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Ridley Scott’s Sadboi-Hours Gladiator II Is Enjoyable & Effective

One cannot underestimate the political significance of <em>Gladiator II</em> in this day and age. The politicians running Rome into the ground could be the leaders of any seemingly democratic nation in 2024.

Rahul+Desai

Nov 15, 2024

Promo poster for Gladiator II.

EVERY TIME I WATCH A NEW RIDLEY SCOTT MOVIE I can imagine him — a cinematic gladiator standing in the middle of a studio-owned colosseum — yelling at the crowds: “Are you not entertained?” There’s something incurably romantic about the 86-year-old director’s career right now. He’s not only churning out sprawling, big-budget historical action epics (and blockbuster quotes) at a dizzying rate, he’s doing it his own way in an era of superhero-infected, franchise-injected and internet-fandom excesses. He’s almost like the Tom Cruise of popular directors: an analogue dreamer in a digital multiverse. But Scott isn’t making a statement or anything; I don’t think he cares less about what the rest of the world is watching, loving and making. His storytelling refuses to live and die in the details; his characters are so loosely based on actual people that it’s like watching fiction and reality getting drunk and hooking up violently. It’s such a no-nonsense approach to film-making that one might blame him for being too cavalier, too functional.

But Gladiator II is proof that all the grumpy pulp conceals a beating heart. A sequel to his Oscar-winning Gladiator (2000), the story is set 16 years after the death of the heroic Roman general, Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe). The Rome that his emperor Marcus Aurelius dreamt of was never realised; it remains as corrupt and ruthless as ever. The arc of Maximus — an Achilles-like warrior whose family is killed and he rises back up from slavery to ‘dethrone’ demented ruler Commodus — is partitioned into two here. There’s Hanno (Paul Mescal), a North African soldier taken captive by the Romans after his wife is killed and his land is conquered. Hanno, whose talent for combat takes him all the way to the Colosseum, wants revenge against Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Roman general who (reluctantly) killed his people. And there’s Marcus Acacius himself who, like Maximus, is the superstar who wants to stop fighting. He’s had enough; he doesn’t agree with the empire he serves.

It’s sort of fitting that Maximus is an amalgamation of these two men. Acacius fought under Maximus and married his former lover, Lucilla (Connie Nelson). And Hanno is soon revealed to be Lucius, the illegitimate son of Lucilla and Maximus who was sent away as a child; he spent his life battling the very heritage that haunts him. Gladiator II is a skillful sequel in the way it slowly morphs into the familiar tale of an exiled prince whose destiny is inescapable; a personal mission becomes more. At first, there are too many things happening: a coup is being planned to overthrow nutty twin emperors Geta and Caracalla, Hanno is doing gladiator things in the arena every day, the wily Macrinus (Denzel Washington) trains Hanno and promises him revenge, and Lucilla asks for forgiveness from her son. But the plot gets slimmer, eliminating characters and subplots mercilessly, until it’s down to Lucius and Macrinus, a former slave-cum-gladiator and trader who — like the hero — is ‘revealed’ to be more than who he seems.

There’s an old-school sentimentality about Scott’s sense of scale and staging. No other director could have pulled off black-and-white afterlife visions in 2024. Scott does, partly in tribute to the famous climax of Gladiator and partly as a middle finger to anyone who thinks on-the-nose symbolism isn’t cool anymore. It even opens with a shot of wheat grains, an ode to the divine fields in which a dead Maximus and his family reunite to the score of Hans Zimmer’s 'Now We Are Free'. The set pieces aren’t defined by glitzy pyrotechnics and money shots either. I mean there are sea invasions, ships, cannons, rhinos, sharks and monstrous apes; Hanno in fact makes a name for himself by biting one of those apes. But the film seems to understand that an ‘explosive’ climax doesn’t have to upstage the action before it in volume and choreography. It’s a simple combat sequence that trusts the spiritual and narrative stakes of the moment — a bit like Batman and Bane’s face-off in the sewers in The Dark Knight Rises. The noise fades away, and the sheer nakedness of two characters duking it out to change the face of history is disarming. It’s so small that it’s big. It’s the equivalent of not having any payoff sequences and coming-home montage at the end of The Martian; the rescue is done, the astronauts and NASA are happy, that’s all. Ditto for the verbal sparring and the indoor tensions in this film; the broader picture is so solid that the dialogue never feels the pressure to surpass a semi-dramatic pitch. It harnesses the context and stillness of the original without adding any chronological acrobatics. Marvel and DC, I hope you’re listening.

Scott’s lithe execution aside, the performances are the selling point of Gladiator II. Paul Mescal is a culturally accurate successor to Russell Crowe, particularly because the actor’s Gen-Z masculinity frames Lucius as a more emotionally alive savior. He doesn’t need to build Rome in a day because he can make them feel for a lifetime. He’s a Sadboi Gladiator of sorts — with wounded literary eyes, a heartbreaking smile, a penchant for poetry, and a kind of social-media rage that insists on being lyrical (“Where death is, we are not; where we are, death is not!”). Mescal is a concept so alien to the Gladiator world that, in Ridley Scott’s universe, he is perfect for the role. You can’t help but follow (like and subscribe to) Lucius Verus; he makes everyone want to be normal people.

Denzel Washington is an equally funky choice as the queer-coded villain, which is precisely why it’s impossible to take your eyes off him. Washington’s depiction of Macrinus is deceptively low-key — no performative quirks, no psychopathic flourishes, no funny voices and scars. As a result, Macrinus sneaks up on the viewer like a long-term disease; he lurks on the sidelines of the drama, and until more than halfway through, it’s hard to tell which side he’s leaning towards. You almost expect him to be an ally at some point, but Washington’s heel turn is unnerving for how easily Macrinus unleashes his bitter-slave-turned-baddie arc. He doesn’t let you feel for him. That’s another neat writing touch: Lucius is the noble nepotism hire, but he aims to give the power back to the people; Macrinus is the outsider cautionary tale who craves all the power for himself. If you spot the pattern of new-age actors who resort to right-wing bigotry as a righteous response to the nepo-baby bubble in the Hindi film industry, the Lucius-Macrinus conflict is a fertile one. As we speak, Vikrant Massey’s The Sabarmati Files is playing alongside Gladiator II in theatres.

One also cannot underestimate the political significance of a spectacle like Gladiator II in this day and age. The politicians running Rome into the ground — reducing their citizens to subjects at the mercy of their tyrannical whims — could be the leaders of any seemingly democratic nation in 2024. The parallels between Lucius’ family — a grandfather whose complicity turned to guilt and hope; a mother dethroned; a father killed — and the Gandhis of the Indian National Congress (INC) are uncanny. Dynasties and their failures are responsible for the making of monsters like Macrinus and his real-world counterparts. At some level, Gladiator II is a potent reminder that history keeps repeating itself until the chain is broken. Lucius hated the Rome of his ancestors, and when he finally returns (to his senses), it’s not for himself. His destiny is bigger than any one person; it’s a coalition, an alliance, of desires and ambitions in service of a land hijacked by selfish oppressors. So he speaks — and punches — truth to power. Rome wasn’t built in a day; it was rebuilt over centuries. But it doesn’t matter who lays those bricks. Yesterday it was a brave general, today it’s an angry prince.