Try not to get your toga in a twist – but early reactions to Ridley Scott’s long-awaited Gladiator II have hit the internet. And the consensus is that the sequel to Scott’s Oscar-slaying 2000 sword-and-sandal epic merits two thumbs up. There is even chatter of possible Academy Awards contention – with Denzel Washington singled out for his role as Macrinus, a sort of Gladiatorial Simon Cowell figure and mentor to the movie’s blade-swinging anti-hero Lucius (Normal People’s Paul Mescal).
The positive response to early screenings will come as a relief to those who hold the original Gladiator in high regard. In the intervening 24 years, director Scott has blotted his copybook multiple times, retroactively bleaching all the fun from his sci-fi classic Alien with a duo of dire prequels (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). He’s also proved hit and miss at the historical epic milieu at which he excelled with Gladiator – with both the charmless The Last Duel and the awful Napoleon suggesting a misfiring mojo.
With Gladiator, he appears to have belatedly rediscovered his talent for grand storytelling. That’s judging by the social media responses that have been published (the embargo for full-blown reviews doesn’t lift until next Monday, 11 November).
“He’s still got it – absolutely buzzing,” tweeted FilmSpeak’s Griffin Schiller. “An epic Shakespearean tale of hope, futility and power within a crumbling system,” he added – which sounds more like a Manchester United biopic than a Roman epic, but there you go.
Other reviewers were just as effusive. “‘Welcome back to the f–king movies.’ That sums up Gladiator II,” says Clayton Davis of Variety, while Simon Thompson of The Playlist felt that it “dovetailed stylishly with the original”. Luke Hearfield, meanwhile, tipped his hat to Scott’s direction: “This swords & sandals epic is easily his best film in ages and will be your dad’s fav film of 2024.”
Morocco
