Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II returns to a colosseum where spectacle decapitates substance

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If nothing else, Gladiator II is a testament to the fact that if you put enough charmers and dang-ass freaks in your movie, and a historical epic-obsessed director like Ridley Scott behind the camera, you’re going to end up with something that’s at least fun. 

The legacy-quel to Scott’s 2000 swords-and-sandals action drama Gladiator has a script that’s only serviceable and misses opportunities to be more substantive (something you could argue is true of the original film as well). Thanks to a cast of *mostly* fun performances, and Scott’s love of a good battle scene, it rises well above the material. Fans of Scott’s more recent historical dramas like Napoleon and particularly The Last Duel may be disappointed the film doesn’t have more to say, but if you love a good big-screen spectacle, you’re in for a treat.

Set 16 years after the events of the original Gladiator, the sequel introduces us to Hanno (Paul Mescal), who’s living in his adopted homeland of Numidia in what’s now north Africa. When the Romans invade, Hanno and his wife Arishat (Yuval Gonen) join the fight, but the Numidian forces are defeated, and Hanno sees Arishat die at the command of General Acacius (Pedro Pascal). 

Hanno is enslaved and taken to Rome — now under the tyrannical rule of twins Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) to become a gladiator, and is bought by Macrinus (Denzel Washington) to be one of his fighters. It turns out Hanno has History in Rome — he’s actually Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), and Lucilla is now married to Acacius, who Hanno/Lucius has sworn to kill. 

The setup of Gladiator II is similar to the original — humble farmer/skilled soldier loses his beloved wife and gets screwed into gladiatorial slavery by his enemies — and the pair of creepy twins running Rome into the ground is only the barest riff on Joaquin Phoenix’s Emperor Commodus. But while many of the beats are the same, Gladiator II takes the opportunity to improve upon some of the elements of its predecessor that haven’t aged that well, and give the parts that worked some extra juice.

For one, this time around Scott has the good sense not to let the score dominate the film. Harry Gregson-Williams’ music is marginally better than Hans Zimmer’s bland, relentless Gladiator accompaniment, but it doesn’t demand you engage with it every second instead of letting the scenes breathe (if this sounds like faint praise, trust me, it is not). The pacing and editing, blessedly, are also slower, a welcome evolution from Gladiator’s extremely Y2K tendency to pack the frame with cuts and a whiplash-inducing number of scene transitions.

copyright Paramount Pictures

With more room to move, Gladiator II has more time to invest in performances. The highlight is Washington’s ambitious, cynical Macrinus. The character’s true motivations aren’t fully clear until the final act of the film, allowing him to be both charming and ruthless, often at the same time. Mescal may not have the same magnetism as Crowe did, but he’s still got his own special charisma and plays well against Washington’s ceaseless scheming. Pascal is, unfortunately, underserved by a role that requires him to be upstanding and patrician instead of letting loose and having fun.

 Advances in technology have also let Scott up the ante on spectacle, which is where Gladiator II really shines. The original film had tigers. Gladiator II has psychotic gibbons, a charging rhinoceros, and a Colosseum naval battle reenactment complete with sharks that chow down on fallen gladiators when they hit the water. Gladiator started with a decent-sized battle scene. Gladiator II has a massive siege complete with flaming catapults and legions of archers. The sequel features the best parts of the original, with the volume turned up.

There are moments throughout Gladiator II hinting at subtext that, had it become more prevalent, would make the movie more than just a big, bloody adventure — particularly where Washington’s character is concerned. Digging too deep on some of those ideas present issues the movie isn’t really built to withstand, which is disappointing. However, if you’re looking for capital-D Drama and big-screen excitement, you won’t do much better than this