Many years have passed since Ridley Scott’s name reliably promised gold-star filmmaking. In the past decade, the work has not looked so good for the man who cemented his legendary status early in his career with Alien (1979), the sci-fi horror with truck drivers in space picked off by xenomorph predators. Scott pushed the envelope further with that anime-inspired sci-fi noir Blade Runner (1982) with Harrison Ford which audiences were slow to like but now represents something like the Holy Grail of genre filmmaking alongside George Lucas’ Star Wars and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Before the turn of the century, Scott’s biggest hit remained Thelma and Louise from 1991, and great expectations had not entirely evaporated despite the massive financial and critical failures of G.I. Jane (1997) and White Squall (1996). But when Gladiator came along in 2000, Scott captured lightning in a bottle.
Russell Crowe’s Maximus is a broad stroke, brawny Roman commander with an Australian accent who has the dream of Rome as a city on a hill and is chosen to succeed Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris at his grandest). I watched the epic again this week and Crowe’s command of the arena and sheer acting authority is enthralling. And then there’s Joaquin Phoenix, captivating and bewildering with eyes like great ravines of ambition crystalised into evil, and Connie Nielson shimmers with allure and deceit in an underwritten role – she faces the same problem in this new Gladiator II – but the whole cast of the first Gladiator with British legends Oliver Reed (in his last role) and Derek Jacobi adding substance to what might have been a relatively straight and narrow story into the monumental and striking feat the film is.
We’ve always known Ridley Scott would need the gods on his side if there were to be any expectations of the same crowning glory for Gladiator II. Set sixteen years after Russell Crowe’s Maximus breathed his last in the Roman Colosseum, the film opens with Paul Mescal’s Lucius fighting for Numidia, a final holdout against Pedro Pascal’s Imperial Roman naval fleet. Lucius is promptly defeated, captured and sold as a slave to become a gladiator. This sings a similar tune as the set up for the first Gladiator. Mescal even has a dead wife, but this time she’s a soldier and dies in battle on Pascal’s orders. It’s a grand opening sequence that prepares viewers for a vision of Rome 200CE that is never fully expressed as the film turns into a revenge saga that twists into an unsightly disappointment.
Mescal cuts a dashing figure on the battlefield and his brooding stoicism will appeal to the fans who fell in love with him in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Aftersun (the indie flick with a final shot like a punch in the guts for which he earned his first Oscar nomination). But in this explosive film, Mescal’s very grounded performance may militate against the swiftness of the battlefield. Though the eyes of the viewer can’t stay on Mescal long when contending with the likes of Denzel Washington – gloriously robed and bejewelled – making a feast of his role as Macrinus, master of gladiators. With Rome in shambles under the terrifying reign of the brother emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn from Stranger Things) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger of The White Lotus), Macrinus sets his sights on seizing power, but Lucilla (Connie Nielson) has her own machinations. At a glance, she miraculously recognises Mescal as the son she abandoned 20 years ago, setting in motion a series of alliances and betrayals that seem to guarantee the ruination of Rome. And that’s where things really fall apart.
Ridley Scott does ramp things up at the Colosseum and there are some truly magnificent sequences and set pieces, as though the filmmakers believed the success of the original film lay in its sheer grandiosity. As the gladiatorial arena was founded on the promise of undeniable spectacle, Scott leans on that same promise, rather than developing a coherent story to rival the original.
Are we not entertained? will be the question posed by every single reviewer of this unfortunate sequel. And the answer is, yes. Sort of. By duplicating and maximising all the elements of the first film that were entirely surface, Scott and his generous team of financiers shovel money into the hands of all the wrong people. In Gladiator, Crowe fights a tiger. So here, in the hope of trebling the level of entertainment value, Mescal fights a rhino! And a monkey! And even sharks, for God’s sake. Is that not entertaining? Nothing could be illustrative of the filmmaker’s profound misunderstanding of what made the first film great than the gratuitous presence of sharks in Gladiator II. Sharks swim around, tearing apart gladiators battling on ships. It’s an unbelievable fiction of course, but here, jumping the shark both literally and figuratively is at least an impressive spectacle and isn’t spectacle what moviegoers want?
'Nothing could be illustrative of the filmmaker’s profound misunderstanding of what made the first film great than the gratuitous presence of sharks in Gladiator II. Sharks swim around, tearing apart gladiators battling on ships. It’s an unbelievable fiction of course, but here, jumping the shark both literally and figuratively is at least an impressive spectacle and isn’t spectacle what moviegoers want?'
Alas, Gladiator II goes out with a whimper. In an attempt to replicate the tragic climax of the first film, the 86-year-old Ridley Scott finds himself again wandering down the wrong road. Panning away from the eternal city burning to the ground is a devastation in a category of its own. In the place of dramatic coherence, we get Mescal’s cry for peace on a battlefield that resounds like the drop of a cotton ball. But is it Mescal who flattens things out? Without giving too much away, all the bravado in the world cannot eclipse the seismic collapse being teased at, and all the viewer can do is sit there, gobsmacked and feeling a little cheated. Instead of falling into place, all the puzzle pieces chitter away like rabid CG monkeys.
Bad timing might be bad luck for Ridley Scott’s latter day and hopeful blockbuster which asks for optimism from an audience likely to be suffocating in political disillusionment. Not quite escapism, nor particularly striking, Gladiator II is untimely and small in the face of the bewilderments of the world.
Eddie Hampson is a literary and film critic.
Main image: Paul Mescal in Gladiator II. (Aidan Monaghan/Aidan Monaghan © 2024 Paramount Pictures)