Gladiator II

Maximus Carnage

Gladiator II
aka GladIIator
Directed by Ridley Scott
UK/USA 2024
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Very small spoilers.

I really wasn’t expecting much from Gladiator II (or GLADIIATOR, as the actual film print reads) as I didn’t think too much of the first movie when it hit cinemas. For me, the first Gladiator had some nicely staged battles and a fantastic score by Hans Zimmer. Those were the two standouts for me... other than that, it was an okay movie, not a great one. So I really wasn’t expecting much from this sequel which, honestly... did anyone want a sequel to a movie where the title character, Maximus, died at the end... thus going a good way to negating any attempt at a possible follow on.

Well, I have to say that, although Gladiator II is a completely unnecessary follow up, I actually preferred it a lot more to the first film. I mean, it’s still not a great film but, yeah, it kept me entertained for much longer and, despite running for two and a half hours, it didn’t really drag either (I thought the first one did drag, somewhat, it has to be said).

This one is, in terms of story content, a kind of toned down remake of the first movie where, this time, it’s Lucius, the grown up son of Maximus, played here by Paul Mescal, who is captured after his wife is killed by his mother’s new husband. Said husband, Marcus Acacius, is played by Pedro Pascal but he’s not really a villain and he plays the character sympathetically. Lucius goes about conquering the new games devised by two Caligula-like ruling emperors (who are essentially the main villains, for a bit), with the intention of taking his revenge on Acacius but there’s more to it than that. Denzel Washington plays the guy in charge of the Gladiatorial school, so to speak and he wants to use Lucius to rise up for his own political ends. Washington is amazing in this, as is the returning Connie Nielson as Lucilla.

There are political conspiracies paced with, frankly, somewhat over the top Colosseum games which include... I dunno... some kind of genetically altered killer ape/dog creatures and a flooded arena filled with sharks. Um, I assume there are going to be one or two accusations levelled at director Ridley Scott that he’s jumped the shark with this movie, for sure. That being said, although the action sequences are maybe not quite as consistently engaging as the first film, they still work very well and the quieter scenes where violence suddenly intrudes into the narrative have positively Japanese levels of arterial spray (well, more like arterial floods) and certainly liven up those moments considerably.

But, I don’t really care, as escapist fantasy it’s fast moving and, well it’s Ridley Scott so, whatever you may think of his movies post-1982 (after his three masterworks The Duellists, A L I E N and Blade Runner, reviewed here), you know that the cinematography is going to be nothing less than stunning so, yeah, no surprises there (and he seems to be using the different qualities of image tone between the two films for the flashbacks as the very thing which makes them feel like a window to the past). What did surprise me was the last combat scene in the film as I didn’t expect to see a certain character turning out to be the real villian until about half an hour before the end (I thought he would become an ally)

And as an added bonus, we get a score by one of Zimmer’s stable, the great Harry Gregson-Williams, who of course gave us the incredible score to Wonder Woman. And yes, Gladiator II is on CD and this was the real motivating factor that dragged me into cinemas to see (well, hear) this thing and, on the music front, I was not disappointed. I can’t wait to hear this thing as a stand alone listen, for sure. It does have a fair few nods to Zimmer’s leitmotif on occasion (although not the Holst derivative, from what I could hear) but it does its own thing and has some nice orchestration.

So yeah, I think that’s me done with Gladiator II other than to acknowledge that Derek Jacobi’s returning character feels somewhat wasted, Connie Nielson is the absolute glue which holds the film (and the story, to an extent) together and I didn’t even mind the tongue-in-cheek ‘I Am Spartacus’ moment after the Coliseum sea battle scene. Definitely worth seeing this one at a cinema if you can spare the time.