By Esme Bell
This is an easy pun to make, but it was with genuine sadness that I left Durham’s Gala cinema last week, after watching Ridley Scott’s latest sequel, Gladiator II.
It is perhaps unfair to say that it completely lacked entertainment value. It was a fun spectacle, at least, peopled with a dynamic and watchable cast – and, as my (Irish) friend Rachel mistily remarked, we can’t forget Paul Mescal’s ‘lovely Gaelic thighs’.
But Gaelic thighs alone cannot – and should not – make a film; and even a whole legion of Irish heartthrobs, no matter how well-muscled, could not atone for Gladiator II’s sins.
I have to preface the rest of this article by asserting how much I love the original, 2000 Gladiator; and so what follows could be seen as irritatingly nit-picking, or a failure to appreciate the new film for its own sake. I (obviously) disagree: Gladiator II as a commercial concept rests entirely on the deserved victory of the first one, and it actively appropriates the plot, music and even physical clips from its originator. This worked well in a film like Top Gun: Maverick, for instance – which proved that a loving sequel to an adored original can absolutely pay homage to its roots, but be completely successful in its own right. Gladiator II, however, fails on both counts.
Perhaps the gravest flaw – which catalyses most of the rest of the issues – is in the screenplay. It is, quite simply, lacking – in warmth, subtlety, heroism, and frankly, any sense of memorability.
I, too, would probably lose a battle against an invading Roman army if I had to listen to Mescal’s attempt at an opening rallying speech. It falls so fatally flat, and seems so painfully self-aware of its inferiority, when compared to the glorious ease of Russell Crowe’s speech at the opening of the first film. This inevitable comparison continues: we have nothing to rival ‘Are you not entertained?’ or the chilling intensity of ‘Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife’ speech. And, again, this didn’t have to become such a glaring problem, but when Mescal’s Lucius is literally and metaphorically Maximus 2.0 – how can we ignore all the ways in which he fails to live up to him?
This brings me to my next point, which I make reluctantly, but truthfully: Mescal was a fundamentally underwhelming leading man. His occasional lapse in accent is forgivable, as Crowe also frequently slips into an Australian drawl; given the Roman Empire’s sprawling nature, it perhaps makes sense that someone’s accent might “travel” too. And, I also concede that most of Mescal’s flaws are the product, again, of the script and the plot, which allowed his character very little nuance or softness. But, the fact remains that, across the film, he acts and speaks on one, growly, broody, bear-like level, with very little variation.
One of the most powerful moments of Gladiator is not a battle, but simply a conversation early on, when Maximus describes his home to Marcus Aurelius: his house, his olives, his vines, the earth ‘black as my wife’s hair’, the wild ponies who tease his son. Crowe’s curt, cropped-haired violence is layered effortlessly with a tender, but never mawkish, vision of Maximus the farmer, who longs only for hearth and home. And this is crucial: we have to believe in his home, in his love – in the holistic man beyond The General – to then share in his grief, accept his need for revenge, and understand the man he becomes.
We are granted no such insight into Lucius as he grunts, rolls, shouts, fights, and rolls again across the screen (Mescal does spend a lot of time on the ground with his tunic riding dangerously high – little wonder his thighs became so significant). And this critical distance from the audience’s empathy and understanding is not just frustrating, but becomes actively confusing. He asserts his passionate hatred for Lucilla (his mother) and Rome in one moment, and shortly afterwards declares his intention to die for the ‘dream that was Rome’ – with seemingly little emotional or logical backing to explain the swift change.
The cast in general though was the film’s strongest asset. Both Connie Nielsen and her character had aged well, and I felt she had more gravitas and purpose in the sequel. Pedro Pascal as the sympathetic general/ go-between was also engaging with his few lines – but his character was so unsatisfyingly written that his warmth and furrowed brow were cruelly wasted.
The twin emperors, played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, were less slimily menacing than Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus – but entertaining nonetheless, and they had Denzel Washington to bulk up the explicit “villainy” a bit more. As Macrinus, he was the stand-out performance for me: he walked a compelling line between power-hungry mad man and charismatic mentor. If, at times, it felt like a reprisal of his role in Training Day, this was in no way a bad thing – and an accidental detail I loved was the way that he would constantly twitch and fidget with his robes. In real Ancient Times, it must have been a logistical nightmare murdering/scheming etc. with such long sleeves.
But even an undoubtedly star-studded, TikTok-approved cast cannot perform in a vacuum: and a plot and screenplay which moves confusingly and unsatisfactorily through story and character will struggle to serve anyone.
I do think too much has been made about how “unrealistic” the shark-infested Coliseum was. The entire plots of both films require a significant suspension of disbelief; a CGI Great White can’t be the final thing that disrupts it. But, although a slight fancifulness of story is in keeping with the original spirit of Gladiator, the rest of the “scaffolding” of the film – the effects, the soundtrack, even the inexplicable image of Tim McInnerny’s senator reading a newspaper – are just further disappointments.
Far too much energy was expended on the computer-generated baboons that Lucius faces in the arena, and their Planet of the Apes-level screams rivalled Mescal’s own acting at points. The cheesy black-and-white rendering of (presumably) the River Styx and Charon claiming Lucius’ loved ones felt similarly jarring and wrong. The music was a particular let-down, also. Zimmer’s original score is so stirring and literally iconic – and the only vaguely memorable musical moments from Gladiator II were the few times that the original theme was re-worked. Zimmer does steal from Holst’s ‘Mars’ in the first film, so I suppose there is a Gladiatorial tradition of reusing and adapting, but it didn’t happen enough to feel like a deliberate choice, and just came across as artificial, lazy – like homework that had been done the night before.
And, in essence, I think this is the ultimate problem with the film. Like James Cameron with Avatar: The Way of the Water, Ridley Scott seems to have been subsumed by his own success, and has forsaken the integrity of his original. Like an emperor trying to win cheap approval, he has treated his loyal watcher as just part of the mob, to be fobbed off with bread, circuses, CGI sharks – and a sad dilution of an initial masterpiece.
Even the excellent ticket price at the Gala (a joyously democratic £5) doesn’t make up for what, in this sequel, we have irretrievably, unforgivably lost: strength and honour.