As a legacy sequel, Gladiator II can’t help but open on a note of cynicism; following in the footsteps of the Star Wars and Terminator films, Ridley Scott’s latest can only justify its existence by extinguishing the flicker of hope that its 2000 predecessor lit.
The first film followed the trials of Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) who – after becoming the chosen heir by the aging emperor, Marcus Aurelius – endured an attempted assassination, the killing of his family, and an onslaught of gruelling deathmatches. In a brazen deviation from the historical record, the ending saw the former army general eke a bittersweet victory over the corrupt warmonger Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) in the colosseum, and usher in a renewed era of democracy.
In retrospect, such wishful revisionism has aged like milk. Outside of cinema screens, the past 24 years have been irretrievably shaped by a resurgence of fascist zeal and imperial domination; not coincidentally, its sequel opens amid blockbusters united by themes of societal collapse — from Dune and Civil War to Furiosa.
If there is a resounding truth to be gleaned from this trend of belated follow-ups and overridden happy endings, it’s that every act of heroism must be followed up by another.
Fred Hechinger (left) and Joseph Quinn (far right) are cruel co-emperors in Gladiator II. (Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
Gladiator II opens on the coast of Numidia in 200 AD, where a flailing Roman Empire has launched a seaborne invasion. Marcus Aurelius’s dream of a republic has long been abandoned. A pair of snivelling, tempestuous twins (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) now sit on the throne, from which they order glorious military campaigns as a means of quelling a dangerously seditious public.
A fake-tanned, beefed-up Paul Mescal plays Maximus’s son, Lucius, who valiantly tries – and fails – to fend off the assault, and witnesses the death of his wife at the command of Pedro Pascal’s decorated Roman general, Marcus Acacius.
The rest follows much like the first film: Lucius is unceremoniously branded and sold into the slave trade, where he proves his worth as a gladiator, and returns to Rome with a glint of revenge in his eye.
We can confirm that for at least part of Gladiator II, Paul Mescal is shirtless and dirt-covered. (Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
If Paul Mescal is to be an action star, Gladiator II is not the film to prove it. One can’t fault the inherent attraction of watching one of cinema’s most saintly softboys being ground up and reconstituted into an unctuous beefcake, but the process seems to have emotionally compressed him into channelling only blunt emotion and flattened, stoic affect. It’s a performance indicative of a script problem, in which Lucius’s patrician upbringing only ever suggests that he may be a different hero from his father.
Frankly, Mescal’s rippling physicality feels ill at ease with swords and sandals (as opposed to thigh-revealing shorts and hoodies). The role demands an increasingly rare breed of action star in the mould of Tom Hardy or Bruce Willis: neither a hypermasc bodybuilder nor a svelte, brooding model, but a scrappy mutt who can channel the red-blooded volatility of a Roman warrior.
In typical Ridley Scott fashion, Gladiator II has been noticeably torn to ribbons in the edit suite, marring an otherwise enjoyable attempt to expand upon the original – itself already a 155-minute historical epic.
Don’t think too hard about how they managed to make the Colosseum water tight. (Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
The colossal set pieces are dispatched with clinical efficiency, even when serving objectively one of the most galaxy-brained action scenes of the year (naval warfare in a shark-infested colosseum), or revelling in berserker violence (most memorably, Mescal eviscerating a monkey with his teeth).
This time round, it’s the backdoor power struggles that take centre stage, steered by a commanding Denzel Washington as the former slave and gladiator handler Macrinus. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, but Washington nonetheless laps up every chance to get his hands dirty as a scheming, villainous queen.
In Gladiator II, Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, a former slave who plots to control Rome. He also acts as a mentor for Lucius. (Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
Ridley Scott’s movies have always had an unusual relationship with queer spectacle, which can be traced as far back as the phallocentric Alien, or Tim Curry’s horned-up, chest-bearing demon antagonist in Legend.
Like the recent House of Gucci, Gladiator II has the elements of camp, but none of the requisite, full-throated commitment to actually entertain on that level. The much-touted homoerotic rivalry between Mescal and Pascal’s characters fizzes out with anticlimactic indifference; the shots of oiled-up, wrestling men are framed without passion.
Brutal general Marcus Acacius and enslaved gladiator Lucius Verus are fierce enemies in Gladiator II. (Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
There’s also some old-fashioned homophobia, particularly in how the emperors’ moral avarice is entwined with their explicit queerness. Not only are they foppish, hysterical and weak-willed, their minds are ravaged by sexually transmitted disease.
At least the film has fun with Matt Lucas, who’s styled as a bald, bleached Harkonnen and presents the games like a particularly demented season of Bake Off.
Ridley Scott returned to the Colosseum for the first time in more than 30 years to direct Gladiator II. (Supplied: Paramount Pictures)
There’s no doubt that Scott, 87 this month, will only retire when he’s dead. Gladiator II marks the fourth historical epic he’s fired off in as many years, and there are more films already in the pipeline – but the fastidious showmanship that made the original Gladiator a classic has been waning.
For a director and visual stylist who was once at the bleeding edge of Hollywood, he seems content merely to wallow in past glory.
Gladiator II is in cinemas now.
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