The first Gladiator movie was a cultural moment. The thumbs-up and thumbs-down stuff rippled into pop culture and down to the playgrounds. With a movie that big, a sequel film was immediately spoken of and placed in development, but it would take over two decades for one to go into production. While there is only one credited screenwriter, David Scarpa, with a shared story credit with Peter Craig, as Ridley Scott has been attached throughout, it would be disingenuous to dismiss his likely contributions to story elements, as much of the gladiator games aspects seem to serve as wish fulfillment for sequences that he was unable to realize in the first film—most notably the ship battle. The sharks may have you laughing and shaking your head with the absurdity of it all, but it and the rhino head on the buffet table sell the spectacle and scope of the Roman Empire even if they strain believability.
The title cards for the film are strong, first providing a visually stunning recap of the original movie and then the lovely morphing of Gladiator with the Roman numeral I morphing into II. It sets a wonderful stage, and then we are introduced to something we didn’t see in the first film. A female warrior in the form of Arishat, who is married to a man known as Hanno, but if you’ve seen pretty much any advertisement for the film, you know it is Lucius (played by Paul Mescal). They live in Numidia, established as the last free place in that area outside of Roman rule. The first Gladiator also began like this, but we saw it from the perspective of the Romans, as Maximus led the Romans in conquest. This time, we mostly stay with the Numidians as they prepare to fight off the approaching Romans, led by Marcus Acacius (played by Pedro Pascal). And then, Arishat is killed before Lucius is taken captive as a slave – we know he’s on his way to becoming a gladiator. This is the beginning of Gladiator 2 repeating a number of the beats of Gladiator.
There are places where the film makes more interesting choices that vary from the original Gladiator. The strongest choice was Macrinus (played by Denzel Washington), who plays the gladiator owner of Lucius in the film. From the first scenes and interactions with Lucius, you know he is thinking and has a goal, and it’s not just to enrich himself, setting him apart from his counterpart in the original film. You can also see him work out Lucius’ identity early on, but you have to wait and watch to see how he plays it. And while this does lead to yet another repeated beat from the original Gladiator, it plays out differently in large part because he is a different character, and we are viewing things from other characters’ perspectives at this point, giving the sequence of events a divergent flavour.
I’ve been sitting with the film since I watched it, trying to pounder the message I’m supposed to leave with from it. And I’m still unsure. In Gladiator, Commodus emerged as a pure enemy for Maximus. He killed Maxiumus’ friend (Commodus’ father, Marcus Aurelius), his family, tried to have him killed, and he ended the ‘peaceful’ transfer to senate rule that Marcus Aurelius envisioned. When Maximus killed Commodus, even as Maximus died, he died believing he had saved Rome and Lucius from Commodus, thus saving the son of the only woman he loved who still lived. Gladiator 2, when you get to the end, because of the way it does deviate from the original, you are left to really question the message and what is the dream of Rome. Because, as it is established in these films, they are all doing it because of Marcus Aurelius. But he only wanted to do it after Maximus had conquered the last Germanic tribe for him, for Rome. So, what does that say of his dream for Rome if it could only be achieved through bloody conquer? To be fair, Lucius does say enough blood has been spilled, but after you sit with the films, you begin to feel that spilling blood is all Rome knows, and it won’t be long before they pick up the sword again. I won’t be surprised, should the film do well, that another Gladiator treads similar beats, though perhaps they can do so without killing the wife.
Gladiator 2 is in theatres on November 22.
© 2020-2024. UniversalCinema Mag.