Gladiator II – A Sort of a Review

There is a sort of a tradition, here on the blog, that if I see a movie on the first night it comes out, I might try to write a sort of a review of it. 

In the last decade, the only way I’ve seen movies on the day they come out is when the local Rotary Club host a premiere evening in the local cinema for local charities. It’s a local thing. Such was the case last night and many thanks to Castlebar Rotary for an excellent evening of old friends spotted, super canapes, nice wine, and a worrying number of warnings that we all better head to the toilet before the movie starts. I guess we are knocking on a bit.

Gladiator is knocking on a bit too. I went to see the first one with my young godson in this self-same cinema and he’s a grown-assed married man now. Trish and I went to Gladiator II last night and, yes, it was a fun night out and, no, the film didn’t quite do it for me. Sorry.

So, mostly for my own benefit, as most of these blog posts are, I thought I’d sit down on this Saturday morning and try to set down some thoughts on why it didn’t do it for me. So, if you want to slope away early this week, that’s okay, ‘cos that’s all you’re going to get.

So…

The opening titles of Gladiator II are great. A surreal animation of key scenes from the original movie where the characters appear stretched, distorted and almost agonised. Very striking and very promising. Less promising is when the title of the original movie appears on screen, and the word Gladiator gets two capital ‘I’s dropped into the centre to make the II of the title. GladIIiator, or something like that. Even at that moment, before everything unfolded, it seemed like a mission statement. Let’s take the original and drop a load of stuff in on top of it. That will be our movie.

And that is indeed our movie. It is the first movie, dialled up. The rhythm of the film is uncannily close to that of the original. Every beat the nostalgic movie pilgrim might wish for is amply catered-for here. 

That might be entirely forgivable, in a commercial/entertainment venture such as this, but the effect is spoiled by the magnification of every trope we meet. Here's just one, as an example. In the original, Maximus liked to take a little earth from the ground on which he is about to do battle, be it the forests of Germania or the blood soaked sands of the arena. It was rather an engaging mannerism, in my opinion. It showed the character to be grounded in the earth and respectful of where he stood and of where he may fall. Enter Lucius in the new movie and, from minute one, he is grabbing stuff, sniffing it, and rolling it around in his palm. It seems he can’t pass an allotment without doing an impromptu soil analysis. That’s the pattern in the movie, trope covered, trope elevated, trope devalued.

Paul Mescal acquits himself very well. Okay, I would say that. I’m Irish and we’re all proud of him because he seems humble and real and he represents us with aplomb and he is out there beating the world. And, yes, I probably would say it except, in this case, I mean it too. He is convincing as a beefed up captive returning immigrant. He looks the part. He is written a little strange. We constantly hear that it is his rage that drives him onward through the narrative but he loves a little downtime from his rage to have a bit of ‘craic’ with his fellow captives. He is also constantly speaking in absolutes, he will never do this and will never do that, in this life or the next, but five minutes later, there he is, doing it. Plus the things he is given to say are just not as catchy as the ones that Russell had. Perhaps the battle was lost because the soldiers were pre-occupied by wondering what he had been on about.

Paul Mescal reminds me of Daniel Craig but only in that they both have taken on a cinematic icon and willed themselves to seriously act the part rather than just be iconic. Paul is working very hard to make Lucius believable and relatable and one can see the nuanced work he is bringing to the role. But he is in at the centre of an absolute machine, where everyone is too busy looking over their shoulders at what went before to really get their teeth into what needs to happen now. He is largely alone in his craft.

And let’s not pretend that the original was the absolute bee’s knees either. I loved it but could also recognise that its strength was in the two enormous central characters. Back then, rage really did drive them both on and we lapped it all up along with all the spilled blood. When the central characters were not engaging, the sappy politics and general grape-eating was all a bit tedious, to be frank. But, boy, when it was mano-a-mano in the Colosseum, we were there for it.

And therein lies the biggest loss in the Gladiator II. Only at one moment, does that mano-a-mano confrontation evolve and that is a good moment. Two men, facing off in front of the baying hoard. That’s what I think I needed. Alas, instead, every time the doors of the arena opened and the gladiators steeled themselves for battle, it was not a person who came out. And, be assured, we didn’t need a man. An overstimulated hoard of Amazonian Harpies would have been just as welcome. But what we actually got was a parade of ludicrous CGI creations that had about as much actual physical threat or stakes as my tired old ass. Every time the gate opened, we wondered, “what in the good Christ is going to come out this time?” And we were never disappointed in our disappointment. We didn’t want a crossbred monkey or a fucking Hippo or whatever it was. Like the baying hoard, we craved flesh and blood. And, incidentally, the Hippo (yes, I know it was a Rhino... I'm being facetious) was immediately no threat whatsoever because we’d seen his brother’s head decorating the banquet table a few scenes earlier.

I think lots of people will like this movie, mostly because they’re not as tired as I am. Denzel is smilingly strong in this. Derek Jacobi is woefully underused but I pray he got a big cheque. The evil emperor twins were a horrible non-event. Rather than giving omnipotent despot energy they instead could only muster a sort of a tired post-show Ed Sheeran vibe.

Only one revived trope succeeds entirely. I’m no massive fan of Hans Zimmer but, with Gladiator, he created a score for the ages and when it swells once again as this new action unfolds, for a moment, everything seems all right.

I generally like Ridley Scott movies. He commandeers vast resources into engaging work. I put The Last Duel a country mile ahead of this one. Perhaps it was just that it wasn’t looking over its shoulder and applying ECG paddles to ideas that had died dramatically some decades before.

I hope you enjoy it. The more I think about it, the more I think the problem was mostly with me. I’m getting old and the things I once admired in cinema are no longer the things I crave. I just don’t think I needed another Gladiator movie in my little life and, looking back, there is perhaps not a single thing that could have been done to make me love it. Perhaps Maximus' big line holds the key.

What they did in life, echoed in the sequel.