Trying twice as hard, Ridley Scott’s sequel to the 2000 historical epic with Russell Crowe is at most half the movie its predecessor is.
I would not say 2000’s Gladiator is one of my all-time favorite movies. But the Ridley Scott historical epic is the kind of movie I will watch the rest of any time I catch it on cable, or happily revisit on other occasions. It has an entertaining, often transcendent mix of spectacle and pathos. And who can’t help but feel something when “Now We Are Free” begins as Juba (Djimon Hounsou) promises to his friend, the valiantly deceased Maximus (Russell Crowe), that they will meet again, but “not yet, not yet“?
In 2024, we meet Gladiator again (though, alas Juba is nowhere to be seen). Gladiator II doubles down on the 2000 original. It has two warrior protagonists who resemble Maximus: Hanno/Lucius (Paul Mescal) and Acacius (Pedro Pascal). It has two emperors (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) who are varying degrees of unhinged, upping the count from Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus. It has twice the political intrigue. It has at least twice the spectacle. (Two naval battles!) It is, fortunately, not twice as long.
For all that, though, Gladiator II feels like (at most) half the movie the first one is. It may have two gladiators, but as a legendary general opposed to imperial corruption, Acacius is essentially Maximus redux. He is even married to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), Maximus’s lover. (She clearly has a type.) Lucius, her son (with Maximus), reprises his father’s trajectory: from slave to gladiator to steward of the “dream of Rome.” Yet neither approaches the charisma or gravitas of Crowe, then at his career peak.
It may be nice to return to the Colosseum, and to see Nielsen and Derek Jacobi (as Senator Gracchus) back. She has some powerful moments, though he is somewhat wasted. But without someone of Crowe’s stature morally and dramatically anchoring the movie, it feels unjustified.
The one thing Gladiator II does have that Gladiator did not is Denzel Washington. As Macrinus, a freed slave who has become a gladiator owner and political Machiavel, Washington is clearly enjoying himself. And in the absence of a significant enough dramatic counterweight, he takes over the movie, enough to make you forget how credulity-straining many of the actions his character takes are. His motivation, at least, is clear: If Lucius, Lucilla, and others want to restore the dream of Rome, Macrinus wants to lucid dream in the nightmare. (As I left the theater, I overheard one of patrons compare Macrinus to Washington’s corrupt cop in Training Day.) But as implausible as his machinations are, the ultimate achievements of his opponents aren’t much more credible.
A sequel released after a long interval needs a reason to exist beyond taking advantage of affinity for an existing property, which the passage of time has leavened with nostalgia, to make more money. Gladiator II can only justify itself internally by, at least at the outset, negating Maximus’s accomplishments and legacy. We learn early on that his death meant little, and that Rome’s corruption only worsened.
His shadow nonetheless hangs over Gladiator II, lengthening toward its conclusion. The movie could not escape this shadow even if it wanted to. But every time it attempts to connect itself to Gladiator (most notably in a scene that echoes Juba’s at the end of Gladiator), to live up its own legacy, it doesn’t feel like storytelling. It feels like cheating. It feels like a reminder of a better movie, one that I will happily rewatch — unlike its sequel, which is barely an echo.