What news of Rome? Gladiator II Review

As Taylor Swift so eloquently says, ‘it’s been a long time coming,’ and this very aptly applies to the new gladiator film, Gladiator II set to hit cinema screens this Friday 15th November. It comes a quarter of a century after the original which by all accounts came out of nowhere and stole the hearts of Academy voters that year to clinch Best Picture and Best Actor for the gladiator himself Russell Crowe. Since that moment it has steadily gathered more and more feathers in its cap, to the point where it is considered a modern classic, a timeless sword-and-sandal relic that could easily have been made in the 1960s. Ridley Scott is said to have greenlighted his role as director without a script and without a leading man, he is said to have said ‘yes’ based on a painting of a Roman Emperor deploying the infamous thumbs up/down signal. He knew what it was about. Using the theme of honour, strength and revenge, Scott managed to revive a genre that at the time had been dead for over forty years, since Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia, and ironically he is in the same position today.

So what news of Rome with this sequel? Well Film For Thought attended the All Media premiere of Gladiator II on 4th November in London and this film has all the trappings to be one of the biggest films of the year. And what’s the outlook for this film? Well the industry is just recovering from an almighty failure for a sequel to a beloved original film, Joker: Folie a Deux, so there is understandably hesitancy in terms of the bankability on big blockbuster films that should on paper work in the market. Gladiator II however has many things working in its favour that point to a much-needed blockbuster level of success.

From the words of David Scarpa, who wrote the historically-adjacent film for Scott with his last film Napoleon, and the vision of Ridley Scott himself, Gladiator II starts in real time approximately twenty to twenty five years after the original. We first meet Lucius living in Numidia with his wife, when the first major battle begins led by Rome’s General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the result of which kills Lucius’s wife in battle and forces Lucius into slavery. This inciting incident bring Lucius, the technical heir to Rome, back to the place he came from.

Paul Mescal is Lucius, and as revealed in the second trailer, he is the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla, and of course the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, played in the first film by Limerick actor Richard Harris. Rumour has it that Ridley Scott saw a young Richard Harris in fellow Irishman Mescal which helped seal the deal, and a nod to this appears in a scene in the film. Denzel plays the Oliver Reed role as the ambitious but sly Gladiator coach. It has been noted in the trailers that Denzel’s upstate New York accent is slightly at odds with third century dialect. It would be a lie to say that this error grates on you, even with the likes of Mescal and the rest doing their best Mid Atlantic accent, Denzel’s drawl in fact adds to it. Scarpa cleverly takes real life brothers and co-emperors Caracalla and Geta, using their immature reign with war as their own personal form of entertainment like a real life Battleship game. When Acacius reminds the emperors that Rome must not forget to feed its subjects, they respond with ‘they can eat war.’ Some could see the twin emperors as pantomime villians, but they add a degree of unpredictability that Joaquin Phoenix so excellently portrayed in the first.

Mescal’s physicality is undeniable, and it is his sheer athleticism (Gaelic football is a well known pre-cursor to becoming a gladiator) that sets him apart from his predecessor. Known for his smaller films where his performance is in the minutiae and the finer details, this is the first one we see Mescal being loud, in his movements and words which he commands commendably, making way for his intimate acting he is known for in the film’s rare quiet moments. Where he marginally falls down, through no fault of his own is ironically his own youth. Crowe was 35 at the time of Gladiator’s filming, and a lot of men, young and old could identify with this weathered and scorned version of masculinity. Mescal on the other hand is more of an ingenue, not in skill or effort but purely in age. At 27 he doesn’t have the same leading man presence as Crowe and that is something that is undeniable. Scott however masterfully melds the modern with the nostalgic and he infuses just the right amount of heart and soul into this film, pulling on the original via various narrative strands that infuses it with that legacy, after all this has to be different to the original in some way.

In terms of length, it is two and a half hours and by the way as it should be for such a huge epic, which is actually more along the lines of a typical movie by today’s standards. Scott shot this film in just 51 days, an absolute anomaly for such a massive undertaking. The money they put into this is all on the screen and you can see the detail, where they could have put a bit more money into is the CGI monkeys – always spend more on monkeys.

Let us be clear, Gladiator II is no Lawrence of Arabia. It does not come close to its predecessor, but it gives it its best shot. It imbues its own unique qualities as well as taking the most emotional thematic strands from the original and ties them up together. Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner have all directed absolute stinkers in the past couple of months, but Ridley Scott is doing the work and going back to basics. People have so many options on their streaming services now that they need to be blown away in a way that is bigger and better than ever before to get them to out of their house and into cinemas. When it comes down to it, give me a gladiator epic any day over a bland and empty Marvel film. There is such a dearth of good films these days that Gladiator II seems like a welcome breath of fresh air. It’s an all round crowd pleaser, an old fashioned good time at the movies, and I promise you it is never, ever boring. And for that it deserves the thumbs up.

Gladiator hits cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday 15th November. It will be released domestically on 22nd November.

Book tickets in advance here https://www.gladiator.movie/