Thumbs Down

Sitting in a near-empty theater on opening weekend of Gladiator II, I couldn’t help but think of an early line from filmmaker Ridley Scott’s epic 2000 masterpiece Gladiator: “People should know when they’re conquered.” Twenty-four long years since his finest hour, the 86-year-old Scott would’ve done well to heed the serene wisdom in that fine phrase as the sequel makes one thing abundantly clear—as a filmmaker, Scott’s best days are far, far behind him.

The legendary director of Blade Runner and Alien, Scott has thrown all caution to the wind with this poor imitation of perhaps his greatest source material. Marcus Aurelius. Maximus. Commodus. Proximo. Lucilla. Lucius. For those of us old enough to remember the sensation of the first film, these names still ring titanic decades later. Each possessed their own ambitions and faults. Each their own momentous and memorable dialogues that carried the story forward between bloody battles in the Colosseum.

But in Scott’s latest adaptation, a $250 million CGI-laden farce, there isn’t a single memorable line throughout the nearly two and half hour run time. Even Denzel Washington, whose character is a shameless ripoff of Oliver Reed’s brilliant Proximo in the original, can’t save this film. The characters never build, the story never unfolds, and the battle scenes are fraught with the tacky simulacra in every other digitized blockbuster. 

It’s ironic that, in 2023, Scott proudly proclaimed he has turned down multiple offers from major production houses to make a superhero movie because he sees them as cheap creatures of a corrupt Hollywood system. Though Scott is right in his assessment of the Marvel Universe, Gladiator II is indiscernible from what he criticizes. He has created a cartoonish, plotless hellscape that wanders aimlessly in a pool of its own magnificent gluttony. For all the hype, there’s simply nothing here worth remembering. 

In reviews of the film, the one consistently positive comment is that it looks amazing. If only I could see what others saw. The original’s gritty gray and austere hemp has been replaced by a squeaky-clean rendering that could’ve been shot in an Apple Store. Gone are the bruised bronzes and tone-heavy ambers; in their place are bleached white and see-through steel. 

Its characters too are bereft of tonal range. Lucius Verus Aurelius, played by Paul Mescal, was a boy when Maximus defied Commodus in the original film. Here, he reappears in a foreign land as a man living under the alias of Hanno. He fights for Jugurtha, a strong-spoken chieftain in the kingdom of Numidia who is given no backstory whatsoever. Hanno, just like Maximus in the original, has a beautiful wife named Arishat who tends to their humble farm far away from the Roman capital. When their lands are invaded by the Roman general Acacius, played by Pedro Pascal, the pair suit up in armor and defend a seaside fortress. 

Because Scott portrays Arishat as a strong-willed superhero, her role in the film is not as an unwilling bystander who is killed merely because of her relationship to the titular character. Instead, she is killed in battle, a battle in which she chooses to fight. As such, Lucius’s motivation to avenge her death fails to carry the same weight as that of Maximus, who tirelessly rides a horse across the entire kingdom in the original only to find his wife and child stripped, beaten, and crucified. 

Maximus has good reason to loathe Commodus as he seeks rightful vengeance in the first installment. Not only had the mad son Commadus murdered his benevolent and wise father Aurelius, he also ordered the execution of Maximus’s family despite the general’s pleading. In Gladiator II, Pascal’s men don’t know who Arishat is, only that she is a formidable fighter who must be killed as any other combatant would be in the midst of battle. As a result, Lucius spends the first half of the film vowing vengeance against Acacius, a man he does not know. 

Returning to the capital, we learn that Acacius is not the same, crazed playboy portrayed by the fantastic Joaquin Phoenix in the 2000 original. In fact, Acacius is a good man who argues for an end to constant war and bloodshed. When informed that he will lead new wars in Persia and India, Acacius protests. As a result, the audience is left to wonder who Lucius’s real enemy is and the rest of the movie attempts, and fails, to explain.

