(courtesy IMP Awards)
Sequels are tricky things to pull off.
Not only are you battling against the fearsomely rose-tinted power of nostalgia, but you are trying to engender the same emotional response and devotion that the original garnered but without the full force of novelty and with a need to summon the spirit and sensibility of that which came before without looking like a tired old retread.
It’s a dangerous dance and not many pull it off, either at all or in a way that’s memorable; thankfully Gladiator II, directed by Ridley Scott to a screenplay by David Scarpa lands impressively enough in the latter camp, a continuation of the story that answers a great many questions and which tells a reasonably engaging story though not, it must be noted, with the full force and power of its predecessor.
Part of the problem is that Gladiator was a powerful denizen of the zeitgeist, bestriding the pop culture landscape like a muscular fighter, its story involving, its characters beguiling and its theme resonant in a world where all too often tyranny triumphs over humanity and all people dream is restoring their sense of personal agency and democratic freedom.
Trying to successfully compete with that level of awareness and collective consciousness was never going to be easy almost a quarter of a century lately, but Scott largely pulls it off albeit in a way which is far more thoughtful and ruminative, reflective no doubt of a director who’s now 86 and likely far more inclined to muse on the state of the world than his younger self may have been.
The fact that Gladiator II does not arrive with the same force as its predecessor is not in and of itself a bad thing; in many ways, it is a film of our time which explores what happens when a chance for a better world is squandered and authoritarianism doubles down until everyone is worse off than they were before.
16 years after Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- slew despotically monstrous would-be emperor, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) in front of the citizens of Rome in the Colosseum, the Roman Empire remains under the yoke of tyranny.
The hope engendered by Maximus’s decisive victory has achieved nothing, and Rome and its considerable lands in 200 A.D., are enslaved to the mad will of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) who rule with an eye purely on the pleasure of power and the diversionary escapism, often debauched, that it affords.
Into this broken world, where Rome sees itself as an enlightened bastion and its conquered subjects view it a despoiler of peace and thief of freedom, comes Hano (Paul Mescal), a man seized when Numidia, the last free city in North Africa is seized, who is sold to Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former slave who keeps a stable of gladiators and who has firm plans to control the empire itself.
He sees Hano, not simply as a fearsome fighting machine but as a means to that end, and as his star gladiator gathers more and more victories so rise Macrinus’s star and his spot atop the dizzyingly corrupt hierarchy of Roman power.
He is no democrat however, and in the end it is up to Hano, his friends and allies, which includes General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and his wife Lucilla (a returning Connie Nelson) to do what they can to turn Rome back to the democratic ideals supposed espoused by Lucilla’s father, Marcus Aurelius.
While Gladiator II is purported to be more historically accurate than its predecessor, there’s still a lot of playing fast and loose with the facts, with Scott more concerned with musing on power, self-determinism and human freedom than he is in instructing on a blow-by-blow, academically accurate history of the Roman Empire.
You could argue that it has thus ever been so in Hollywood and that while movies like Gladiator II are entertaining, they should ever be confused with or treated as some sort of history lesson.
We are here, after all, to see justice served and freedom elevated, and while Rome never returned to being a republic nor did it become the sort of democracy Hano, who hides a few secrets of his own, fought for, the finale does give us a warm and heady sense that you can fight tyranny and win, and importantly, change things.
That may feel like a pipedream in our hyper surveilled, digital world that is scarily tipping towards authoritarianism, but in Gladiator II, it is a vibrant and possible ideal that the hero of the hour does his best to make manifest.
Walking into the film, you need to know that Gladiator II is a quieter, more reflective film than Gladiator, one more given over to musing on ideals and truths than slogging it out in arenas full of sand and blood and the demented baying of crowds drunk on cruelty and murderous intent.
There are some epic fight scenes and indeed, the battle between Hano and Acacius, where too late the former learns the latter is a secret ally, is epic in scope, fury and emotional intensity, and the naval battle which sees the Colosseum flooded and sharks released (that never happened by the way) to gobble up gladiators who fall overboard, are impressive piece of action cinema.
But by and large, Gladiator II is far more thoughtful beast, given over to gentle musing and contemplative maneuvering, and while this works exceptionally well to build atmosphere and drive the narrative, and the film is well worth the 2 1/2 hours you will have to devote to it, it lacks the all conquering power of the original, most obviously in the final act which strikes an epically ambitious note but one which fails to really carry a whole symphony of belief and action based on that belief, and which, while an impressive and highly enjoyable film, is nowhere as spectacularly immersive as many fans of the original might have hoped.