At 86 years of age, there are very few filmmakers who can match Sir Ridley Scott's knack for a quick turnaround. Averaging nearly a film every year since the turn of the century, Scott’s “run n’gun” style tends to prioritise quantity over quality, the results of which are best demonstrated by his sublime The Last Duel and more muddled House Of Gucci, released only months apart in 2022. Every Scott production is a coin toss, which is why I was able to hold out hope for Gladiator 2 right up until the titles began to roll.
Indeed, the first hour of Gladiator 2 was for me overshadowed by a creeping sense of regret over having rewatched the original in preparation. This is less a sequel than a redux, playing out many of the same beats on a larger, more CG-addled scale. Paul Mescal plays Lucius, a brutish man who has sworn revenge against the Roman general (Pedro Pascal) who had his wife killed and sold him into slavery. Lucius’s bloodlust for who is otherwise a celebrated war hero catches the attention of cunning power-player Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who quickly sets him to work in the Colosseum.
Mescal’s performance is serviceable, though the film forces a number of unfair comparisons to Russell Crowe’s Oscar-winning performance, positioning Lucius in many of the same scenarios as his predecessor, always with diminished returns. The ensemble around Mescal tend to fare better; Washington and Pascal are both scene-stealers, while Joseph Quinn relishes his chance to play an erratic and impish young emperor. The one supporting player failed by David Scarpa’s screenplay is Connie Nielsen, whose reprised role has been stripped down from a serpentine schemer into a bleary-eyed housewife, as feeble as she is easily deceived.
Beyond the story, Gladiator 2 is a film sold primarily on its spectacle, with much having been made of Scott’s gargantuan set builds. Unfortunately, these may as well be green screens when put up against the onslaught of CGI boats, rhinos and sharks which replace the grit and weight of the original’s immersive set-pieces. There is an artificiality throughout the film which takes much of the pleasure out of Mescal’s physical endeavours, most fatally in the film’s opening movement, wherein a pivotal emotional beat is lost in the haze of unconvincing effects work. Scott’s over-reliance on digital technology in recent years is something he has struggled to justify, typically sacrificing practical craft for speedy and more efficient turnarounds.
Gladiator 2 does find its feet eventually, breaking from the mould of its predecessor for a propulsive final hour which finally gives Mescal something substantial to do (albeit intercut with Washington delivering a series of epic monologues about the wavering state of Rome). There is a semblance of purpose here, as Scott through his hero and villain makes a series of grand, sweeping statements more applicable to modern America than to history, but it does feel like too little too late in a film determined to pay homage to its original, and doomed to live in its shadow. For all their virtues, Scott isn’t the filmmaker he was 24 years ago, and Mescal is no Russell Crowe.
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