Sir Ridley Scott didn’t make his first feature film (1977’s The Duellists) until he was 40 years old. The director, turning 87 at the end of this month, has not wasted any time making up for that late start with a remarkable array of landmark films including Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma and Louise, The Martian, Black Hawk Down and on and on.
Coming off the massive Napoleon, he jumped right into another epic project with a sequel 24 years after 2000’s Gladiator became his only Best Picture Oscar winner (though he lost Best Director to the double-nominated Steven Soderbergh that year). Scott generally has resisted going the sequel route to his films, with his 2012 Prometheus and 2017 Alien: Covenant proving the exceptions, though those two films completing his so-called Alien trilogy came respectively 33 years and 38 years after his much-imitated 1979 hit, Alien. In between he left it to others including James Cameron to take on sequels before revisiting that particular world.
Coming back to the Roman Empire in Gladiator II took a quarter of a century to finally get to the screen, to get it right and to not disappoint the growing cadre of fans of the first, while still carving out its own reason to exist other than making a boatload of cash. This is all not to mention that doing a follow-up to a much loved spectacular that won the Oscar for Best Picture and grossed nearly a half-billion around the globe at the time is a challenge for anyone, much less a filmmaker at Scott’s point in life. He proves, as usual, age is just a number with this riveting return to one of Hollywood’s long-cherished but generally abandoned genres and breathes new life into it again. This is the movie Imax was invented to show.
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Importantly, Scott — who seems to thrive on gigantic battle sequences (he had six of ’em in Napoleon — knows that visual thrills are not enough, you have to have a compelling story. And he’s got one with the journey of Lucius (Paul Mescal), a young man, adrift and angry, a barbarian fighting off the Roman Army but ultimately set loose into the ring — the Colosseum — as a star attraction to feed the entertainment needs of the bloodthirsty public led by repulsive twin emperors Caracalla and Geta (deliciously evil Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn). The crowd demands more sickening violence than ever, and the Roman leaders deliver it to them. In many ways, this societal collapse is just as pertinent as ever to the world into which Gladiator II is about to be released just in time for Thanksgiving.
Timewise, it is 15 years after the brutal death of Maximus (played in the original by Russell Crowe, who won the Best Actor Oscar), who of course was a leader in the Roman military battling barbarians. Maximus became a gladiator but not opposed to the emperor. That made him a polar opposite to our new protagonist, Lucius, who more resembles the frustration of a younger generation than the order of things that defined Maximus. Revenge for him is personal.
It all starts out in Numidia, where Lucius has lived most of his life only to be disrupted when the Roman Army shows up primed for our first spectacular swordplay and the death of his wife at the hands of the General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who led the mob into his hometown.
Captured and transported to Rome, we know this is a man who will be out to even the score, and thrown to the wolves so to speak. He will start with Acacius, who is married to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the daughter of the late Emperor Marcus Aurelius and whose brother Commodus and lover Maximus were killed by the end of Gladiator. She is shrewd in the middle of all the madness that has engulfed the Roman Empire, not just the link to its past but perhaps its future. It may be fun for the spectators in the stands to watch, but it is much more for Lucius, who is taken into the stable of gladiators run by devious ex-slave Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a man who has come up from nothing to become a successful businessman and crafty entrepreneur, not as an emperor or a politician but even better as an evil character craving control of the game. He serves Lucilla’s needs but also sees Lucius as an emerging star attraction in his stable to be manipulated. Washington is superb, clearly having a blast as this complex villain looking for power at any cost.
The plot as devised by screenwriter David Scarpa (who shares story credit with Peter Craig) contains a few twists and turns venturing into melodrama involving key characters and revelations that are best left discovered by audience, not divulged in a review, but you can guess it all gets emotionally complicated.
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Based on his recent work and sensitive portrayal in Normal People and Oscar-nominated turn in Aftersun, I didn’t visualize Mescal following Crowe into this particular ring, but his muscular and compelling turn as Lucius is the real deal, as fierce in all the swordplay as he is human in his portrayal. There were times he even reminded me of Spartacus-era Kirk Douglas. Nielsen, one of only two actors returning from the first film (Derek Jacobi reprising his role of Gracchus is the other), is splendid here, an important anchor to the family story behind all the action, the glue keeping it all together. Pascal walks a gray line and proves his worth not just in the action scenes but also as a man trying to balance his role in this society and what it expects of a general but also his own humanity. No easy trick. Hechinger and Quinn are priceless as the batshit-crazy twin emperors eating up whatever scenery they can find.
And speaking of the scenery, Scott has got the A-team on this movie, with some trusted artisans working with him again from the 2000 Gladiator including Oscar-nominated production designer Arthur Max and cinematographer John Mathieson and Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates all back in the saddle. Shout-out to the special visual effects teams and to composer Harry Gregson- Williams for his stirring musical score.
Producers are Scott (who was not a producer on the original film), Douglas Wick, Lucy Fisher and screenwriter David Franzoni — who all won Oscars for producing Gladiator — and Michael Pruss, president of film production at Scott’s Scott Free.
Gladiator is a hard act to follow, but Sir Ridley Scott proves still to be a master working up a Roman orgy of excitement that proves a worthy successor in every way.
Title: Gladiator II
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: November 22, 2024
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriters: David Scarpa. Story By Scarpa and Peter Craig
Cast: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Derek Jacobi, Lior Raz
Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hr 28 min
