Gladiator II (2024)

This sequel lamely replicates the 2000 original instead of expanding on it

Denzel Washington as the scheming Macrinus gives a witty, spine-tingling performance

Gladiator II (2024)

In theaters

You wouldn’t be misguided to ask why this picture exists. True, Gladiator (2000) was a juggernaut, a money-making Oscar Best Picture winner which also picked up Best Actor for Russell Crowe as Maximus Decimus Meridius, Rome’s baddest sword wielder, beheader and grimacer: I am not to be trifled with!

But at the end of that bloody extravaganza, were you left wondering what might become of Maximus’ offspring? No, I didn’t think so.

Yet here, returning director Ridley Scott and his screenwriter Paul Scarpa want to instill in audiences a lust for more imperial bloodletting, gladiatorial disemboweling and whacked off body parts.

Out of their love of history? I wonder. Fifteen out of this year’s 20 top grossing movies are sequels. That’s “top grossing”, not most inspired, original or stirring. It seems Hollywood execs these days read sequel scripts with their breakfast and greenlight them sipping cocoa at bedtime.

But sequels shouldn’t be duplicates. They should be continuations. Yet here we’re getting the same old tropes from the first movie.

The filmmakers don’t even manage a fresh hook. They’ve concocted a story of yet another muscled fighter with a nascent hero’s gleam in his eye, Maximus’ son – not that he knows his parentage when we first meet him – Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal).

The sequel takes place 16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, with Rome ruled by the corrupt sociopathic twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius, who as a child was rushed off to safety at the end of the original movie, is now in his mid-twenties living as a humble farmer with his wife Arishat (Yuval Gonen) in the North African colony of Numidia.

Pastoral bliss cannot last. Confronted by the conquering army of Roman General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the colonists arm themselves to fight back. Arishat decides to join her husband in battle.

Did women in ancient times often do that? I don’t know. No matter. The moment she puts on her armor, we know she’s a goner. There’s an arrow through her heart three minutes later.

Surprised? Come on, no you’re not. Screenwriters kill off a beautiful young wife so that her stricken husband can seek revenge. For the rest of the movie we can go, well, of course that’s why the man’s bloodthirsty and cruel – they killed his wife!

But who is “they”? In fact, Acacius had no idea that one of his soldiers killed Arishat, but for the rest of the movie Lucius is out to get the man who slaughtered his soul mate. Does he eventually pole axe Acacius? Don’t make me get all obvious with you.

But he has to overcome obstacles before he gets that chance at revenge. As part of a defeated force, he’s sold into slavery.

And then he’s given a chance to “elevate” his station by becoming a gladiator, where he confronts other gladiators trying to stick swords in his entrails, howling hairless baboons trying to rip his face off, and flesh dealing “managers” of gladiators bent on exploiting him to death.

These highly remunerated showmen dicker over whether a gladiator they control will look better triumphant or with his body chopped into bloody parts scattered across the arena’s sands. The managers get paid either way.

One of these handlers, Macrinus (Denzel Washington), sees promise in Lucius, sifting the bitter young man’s fighting fierceness like gold coins in his hands, and decides to use him in a plot to overthrow the corrupt men in power. Long-range, he hopes to make himself emperor, but has to keep that endgame deeply under wraps.

Geta and Caracalla are nutty enough that with a little cagey manipulation they could self-destruct, clearing Macrinus’ path to emperor-hood.

Macrinus convinces Lucius that ridding Rome of these two sadistic mental defectives could lead to the dream of Rome, that airy notion imported from the original movie.

Lucius (Paul Mescal) avenging his fallen wife against General Acacius (Pedro Pascal)

Hold up. Here we go again. Historians have made it clear that Romans didn’t entertain notions of democracy similar to ours. The Roman Senate wasn’t a representative body. Its members were appointed. The rich and powerful took care of each other.

Bogus historical “ideals” aside, Macrinus doesn’t count on Lucius discovering his true origins. The avenging young man is the secret son that Maximus had with Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), Marcus Aurelius’ daughter. (It’s as if Russell Crowe’s genes are giving Mescal backbone.)

At great peril to herself, Lucilla gets word to her son that he could be Rome’s next emperor. She urgently wants him to know that sly, devious Macrinus is a usurping phony.

So, do you think Lucius foils dastardly Macrinus? Is Rome in Italy? There’s so little invention here that watching the movie, for all the bloodletting, is more exhausting than thrilling.

Does it look good? Definitely. The production design is superb. Rome appears both grand and forbidding. And Scott’s direction shows a fine eye for both spectacle and intimate emotional exchanges. The actors all do creditable work and are mostly a treat to watch.

First among equals is Washington as Macrinus. He all but walks away with the picture. Watch how he can sway a listener or menace a whole room with an elegant swing of his arm in his silken ruby robes. As he strides into a gathering his tight, wicked smile, gold earrings glittering, reduces everyone to servitude.

The nitwit twin emperors bend their ears to learn his “helpful” suggestions, never sensing his raw ambition. He’s also a comic who cracks jokes, an entertainer making fools of Rome’s unsuspecting power elite. It’s an unabashedly showy role brought off with icy precision. Washington here is a fleet, funny, frosty master of movie acting.

Mescal, as Lucius, doesn’t seem to be in it to dominate, which has to happen in a lead role. He’s an incomparably engaging actor who can entrance fellow actors and the audience utterly without guile.

But that princely openness isn’t suitable for an avenging gladiator, so Mescal’s feints at ruthlessness here seem to come out of nowhere and don’t add much tension to the performance.

(I should note that though I’ve seen a good deal of Mescal’s TV and movie work, on stage last season in London he got rave reviews as menacing-violent Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. That production is headed for New York in the spring of 2025, so I and others will have a chance to see an edgier side to this fluent actor.)

He’s an able presence here, but the role is so superficially written that you can’t even say he’s miscast. Just unfortunate in trying to flesh out a characterization that isn’t fully developed in the writing.

Everyone else is more than able, so the movie’s flat after effect isn’t their fault. Scott’s corny “vision” of the ancient world is so insubstantial and ahistorical that the grandeur we wonder at isn't the spectacle, but the director’s insistence that we watch for our own good.

He pretends he’s teaching us lessons in history. What he should be doing is exposing the summoning of guts it took for people back then to fight for whatever — sharply circumscribed — futures they could imagine.

Movies need to get beneath the “democratic” folderol of traditional Hollywood epics. Autocrats ruled ancient and medieval societies with iron will, not with outreach to “the people”.

Yet Scott’s already talking of a Gladiator III. On the evidence of this outing, I wouldn’t count on him digging any deeper.