Gladiator 2: Plastic Intensity and Animated Slop
By Johnny Ball
Where to even begin?
It’s fairly uncontroversial to suggest some films should never be remade or that some films should never have sequels. Jaws had four sequels, each one more insulting than the last. Starship Troopers had three and Freddy Kruger got more screen time than he ever really deserved. Equally for every bad sequel there’s a goodie and the annals of film call back to Aliens, Terminator 2, The Godfather Part II, and Ace Ventura Jr. There are usually thematic similarities between successful sequels and remakes. They build upon previous iterations; a new character here, an improved villan there, a fresh angle for good measure, always maintaining, always building on the value of the original. Gladiator 2 does none of these things. No one ever wondered what happened to the blonde kid in the original, and no one sat awake at night asking what became of Russell Crowe’s love interest. But here we are.
The great Ridley Scott is back behind the camera for this iteration and while it’s not a car crash, it is an insulting, vain mess. We begin in 200AD – 16 years after the events of Gladiator (2000), with a brooding if static Paul Mescal sporting a non-descript Northern English accent (eh?) in his first balls-out Hollywood parade as a leading man. Mescal is in great nick as Hanno/Lucius and really does look the Roman part, as does Pedro Pascal as General Acacius – who is easily the most compelling character of the film – making it all the more frustrating when his role is wasted the way it is. For Mescal though, he is badly hamstrung by Ridley Scott’s decisions: the accent (he does a good, if not great job), by the weight of the role, some listless dialogue, and an overall lack of polish on the filmmakers’ part which, as the lead, drags him down. It is shame for him and although all roads may lead to Rome, they do so via the great Maximus Decimus Meridius. And where Russell Crowe’s Maximus bleeds gravel-voiced authority, Mescal’s Lucius seeps a fairly ductile vigour.
Which segues nicely into the greatest frustration of this whole gloopy mess: what actually is it?
There’s a culpable tension always scheming away at the edge of frame, prying at the door and breathing down your neck. It is at times ferocious and compelling and grand in scale, and then the following scene will contain genetically-mutated killers monkeys, or some cheap CGI sharks. And then everything good that came before is mocked and scorned and illegitimate. Is it a camp fantasy adventure? Or is it an entree to a brooding mythical dynasty? Gladiator 2 has no idea.
This flirtatious/disappointing dichotomy is embodied by Denzel Washington in his performance of slave trader turned expert politick Macrinus. He steals every granular frame with the kind of career-magnetism you cannot help be engrossed by, tiptoeing his way between Roman pillars, wagering and chicaning his way towards the senate. Until the onset of the final act, at which point magnetism quickly gives way to a pretty crass overbearance, as whatever remaining sense of logic and proportion falls dead to the whims of flying sharks and treasured pet monkeys.
Gladiator 2 is far from unwatchable, and opulent Roman glory has seldom looked so good. The sets, staging and costumes are vivid and alive, constantly beating and breathing life into scenes. Paul Mescal is good – if not great – and does an admirable job of carrying a big messy baby on his back for two and a half hours. Another positive being that it rarely feels such a grandiose length, and that is testament to some solid pacing and an intangible understanding of ‘big cinema’ that few alongside Ridley Scott can fix. But plastic intensity seeps through every pore. The script is unfurled and inert and the visual effects are cheap and uncoordinated, mixed into in some lukewarm animated soup made all the more painful by a $200+ million budget.
More than that though is why. Why was it needed? Why does it feel so rushed? Why is it such an unfailing vain expression? The mythicism of the original gives way to base, pointless fantasy. And that’s the real crime. A gaudy, dense insult.
