Gladiator 2: Twenty-four years after the great success of one of Ridley Scott's last noteworthy films, the long-awaited sequel to Gladiator, again directed by Scott himself, arrives at the cinema on November 14. Written by David Scarpa, who previously collaborated with Scott on Napoleon and All the Money in the World, Gladiator II is a historical adventure blockbuster that attempts to follow in the footsteps of the epic nature of the first film but fails in its intentions. The cast includes Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington, Joseph Quinn, and Connie Nielsen. Thanks to Paramount Pictures we were able to see the film in preview and below we report our opinion.
Gladiator 2 Movie Story:
The film is set a few years after the killing of the hero Maximus Decimus Meridius and follows the adventures of Lucius, nephew of Commodus, forced to fight in the Colosseum after his homeland was conquered by two tyrannical emperors, now ruling Rome. With his heart burning with rage and the fate of the Empire hanging by a thread, Lucius must face dangers and enemies, rediscovering in his past the strength and honor needed to bring the glory of Rome back to his people.
Gladiator 2 Movie Review:
With 12 nominations and 5 Oscars won, Gladiator (2000) was one of the last great successes of Ridley Scott, a great author who in recent times, despite bringing highly recognizable cinema to the theater, has always tried to bite off more than he can chew, proposing stories that are not always up to his name and favoring a spectacularity as an end in itself even at the expense of a sensible narration.
Let's be clear, twenty-four years after the first film, no one felt the need to bother a cult-like Gladiator that saw an immense Russell Crowe in one of the roles of his career, but in the era of sequels, remakes, and reboots... it doesn't seem like such a shocking thing. Cinema is entertainment, but it is also above all an industry, a money-making machine that often aims to make money by clinging to names and titles that have made history to grab a larger slice of the audience.
It is clear that a story like the one told by Gladiator (2000) did not need a sequel, also for all the meta-narrative sense that the film conveyed with its exciting ending, but money often goes to the detriment of art itself. The result is a film without an identity, with uninteresting characters and a not exactly captivating staging.
It is almost impossible not to make a comparison with the first film since Gladiator II is its direct sequel, it goes without saying that one would expect continuity both in terms of the screenplay and the staging, but this does not happen. Although the first film took important historical liberties (a characteristic that is not necessarily negative), with the second film you have to come to terms with a narration that has very little truth, both from a historical point of view and from the behavior of the characters themselves.
Due to superficial writing, the entire cast seems to behave in a completely disconnected way, only a very good Pedro Pascal comes out clean, capable of giving the best performance of the film in the role of a character, Marcus Acacius, focused from beginning to end. Paul Mescal in the role of Lucio, the protagonist, the new gladiator, a war machine, is perhaps one of the least explored and unattractive characters in the film, interpreted perhaps in the most two-dimensional way possible, without any real logic.
His story is the mirror of what happened to Massimo in the first film, but if on the one hand, Crowe's character enjoyed an almost perfect writing, the same cannot be said of Lucio, bringing to light a character who has little to tell. Denzel Washington, potentially one of the most iconic characters of the film - also given his obvious fun in playing the role of Macrinus - is almost completely lost in front of writing that makes his character exalted without half measures; the same goes for Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger respectively Gaeta and Caracalla, the two emperors of Rome, perpetually overacting, to the point of ridiculous.
The bad writing of the characters then spills over into the plot which, despite a story that carries forward the much-declined theme of family, pride, and inheritance, succeeds in little else, preferring a tight action often useful for the sole purpose of carrying forward the narrative. The staging itself seems to have taken huge steps backward compared to 2000; the desire to propose "shocking" or aesthetically strong scenes (with moments bordering on gore and splatter) completely ends in itself, leading to nothing but redundancy in what is shown.
The special effects are fake and not very credible, starting from a group of "zombie" monkeys to sharks in a flooded Colosseum with lots of little islands as if one were in the arena of the Hunger Games (the intent to cite the Numachies, naval battles recreated ad hoc, is obvious, but perhaps a little excessive). Even the fight scenes fail to entertain as the production had perhaps intended - except a beautiful duel scene between Mescal and Pascal - they are not necessarily badly executed, they are simply long and too redundant.
Unfortunately, Gladiator II fits perfectly into the cinema of the last years of Ridley Scott, an author who has certainly made the history of contemporary cinema but who in recent decades seems tired. Although he offers a cinema not devoid of ideas, what is missing is precisely the order and organization of these latter. His latest effort, released shortly after the flop of Napoleon, shows some of the same defects as the previous work. Poor management of the characters and a sometimes botched staging make what should have been a contemporary blockbuster a film that answers the question "How often do you think about the Roman Empire?".