The joint emperors, Geta and Caracalla, could be the arch villains of this film but neither are as intimidating or mad as Scott would like them to be. Lazily mired in the palatial kingdom of Rome, the two men find no motivating factors for their angst. When the pair arrange a series of gladiatorial games to celebrate the victory of Acacius, there is no pushback from the conspicuously absent Senate, whose Gracchus, Gaius, and Falco all played meaningful roles in the first film.

Denzel Washington finally appears in the role of Macrinus, an arms dealer living on the outskirts of Rome. There, he keeps a stable of gladiators and conspires to wrest control of the empire. Early reviews claimed that Washington single-handedly carried the film. On this point, I must disagree. He is a shadow of the original’s conflicted and passionate Oliver Reed, whose rich backstory—a gladiator who won his freedom—paces and inspires Maximus to great heights. 

In one of the finest acting performances in the history of cinema, Reed dreams of days gone by as Russell Crowe and the audience hang on his every word. Staring out an open window whose peach curtains swirling in the background, Reed takes a deep breath and in one mesmerizing monologue describes the awe and spectacle of the Colosseum.

“Fifty thousand Romans,” Reed says wistfully. “Watching every movement of your sword. Willing you to make that killer blow. The silence before you strike and the noise afterwards. It rises, rises up like a storm, as if you were the Thundergod himself.” 

Here, with the fantastic original score building out the scene, Reed accomplishes something that Washington simply cannot—a moment of sheer inspiration that catapults the viewer 2,000 years back in time. 

Ridley Scott has never shown an interest in producing historically accurate films—his Napoleon was thoroughly maligned for this reason—but Reed barrels right through that wall, whether Scott likes it or not, to a time and place long before film cameras and moviemakers. That, more than anything, is what Gladiator II is missing: the feeling of the past staring back at us across the centuries. 

And, while the first film never advertised itself as an accurate portrayal of the Roman Empire, the second veers so far off course it might as well have left the whole premise behind. Mescal battles CGI-monkeys, outsmarts a CGI-rhinoceros, and dodges CGI-sharks. They all look as silly as anything you’d find in those Marvel films Scott refuses to helm. The real Romans actually did flood the Colosseum for gladiatorial games, but Scott goes so overboard with the charade that it borders on comedy. 

When Crowe stepped into the arena there was a real, palpable sense he could be killed at any given moment. When Mescal takes his turn, I couldn’t help but think of the Townes Van Zandt tune “Waiting Around to Die.” Gone is the spine-tingling, nauseating suspense of the first film. In its place just the dull foreknowledge that everybody except Mescal is going down.

The thumb-tilting sequence makes a return to little effect. Joaquin Phoenix was terrifying in his portrayal of Commodus. These two clown emperors, with their hands outstretched to the gods, possess none of the verve or horror that Phoenix so adeptly mustered. When Pascal is struck down by Praetorian arrows after a thumbs-down decision, you can sense scriptwriter David Scarpa’s heavy hand at work. 

Washington eventually, and inevitably, outfoxes these two goons and brutally takes control of the empire. It all rather hurriedly leads to a rushed ending in which everyone quickly dies except Mescal. Even the luminous Connie Nielsen, who reprises her role as Lucilla to great effect, can’t outlive Scarpa’s death march. 

At the end of Gladiator II, the bad guys lose and the good guy wins in the exact sort of anti-climactic flourish its predecessor smartly avoided. When Crowe dies in the original, the audience feels sadness, but the story is completed in a way that is resolute and satisfying. His death was not only required by the storyteller, but earned. As Mescal reaches for the Colosseum’s dirt in the sequel, having dispatched Washington in a watery battle as dueling Roman armies look on, one can sense Scott attempting to perfectly tie up the bow on his late-career, but it’s got none of the original’s gravitas.

At its core, Gladiator II is little more than a bastardized rebranding of one of the seminal movies in blockbuster history. This is a movie soon to be forgotten. For all its blood and guts, it has no heart. Gone is the charm and scale and depth of the first film. In its place heartless caricatures and a runtime that borders on punishment. If the first film was a filet mignon, this is Scott’s Value Meal. See it at home. Or, better yet, skip it altogether.