Can it be that a film is simultaneously too much and not enough? This is the issue with Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II”, a film just tumbling full of enough exhilaration to keep it from getting dull, however when you try to get something out of it in the sense of a thematic exploration, it drips through your grasp like the sand in a warrior’s palm. It is a film that doesn’t quite fumble in shedding the dull shadows of its predecessor and beats that seem so numbly familiar. Once Denzel Washington burst outside the familiarity, his performance was baffling which led him to straight stop the film from reaching a gravitating balance as all along everyone wished him to be the center of the attention, oh but outside the hero as a leader story this film greatly comfortably pulls off.
“Gladiator II” picks up the story of Lucius 16 years after Russell Crowe’s Character’s demise, With an Action scene that sets up a quite Violent historical period and the Focus characters: the Roman General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and a Roman Refugee named Lucius Verus “Hanno” (Paul Mescal). It is Acacius’s violent attack that results in the death of Lucius’s wife which sets him up as a ruler whom Lucius will struggle against in the Colosseum but David Scarpa’s script isn’t that simple. It is disclosed early on that Acacius is married to Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) Who was the Love Wish of Maximus in the part, and now the drama goes into real complexity because of the revelation that Lucius is the child whom the lady has been hiding away for years in fear for signs of danger from one of the three tigers to whom she has been left with. That’s right, it is Maximus 2.0.
Previously, Lucius is compelled to fight for his endurance against a crowd of wild baboons, impressing a slave trainer named Macrinus (Washington). He tries to hold it together but is engulfed in rage which he currently bears against General Acacius. Let’s fast forward to Rome where we meet two really strange emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Quinn and Hechinger embody an over-the-top, wide-eyed, psychotic craving for power which unfortunately worked against the film. Washington plays Macrinus like someone with a capable political mind in every such circumstance he is in and he is doing Shakespeare while Quinn/Hechinger are doing, well, “Beavis and Butthead.” The Emperors are there for us to get a kicker that wow Macrinus is smarter and cooler than them, make more sense than the Emperors. But it is not the case “Gladiator II” oversimplying the men responsible for the bloodshed to thin characters.
Even more disastrous is the degree to which “Gladiator II” is absorbed by the visual splendor. “Gladiator II” reproduces the ubiquitous imperative of upholding bloodshed to the tune of insane spectacles and more insane Robinson. Like how the Animation Baboons was not beloved in the previous movie, the movie’s CGI and graphics were not particularly excellent either. However, every time “Gladiator II” pretends to care about how power is won, and, more importantly, how it is lost, it whips out sharks from its hat. Yep, sharks. Set in the Colosseum with soldiers standing on a Rhino, And to be fair, the movie induced short bursts of insanity, such as cartoonish baboons wherein the movie suffered terribly from poor CGI with the exception of well-executed graphics. Maxim. Then the movie rotates on the Rhys alongside the Lucius/Maximus pair almost forcing the movie to gouge the first film of its images. It becomes clear that the only goal of this movie was to appease the fans of that movie.
For a large number of peoples, and on some occasions for this person, it suffices. It certainly looks decent for the most part, the sound mix is brilliant. Scott is certainly not lacking in these areas. On regard to performance, Crowe has mesmerized the audiences far more than Mescal, who falters, but I feel this is more to do with a relatively passive script that chooses to make him a mere placeholder of someone rather than a distinct individual. Pascal gets off easier even though he has slightly less screen time than what the equation would suggest. Nevertheless, he is the only actor apart from Washington, who one can envision making the moves that no other performers would want to try, especially when his role as a military leader is being literally torn apart around him.
Once again, this is undeniably the film of Washington, as he keeps adding more and more plum to his hat, while doing so being an Oscar winner, a man who has the ability to maneuver his way through the middle during a blitz and has absolutely no regard for the power plays being made that are necessary for him to do that. Now, look at it this way; Think of Darth Vader in the Centre Arena and tell me how ‘Gladiator II’ makes sense or the more aspirational version of this sequel is located how I do not know. If only the filmmakers were able to break free from the constraints of the Colosseum.
It’s insane to think that one of Hollywood’s infamous unsold scripts is Nick Cave’s Gladiator II, which was initially being developed under the name Christ Killer, with Russell Crowe reprising as a Maximus who must fight his way out of purgatory with the rest of the world in the backdrop of the 20th century wars. Of course, it sounds simply ludicrous, so it does not come as a surprise that it appositively was put to rest, but a thought struck me while watching the movie: Surely this film had some redeeming quality to patch the gap between the sharp divergence from the first one, which the other sequels seem to be content with. It’s a splendid movie, but is being that only it?
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