Jonah Naplan   November 24, 2024

Ridley Scott loves his big battles. A lifetime career as a filmmaker has allowed him to use the industry’s newest technology to create these massive spectacles as the tools have evolved over the course of several decades. Last year, he taught his audience a history lesson with the epic “Napoleon,” and two years before that he focused the camera on personal but equally grandiose battles in “The Last Duel.” His newest soap opera is “Gladiator II,” an ambitious, brutal and super-fun epic that dazzles in both its star power and its action. A sequel arriving 24 years after the Best Picture-winning original, the film’s biggest challenge is to continue the story of this ancient world in necessary ways all while being a thing complete of its own regard. It manages to get by in both categories simply by being so thematically rich and because the charm of the cast has us locked in, but it barely escapes the shadow of the original through its best sections, being that the film’s overarching structure is such a rehash of the beloved 2000 movie.

This one takes place sixteen years later and follows Lucius (Paul Mescal), who was just a small boy in the first film but who has grown up to become a skilled Roman fighter. His role in an attack off the coast of Africa led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) results in the death of Lucius’s wife Arishat (Yuval Gonen) and his purchase as a refugee gladiator by the powerful Macrinus (Denzel Washington) after he scales down several vicious baboons in the arena. The latter is only one example of the places Scott is willing to go to hammer home the campiness of the central concept: one man fighting another to the death while crowds of thousands surround and cheer them on. “Gladiator II” not only has baboons, but sharks and rhinos and a knowing helping of melodrama. Over the course of the film, the script by screenwriter David Scarpa (who wrote Scott’s “Napoleon”) will pit Lucius against these beasts and several other human opponents in the arena for mass entertainment. This dangerous, violence-stricken world is established in full early on but continues to surprise you as you keep watching. Scott seems to have found a love for severed heads and blood that gushes like a garden hose and uses both devices with little hesitancy.

The new Rome is ruled over by a pair of ruthless emperors named Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) whose eccentricity shines through in the excited way they react to warfare like giddy children on Christmas morning. If they’re the frat boys of this campus, then Washington is the wise dean of students, radiating cool and collected yet still imposing and very evil. He puts on the best performance in the entire movie, doing so much even without the physicality required from Mescal or Pascal. The way he’s able to capture our attention in a given moment, no matter who else is on screen, is a corrupting talent, making Washington a surefire contender for Best Supporting Actor in this year’s Oscar race.

Equally as impressive and shiny of a feature are the movie’s Colosseum scenes which are just as brutal and riveting as you’d hope them to be. There’s no question that Lucius will win every duel, even when he’s pitted against Acacius who gets thrown into the arena after staging a coup against the emperors, but Scott still holds us on the edge of our seat, far more effectively than during the big ensemble battles, which occur at the very beginning and the very end of “Gladiator II” and are shot with attention to detail by cinematographer John Mathieson but presented with less thematic integrity.

With this project, Ridley Scott reiterates the importance of the classic hero’s journey, rising up from oppression to lead a rebellion against the oppressors. It’s a fable worn old with time, and the central narrative of “Gladiator II” is derived from this straightforward tale. There’s nuances to be had with it, though, including a subplot about how Acacius’s wife Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) is actually Lucius’s mother and the late wife of Russell Crowe’s fearless Maximus from the first movie, making him the father. This sort of waxing of a new generation in Paul Mescal reads as clumsy, especially because he’s not nearly as endearing of a protagonist as Crowe, but, then again, who is? Having been passed the gladiatorial torch, Mescal does a fine job with what he’s been given, working with a character who is ultimately thinly-written but fun to watch nonetheless.

The biggest criticisms of “Gladiator II” will be about the script, which seems to have big ideas but runs away from following through with any of them once it nears execution. There’s something important here hidden underneath all the cinematic shine about how it’s the smartest rulers, good or evil, who tend to get what they truly desire over those who talk a big game but are all bark and no bite. Washington seems to be one of if not the only player who truly understands the lengths this maxim could have gone had the script more thoroughly fleshed out its moral intentions. But if “Gladiator II” spends too much time in the shadow of its predecessor, that’s not because it’s subtly trying to work with a formula Scott already knows is effective. On the contrary, “Gladiator II” loves the first film and rehashes some of the same beats to honor and show its appreciation for it.

The final twenty minutes are triumphant in a cheeky way, like Maverick successfully landing back on the aircraft carrier in the “Top Gun” franchise and Bill Pullman’s President Whitmore delivering his patriotic speech in “Independence Day.” Hailing Marcus Aurelius as a savior and vowing to continue his work at building a new Rome is this movie’s version of patriotism, and Mescal takes it in stride. It’s not hard to buy into this film’s clash between realism—the time of gladiators and championed violence is a truth—and fantasy elements—I’m not sure the Colosseum ever hosted sharks or that it would have been possible to read about a gladiator fight in a newspaper, as one character does here, since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press wouldn’t make that possible for another several centuries—because the film is charming and entertaining enough that we’re content to suspend our disbelief.

At a remarkable 87 years old, Ridley Scott seems perfectly happy continuing to make these cinematic epics that are technically impressive on a state-of-the-art movie screen but also just a blast to watch with a big bucket of popcorn on the couch at home. “Gladiator II” does not seem like (and hopefully is not) a final battle cry for the director. We’re still entertained, and he’s still got more to give us.

Now playing in theaters.