Review: Gladiator II

An unnecessary but highly entertaining sequel.

Few movies demanded a sequel less than Gladiator. Ridley Scott’s action epic was a box office hit that walked away with Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor, but I can’t imagine audiences were crying out for more. Maximus’ story was pretty finished when he died on the Colosseum floor, and the film didn’t leave any dangling story threads. Ideas for follow-ups were floated for years – including a truly deranged, time-traveling epic from Nick Cave that I would have loved to see attempted – but it never appeared to be a serious consideration. 

But we’re in the age of the legacy sequel, and Paramount Pictures doesn’t have a plethora of IP to play with, so I guess no one should be surprised that Gladiator II is hitting theaters later this month, more than 24 years after the original. But what is surprising is that Ridley Scott doesn’t phone it in, delivering a highly entertaining spectacle and his best movie in years. 

Set several decades after the first Gladiator, the sequel takes place in the last days of the Roman Empire, as the city is ruled over by two obnoxious and corrupt twin tyrants (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger). When General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) sacks an African city, a young barbarian named Lucius (Paul Mescal) is taken as a slave and forced into gladiatorial combat. This young man, who lost his wife in battle, vows revenge on the general; he gets a chance when Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an opportunistic citizen with eyes on the Senate, purchases him and gets him into the Colosseum for the games. But his path to vengeance is complicated; Acacius isn’t the friend to the emperors that he might initially seem, and the presence of his wife, Lucilla (Connie Nelsen), who we met in the first film, suggests that maybe Lucius isn’t the nobody he’s been raised to believe. 

David Scarpa’s screenplay doesn’t stray too far from the template of the 2000 film; in fact, the biggest knock against the sequel is that it follows the beats of that original a bit too closely, and makes some clumsy retcons. It starts with a battle that wounds the hero and leaves him in captivity. He learns to fight, and is trained for arena combat. He becomes a leader to the gladiators and a hero for the people, entertaining them and marshaling their anger toward Rome. As he gets closer to his target, there’s political intrigue, shocking revelations and a rebellion. And, of course, it ends with a one-on-one brawl. Those who’ve seen Gladiator multiple times will see that it largely follows in its predecessor’s footsteps in a way that feels like a bit of a letdown, and some of the scenes calling directly back to Maximus’ story feel a bit too forced. 

And yet, what Scott and his cast do with those beats is a lot of fun. The director is 86 years old and yet still working at a fast pace and on an astonishing scale; apparently no one has told him that most directors tend to move on to more intimate projects in their golden years. Scott can be hit or miss; 2021 brought both the critically acclaimed The Last Duel and the ridiculed House of Gucci, and last year’s Napoleon came and went without any fanfare. But Gladiator II finds Scott at the top of his game, reveling in ways to make the combat more outlandish and thrilling, throwing in wild animals, a flooded Colosseum and sprawling battles. You can almost imagine the film being pitched by Bill Hader’s SNL character Stefon: “This movie has everything: Gladiators fighting baboons, a centurion on a rhinoceros, shark attacks, Denzel Washington talking to a severed head and that thing where an emperor walks around with a monkey on his shoulder that’s wearing a dress and a diaper.” 

All of that is in the movie, and if it verges on the outlandish – apparently, the Romans did flood the Colosseum to reenact naval battles, but there’s no proof they brought in sharks – it’s also very entertaining. Scott has fun depicting the opulence of life in Rome and the depravity of its rulers, and as with the first film, it’s galvanizing to watch the downtrodden gladiators rise up and capture the acclaim of the people. There’s perhaps a bit too much CGI assistance in the battles and world-building, but Scott still delivers a movie where the action thrills and we’re swept up in the spectacle. 

Mescal delivered one of the most subtle and affecting performances of the last few years in the 2022 drama Aftersun. He doesn’t quite have the charisma and presence that made Crowe a movie star in 2000, but there's a rage that Lucius shows early in the film that is gripping. One of the most interesting aspects of Gladiator II is how it tries to do a little more than just be a typical revenge thriller, delving more into political intrigue and personal responsibility as Lucius discovers the truth about his identity and grapples with whether to pursue revenge or give himself to a more noble cause, and Mescal is solid capturing the character’s transition. Watching a movie take place on the eve of the fall of the Roman Empire as the people begin to rise up under tyrants had an unexpected resonance as I watched it the day after America willingly took a step closer to fascism and its own potential fall. 

The supporting cast is a lot of fun. Pascal brings complexity and vulnerability to Acacius, and one of the movie’s most interesting threads is his world-weariness and frustration with fighting constant wars. It’s good to see Nielsen on the screen again, and she provides the film’s emotional center. But towering above everyone else in the film is Washington. Playing a conniving, charming and worldly politician, Washington is having a blast, going big and keeping it just on the right side of camp. He’s funny and intimidating, punctuating every word with a devilish smile or big flourish, and when Macrinus reveals his full intentions, we see that Washington has dominated the film just as thoroughly as his character wants to dominate Rome. It’s a great, fun performance that reminds us that there may be no better living actor than Denzel, and it’s worth the price of admission. 

Is Gladiator II great? No…but the truth is, neither is Gladiator, which succeeded not because it was a masterpiece but because it was a highly entertaining epic that also birthed a movie star. Gladiator II can’t quite measure up because of how closely it imitates the first film, but that it gets as close as it does is a pleasant surprise.