Gladiator II: A Review

GLADIATOR II

When Gladiator was sweeping the nation and then the Academy Awards, I never thought that we would need, let alone get, a sequel. I liked Gladiator well enough as good popcorn entertainment. However, had I been the one deciding things, I would have voted for Traffic as the Best Picture of 2000. Now, after almost a quarter of a century, we have Gladiator II, which goes into the tale of the original film's child character. Gladiator II is indeed an epic, an epic disaster. Boring, blank and at times cringeworthy, Gladiator II makes the case that the dead should remain buried. 

Sixteen years after the events of Gladiator, we find ourselves in Numidia, 200 A.D. A young man known as Hanno (Paul Mescal) lives in relative peace with his female companion. Into his city sweep the Roman army, bent on conquest. Leading the troops is General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who kills Hanno's beloved and takes him, along with other men, prisoner.

It is off to fight as gladiators for the captured men, where Hanno and his compatriots face off against bad CGI baboons. Hanno defeats them, in part by biting one of them. Looking on is former gladiator and trainer extraordinary Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who takes Hanno under his wing and into Rome itself. Acacius is being feted by twin Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), who are pretty bonkers but who want to celebrate Acacius. For his part, Acacius just wants to return to his wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). 

Hanno has sworn revenge against Acacius, but there are twists to endure. There are the machinations of Macrinus, who is plotting to overthrow the emperors and assume power. There is the hidden legacy of legendary gladiator Maximus, whose own legacy is tied to Hanno. Finally, there is Hanno's connection to Lucilla, for we discover that Hanno is really Lucius Aurelius, grandson of Marcus Aurelius and the son Lucilla sent away after the events of Gladiator for his own safety.

I guess Lucilla did not do a good job of keeping tabs on her only child, for he ended up in the backwaters of Numidia, facing off against sharks both metaphorical and literal. Lucilla perhaps was too busy plotting yet another overthrow of the imperial system to give much thought to what ever happened to her son. Still, will we get a mother and child reunion? Will Hanno/Lucius face off against Acacius? Will Macrinus succeed in his plot to ascend the throne or will some pipsqueak thwart his plans?

It was probably no more than fifteen minutes into Son of Gladiator that I asked myself, "are we getting the same beats to Gladiator"? We start Gladiator and Gladiator II: Judgment Day in the same way: our lead character, devoted family man, is taken prisoner to serve as a mysterious warrior, angry and thirsting for vengeance in this life or the next. David Scarpa's screenplay (from a story by Scarpa and Peter Craig) is a Gladiator remake in all but name. There is not one original idea in Son of Gladiator, for everything that was in Gladiator somehow found itself into Gladiator II. 

A warrior who became a slave. A slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor! You could sum up the plots to both Gladiator and Gladiator II: Electric Bugaloo in the same way. The only real tweaks between the two films are that Lucius was technically not a general (though he did lead armies) and there were two emperors. Apart from that and the Proximo character being a villain there was very little difference between the first and second film. One could make the argument that Gladiator's Maximus was split between Lucius and Acacius, but that is not a big point. 

Think of it: Lucilla is not only still meeting in secret to try and restore the Roman Republic, but she is still working with the same people, like Sir Derek Jacobi's Senator Gracchus. You would think that after decades of working at something, the conspirators would either get it right or just give up. Instead, we have to drag Lucilla and Gracchus into things because Gladiator II was too lazy to come up with something remotely original. 

As a side note, in what is meant as a climactic moment, you can spot out of the corner of your eye Sir Derek holding a large spear looking totally confused and unsure of what is supposed to be doing. A quick glimpse sees him killed off and I think, "Is the Shakespeare denier that hard up for work that he agreed to be in this drivel?". 

Few films of 2024 have been this lazy, this poorly thought out, and frankly this embarrassing to almost all concerned. Ridley Scott, returning to helm this fiasco, appears to have decided that the people in front of the camera did not have to actually "act". Instead, they just had to look all sad, though my guess is that they looked that way because they realized that they were in Son of Gladiator. 

The only other film that I remember Paul Mescal from is All of Us Strangers, where he played the ghost whom Andrew Scott had sex with. Ghost sex, as laughable as it may sound, apparently is surprisingly common in Hollywood franchises. I can think of another sequel in 2024 that featured ghost sex or at least the suggestion of it. I figure that "ghost sex" is different than "ghosting". 

If Son of Gladiator is meant to be his big budget breakthrough, I think it will be anything but. His Hanno/Lucius is dull as dishwater, bland, boring and personality-free. He comes across as a stubborn idiot, permanently morose and devoid of any personal magnetism. We never get to know him other than with large brushstrokes: he lost his love, has no sense of humor or tragedy and apparently is simultaneously aware and unaware of his true identity. The idea of him inspiring his fellow gladiators into battle when we never see him interact with anyone, let alone his dishwater personality, makes the whole thing laughable.

Matching him is Pedro Pascal as the Maximus-like Acacius. He is a reluctant warrior, but he too has nothing to make anything think he'd inspire the Praetorian Guard to select him as the next Emperor. 

As a side note, I might not be the only person who confuses "Mescal" and "Pascal", so I hope I got the names right.

Connie Nielsen was dragged out to tie Gladiator to Gladiator 2: Freddy's Revenge, but she was just as bad as everyone else was in Gladiator II. Perhaps it is a bit unfair to condemn the actors given their awful dialogue. "Brother, let's not kill each other for their amusement," Hanno tells someone early in the film. Such grandiose, pompous things to say make things more ridiculous. At that previously climactic moment, she tells her son, "Go, my son". I wanted to shout in the theater, "Lady please, you should be dead. You ain't gonna be talking, let alone spouting out grandiose statements". The Two Emperors are so unimportant to whatever is laughingly called "the plot" that they were more distractions in their wild overacting. When one of them is killed, there was actual chuckling from some in the audience. Make that of it what you will.

Much praise has been thrown Denzel Washington's way as the scheming Macrinus to where he is held as an almost prohibitive frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor. To be fair, Washington seemed to be having himself a whale of a time, devouring the scenery with delightful abandon. He, I figured, understood that Son of Gladiator was not going to be good. Therefore, why not have fun with it all, and fun he did have. It does take a lot of skill to not start laughing when he is appointed Second Consul after seeing the First Consul be the surviving emperor's pet monkey.

Nothing in Son of Gladiator works. The visual effects are shockingly awful: the CGI baboons beyond dreadful to where I question Ridley Scott's sanity in approving them. The score uninspiring. The cinematography as bland as Mescal. I get that the final climactic arena match is supposed to be at night, or at least it looked that way. I don't care, it's all awful.

I have been criticized, with some accuracy, of my habit of being hung up on details. For the life of me, I simply cannot understand why Maximus' quote, "What we do in life echoes in eternity", which is etched on his tomb, is in English. It is literally written out in English. I sat there thoroughly flabbergasted in seeing it written out in a language that did not even exist at the time. Were those behind Son of Gladiator so lazy that they could even bother trying to write it out in Latin? Are audiences that lazy that they cannot be bothered to accept ancient languages set in ancient times? 

Gladiator II is as much as sequel to Gladiator as Grease 2 is a sequel to Grease. I love Grease 2, but even I concede that its connection to Grease is extremely thin. In the same way, Son of Gladiator takes on the carcass of Gladiator and desecrates its predecessor. At one point, one of the characters says, "What is my purpose here?". I think that captures my sentiments on everything connected to Gladiator II. 

DECISION: F