Gladiator II is a funny title for a movie — any movie, not just a Gladiator sequel. A few years back, we might have reckoned with a title like Gladiator: Rise of Lucius or Sand and Blood: A Gladiator Saga, but no, now it’s just Gladiator II. You remember Gladiator? This is the second one. The Roman numerals are because these guys are Roman. Don’t overthink it.
That type of “listen, it’s a sequel” energy pulses through Ridley Scott’s latest blockbuster. Just about every element of the first film that people like or remember is back and hits you like a hammer: fingertips sifting through wheat, Paul Mescal’s Lucius encouraging other fighters to stick close to him during battle, Derek Jacobi. The crux of Gladiator II is less retread than it is literal doubling, or even tripling. Instead of Russell Crowe’s low-voiced gravitas, enjoy not one but two characters burdened by the need to do right in an unjust world — Lucius, yes, and Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius. Instead of Joaquin Phoenix’s wimpish Commodus, enjoy Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger’s gruesome twosome Emperors Geta and Caracalla, respectively. The behind-the-scenes conniving of the senators in the first film gets transposed onto Denzel Washington’s Macrinus and Tim McInnerny’s Thraex. And if you thought the triple tiger battle was the showstopping event of Gladiator, wait til you see the full CGI zoo that awaits the fighters here. Scott’s general disinterest in the why and how of all this came to be is somewhat refreshing. Devoid of weepy backstories or extended flashbacks, he knows that you know this is Gladiator II. Time for some arteries to rip open and for guys to yell at each other louder than ever before.
But there’s also a lot in Gladiator II that feels funny on purpose. We know that Washington can recite Shakespeare from memory, but here he’s turning in a charisma-fueled performance rich in silly line deliveries: “I own … your house. I want … your loyalty.” And what Gladiator II lacks in British film pedigree without Richard Harris or Oliver Reed, it more than makes up for with stars of British sitcoms: the aforementioned McInnerny from Blackadder as a scheming partier and Little Britain’s Matt Lucas is the new Master of Ceremonies. And it doesn’t feel like Scott’s take on ancient Rome is any lesser for leaning into its lighter side. What he’s depicting is an empire mid-ruin, collapsing under the weight of its diseased and corrupt leaders, and speaking from some degree of experience, that can sometimes be so funny. A spying servant disappears into the bushes like Homer Simpson. There’s a secret passageway operated by pressing on a stone (could they do that back then?). Hechinger has a little monkey who benefits from, uh, pet nepotism and winds up snagging a military post.
Gladiator II, in other words, abandons almost all pretense. The first film was good because it took itself seriously whether its audience did or not. With the sequel, however, Scott seems eager to play up what he knows the audience wants, and they want, well, to be entertained. It’s here for a good time, not a long time (well — kind of a long time, actually, at a 158-minute run time). They bring sharks into the Colosseum! How anyone accomplished this, we never learn, but it might make for good material should there ever be a third Gladiator (GladIIIator?).
Those cheeky highs are just delightful enough to carry the film when it does become tedious or self-serious. While there’s a kind of knowing, secondhand embarrassment to watching Paul Mescal try to do Russell Crowe’s deep gravelly voice or that awkward first act where we’re supposed to buy him as a white general of a Pan-African army, the film’s attempts to build meaningful emotional arcs stumble again and again. In fact, the villains are so high-spirited and indulgently grotesque that they’re much more fun to carry water for than Mescal’s bruised reunion with his mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), or dreary working-class rebellion. You’re laughing. Rome is burning, and you’re laughing? Well, yeah — it’s all pretty funny, depending on who you’re cheering for.
