unpopular revival of the Star Wars sequels franchise, and the highly acclaimed Creed trilogy, which is a spinoff of the Rocky movies. Gladiator II fits right in the middle of good and just okay. The only cast members from the original movie brought back were Connie Nielson (as Lucilla) and Derek Jacobi (Gracchus the senator).
As for the story, it goes quite similar to the first one, but with a little more plot threads. Scott decides to build off the events of the first one, even though both of the main characters had died. He also notes the shift of Rome, and the movie taking place 16 years later from the first one. He uses the child Lucius as the main focus point, because he is the son of Maximus, who was played by Russell Crowe. The story goes where after Lucius ran away from the guards, he took refuge in the African country Numidia, where he became a general there. While a general, Numidia gets attacked by Rome, led by General Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal. Lucius, now played by Paul Mescal, gets captured as a prisoner of war and made a slave, where he begins to train as a gladiator. The rest of the movie goes pretty simply, with amazing action sequences such as the naval ship battle in the colosseum. Mescal does an amazing job as this fierce warrior, and the duel villains of Emperor Geta (played by Joseph Quinn) and Emperor Caracalla (played by Fred Hechinger) are some of the most entertaining scene-stealers in the whole movie. Denzel Washington as Macrinus does a pretty solid job, but his character development is what takes points off for me.
My biggest problem with the movie is the many different plot threads Scott tries to include, and the amount of confusion my brain was in trying to figure out each character’s connection to each other. In my opinion, Scott tries to do too much in this one, and that takes away from the fun of the movie. I feel he could’ve added an extra action scene or two, but because he set up so many conflicts at the start, those scenes ended up just becoming conversation scenes, in order to clear up problems, or talk of these problems. What Scott is doing at age 87 is crazy to come out with this quality of a movie, and he remains on most people’s top directors list. This movie from him is pretty solid. It’s not amazing or a box-office smash, it’s just a fun movie to see with your friends. As for me, I’d go 7/10 and say the first Gladiator was way better than this one.
