Lengthy earlier than “eager about the Roman empire” turned shorthand for having a hyper-fixation, Ridley Scott turned the precise Roman empire right into a mainstream obsession. In 2000, the director’s sword-and-sandal blockbuster Gladiator muscled its means into changing into that yr’s second-highest-grossing movie, earlier than profitable the Academy Award for Finest Image and cementing its standing as—I’m simply guessing right here—your dad’s favourite film of all time. “Are you not entertained?!” Russell Crowe’s Maximus goaded the gang in a memorably rousing scene. We actually have been: Right here was an virtually absurdly easy story of revenge that Scott, through visceral combat scenes (and actual tigers), was a maximalist epic.
For Gladiator II, now in theaters, Scott has one way or the other taken it a step additional. The sequel has twice as many heroes to root for and twice as many emperors to root towards, plus a wild card within the type of Denzel Washington’s conniving arms vendor, Macrinus. In lieu of tigers, battles within the enviornment now contain a menagerie of baboons, sharks, and a rhino. Even the opening credit have been designed to excite the viewers: Key scenes from the earlier movie are animated in a painterly sequence, which lands on a title card that stylizes the sequel’s title as, gloriously, GLADIIATOR. It’s so grandiose, the viewers at my screening began applauding earlier than a single combat had begun.
Set 16 years after the occasions of Gladiator, the sequel follows Lucius (Paul Mescal), the son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, reprising her function). Lucilla secretly despatched the younger Lucius away to the dominion of Numidia for his safety after Maximus’s dying. Within the years since, rather a lot has occurred, which we study by way of overly ornate flashbacks and exposition. Lucius has come to resent his homeland and his mom, given their time aside. That resentment grows into rage after Roman forces, led by Lucilla’s new husband, Common Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), conquer Numidia in a gap battle that results in Lucius’s spouse’s dying. In Rome, in the meantime, a pair of snotty brothers named Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) have turn into co-emperors. Their reckless management has impressed a resistance led by Lucilla and Acacius, and turned town into fertile floor for the rise of opportunistic energy gamers resembling Macrinus.
The plot, filled with so many shadowy conspiracies and crafty characters, is way much less easy than the one in Gladiator, to its detriment. However amid the bloat, Scott houses in on how the cycle of ambition and retribution might be onerous to interrupt. Bloodshed is the trigger and impact of each twist within the story, the rationale behind Rome’s tumult and the obvious resolution to its woes. Violence calls for the highlight, and Gladiator II attracts rigidity from the truth that a lot of its characters can’t escape their attraction to brutality. In Scott’s arms, historic Rome has by no means been extra ruthless—or extra exhilarating to observe.
The director is a grasp at pulling magnificence out of rough-and-tumble set items. Throughout the assault on Lucius’s house, embers swirl like snow, flecks of water and dirt smack into the digital camera lens, and each strike of a sword or blow of a fist lands with primal depth. Contained in the Colosseum, regardless of the noticeably heavy use of CGI, Scott finds putting photos within the chaos: A pool of blood blossoms underwater. An arrow zips throughout the sphere. A gladiator tosses sand into the air. These photographs are mesmerizing for the viewer, and convey the unusual attract of battle for the combatants themselves.
These energetic combat scenes are matched by a set of flashy performances, with these taking part in the villains stealing the present. Mescal and Pascal embody their roles’ gravitas and turn into virtually feral after they’re pressured into the Colosseum. However Quinn and Hechinger have way more enjoyable leaning into their characters’ boyish petulance, echoing Joaquin Phoenix’s work because the man-child emperor, Commodus, from Gladiator. Washington, nevertheless, runs away with the film: Armed with a Cheshire-cat grin, heaps of jewellery, and seemingly limitless glasses of wine, Macrinus toys with Rome prefer it’s a large chessboard stuffed with pawns, and the actor embraces the script’s quite a few swerves. He imbues the character with an infectious glee in each scene, whether or not he’s cheering on the lads reducing each other down inside the world or quietly trying to control Lucius into doing his bidding.
For all of the enjoyable it’s having, Gladiator II does require a working information of its predecessor’s story to grasp the stakes, which additionally means it magnifies the unique movie’s flaws. The characters are extra thinly drawn, with shallow motivations regardless of the plot’s contrivances. The dialogue is extra stilted, filled with pat observations in regards to the “dream of Rome” within the face of an empire that repeatedly fails to study its lesson. And the ending places forth the obscure notion that Rome’s future depends on unifying its individuals—an earnest sentiment, possibly, however a moderately uninteresting conclusion to achieve after two hours of savagery.
Then once more, Gladiator II doesn’t declare to supply something greater than pure spectacle. The finale gestures at the concept hope is its personal type of energy, however even Lucius admits to its limits as a peacekeeping power. “You look to me to talk,” Lucius says as he addresses opposing armies about to combat. “I do know not what to say.” Perhaps Macrinus, who believes that Rome is doomed to brutality and bloodshed, has a degree when he asserts that violence is “the common language.” In any case, to borrow a revered gladiator’s phrases, it’s undeniably entertaining.