Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton
Week of November 18, 2024
Gladiator II
Rated R for Strong Bloody Violence
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%
In Theaters
For years we have been promised a sequel to one of the great modern classics: 2000’s Gladiator. As you may recall, Gladiator ended with a brutal fight to the death between its hero Maximus (Russell Crowe) and the evil emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), leaving Lucilla (Connie Nelson) and her son Lucius safe, for a bit. In the time since that ending, evil emperors have come into power and the need to hide Lucius brought him to an African kingdom to live out his life in relative safety. But when the Romans, led by a new and somewhat honorable general (Pedro Pascal) come to invade that African Kingdom, adult Lucius (Paul Mescal) is captured upon their defeat and brought as a slave to Rome. That’s when a power-hungry slave-trader named Macrinus (Denzel Washington) purchases Lucius and puts him into the Gladiatorial games. But Lucius, being the rightful heir to the throne, wants nothing but revenge and retribution for crimes both old and new. Let me first say that I am a major Gladiator fan. So much so that I have a son named Maximus. So I was eager to see what director Ridley Scott had planned for this sequel that was more than 20 years in the making. Story wise, I was okay with the plot and the revelations. The screenplay is complex and fits in nicely with what came before it. I also really loved the multiple actions sequences including the war in the beginning, the apes, rhino and eventually the huge set piece where they filled the Colosseum with water to reenact ship battles. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t have had live sharks in those battles, but if you’ve been to the Colosseum, you would know that this was something that they did from time to time and the visuals here are stunning. Unfortunately, this film has some serious problems, mainly in that it is overly-stuffed and clunky. Just as in Scott’s last epic, Napoleon, the film feels like a four adventure shoved into two-and-a-half. So rather than fluidity between beats, you get chunk after chunk thrown against each other, more like a video game than a movie. This was not only distracting as you are trying to enjoy the journey, but it also takes vital focus off of important relationships and developments. And because of this, it also removes the emotional weight it might have had. There were several moments in the first Gladiator that had me in tears and then really rooting for the hero. This one had none of that. Maximus had a solid reason for vengeance, but here Lucius does not. I feel as if they had a monumental story to tell, but just couldn’t find the proper way to tell it. By the end, they manage to get it all out, but not in a way that equals the legacy left by the first. B-