'Gladiator II' Is Smothered by the Shadow of the Original

Any time a legacy sequel is announced, one of the first responses is usually a vocal “but … why?” As a hyperbolic question cried into the void, that reaction is … well, just that. But the actual question of why can often tell us a lot about the final film. Long before Mad Max: Fury Road blew our hair back, we kinda thought it might do just that because of George Miller’s unstoppable passion to get it made. Meanwhile, Jurassic World only ever felt like a naked money grab, and the film, to paraphrase coach Dennis Green, was exactly what we thought it would be. As with any movie, the motives behind it by no means predict the result, but they’re interesting to consider.

So, why did Ridley Scott decide to revisit his Gladiator almost a quarter century later?

Set sixteen years after the original, all in Gladiator II’s Rome is not great. The Empire is led by twin Emperors Shitheelius and Fucknutimus (Joseph Quinn’s Geta and Fred Hechinger’s Caracalla). Lucilla (Connie Neilsen) is married to the conquering but tired General Acacius (Pedro Pascal). The Roman Senators remain as powerless and feckless as ever. And our Proximo replacement, Macrinus (Denzel Washington), has recently acquired a new gladiator named Hanno (Paul Mescal). Can you already feel the shadow of the first film smothering this?

If not, consider this a tepid spoiler warning for the rest of the review, because there is something the movie treats like a surprise, which both the trailers and IMDb give away, and it’s a dumb problem that we need to talk about. So if you want to be completely “spoiler”-free, skip the rest of the review, which boils down to “some decent action and Denzel being the best, lifts this movie to a full-breathed meh.” So, yes: Hanno is actually Lucius, the secreted-away son of Lucilla (played in the original by a young Spencer Treat Clark). The film treats this as a slow-burning revelation, revealed almost ham-fistedly, which is disrespectful to the viewer, frankly.

The larger problem, however, is that it allows the first film’s shadow to fully subsume it. Because here’s another member of the Roman elite who has found his way back into the Coliseum as a slave gladiator, where he will inevitably be roped into the city’s political machinations against the evil, despotic Emperor(s). It’s a shame because the film opened with the potential for being something different but akin to the original, as Pascal’s Acacius led a great action conquest of Hanno Numidia. Acacius came home weary of it all while Hanno and his slave mates were vanquish men being dragged to a land they loathe. It’s shades of the first film but with the potential to go in a different and at least slightly interesting direction. And then Denzel’s Macrinus enters and suddenly it feels like it could get very interesting.

Because he is pure improvisational Machiavellian energy, just flowing through the scenery. While Washington is soon to play Othello on stage, this shows what a great Iago he’d be as he runs around the characters and edges of the film, both scheming and taking opportunities before him. As we learn more about Macrinus, coupled with this performance that is a little unlike anything Washington has done before (it’s close to Training Day’s Alonzo, but a few shades brighter), he could make the center of a great film anchored on the other side by Pascal and Mescal. But the film instead feels the need to track and mirror Gladiator and, in the process, creates a movie that feels stitched together. I haven’t even really talked about the twin Emperors, performed by Quinn and Hechinger with chaotic energy that is wildly out of tone with even Washington’s. They’re not necessarily bad performances, but they’re not of the same movie as everything else.

As for the other performances, Washington aside, Pescal is the other standout. Strong action coupled with a muted emotional performance winds up being incredibly rich for the limited screen time he’s given. As his wife and, yet again, a rebel to the Empire, Neilsen does her best with one of the characters that most has to bear the unfortunate weight of the first film. And then there’s Mescal. He looks great. He fights well enough. And it’s not that his performance is bad. I don’t think he’s capable of bad. But it’s just wrong for this character and the beats Lucius needs to hit. With a different character arc, one where he doesn’t need to be the hero of the Empire, this performance may have been perfect. Here, it just feels out of place.

But even if the plot is a mess, and even with mismatched performances all over the place, the action can pull it all together and still make this film feel like a win. Sadly, it’s all downhill after that opening sequence. There’s one low-scale, non-coliseum fight that is legitimately excellent. But the rest? I mean, I guess the rhino is kinda cool, but the apes were a CGI nightmare, and what could have been cool because pirate ships were made preposterous because sharks.

Reread that last sentence, and remember what movie we’re talking about here.

So, we come back to the question I started with — why did Ridley Scott decide to revisit his Gladiator almost a quarter century later? The story of the sequel’s false starts over the years is well documented, from versions involving Jesus Christ to ones where Maximus ends up fighting in World War I (sorry not sorry to say I’d watch all of that!). The length of this film’s journey reflects a motivation of more than greed — it does not feel like a money grab, nor does it feel lazy or entirely unnecessary.

It feels like there could have been a good movie here—maybe even a great one—if it had focused on what Denzel was doing. But somewhere along the way, someone decided it needed to cling to the original, and the result feels cobbled together with duct tape. Then there’s a spoiler I don’t even want to touch—it’s dumber than the Hanno/Lucius identity reveal. And no, it’s not what you’re thinking. Walking into the screening, I feared they might shoehorn in some kind of Russell Crowe cameo (unless they were fully leaning into the rumored version with Maximus in Hell!). For the record, they didn’t technically bring him back.

But they did manage to conjure him in my brain. There he was, gently tapping me on the shoulder, like some vision crafted from Valhalla wheat grass. And as I turned to face him, my imagined Maximus shed his serenity, threw his head back, and roared, “ARE YOU NOT MEHNTERTAINED?!” That question, unfortunately, ties back to the spoiler. Because through its misguided twist, Gladiator II commits the cardinal sin of legacy sequels: it adds something that actually diminishes the original. That is the film’s true travesty. And no, with that, I was not entertained.