Gladiator Two or, Gladiator squared
make more of them please.
So I had this whole piece ready to go about getting old but then yesterday, Katie insisted on seeing Gladiator Two. She loves that stuff so we went and saw Gladiator Two and now all I can think about is Gladiator Two. Because I don’t know if it’s ‘good’ but it’s hilarious. So here’s a review, of sorts, of Gladiator Two. I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum.
First of all, Gladiator Two is a Sir Ridley Scott movie. And I heard he’s doing a Bee Gees biopic next (lame) but I really wish he’d keep doing stuff like Gladiator and Napoleon. Gruesome historical epics. Because this is where he shines. I want him to do a gory Punic Wars movie and a gory Battle of Lepanto movie1 and a gory Bar Kokhba revolt movie and a gory Hundred Years War movie centered around Joan of Arc. Sir Ridley Scott (who is eighty-seven, that's almost ninety) has shown no desire to retire. I say let him cook. Let him keep cranking these puppies out.
And he’s finally leaning into his superiority in making these insanely bloody pseudohistorical epics. When Napoleon came out, for example, Sir Ridley Scott told the historically accuracy nitpickers to “shut the fuck up.” This time, when they came for him over a ridiculous scene featuring sharks devouring gladiators in a colosseum naval battle, the director said “of course” the Romans could have had sharks in the colosseum. Which is a totally different response — one in which, Sir Ridley Scott is rewriting history. And honestly, that doesn’t bother me one bit.
But again, Sir Ridley Scott is nearly ninety years old. That’s fact A. And fact B — there are a ton of sharks in the colosseum scene, like two dozen, almost a sharknado amount of sharks. Can you imagine this ninety-year-old British knight/director in the editing room bellowing “more sharks! We need more sharks in the scene!” I love it. Maybe that’s not exactly how it happened but if the sharks in the colosseum scene taught us anything, it’s that we can rewrite history to fit our preferences.
Gladiator Two wasn’t on my radar until Katie started insisting that we go.2 But I remembered it being a thing from months ago, I remembered the first thing I heard about this movie was months ago when the racists were getting upset because Denzel Washington plays a historical character who, historically, wasn’t black. Nevermind that the movie’s two white emperors, historically, weren’t white. But Denzel Washington controls this movie and its story because he’s Denzel Washington. The same Denzel Washington he was in Training Day and American Gangster (another Ridley Scott film). And that’s hilarious and awesome. It’s just Denzel in ancient Rome.
The story, well the story stinks.3 It reminds me a lot of the Harris/Walz campaign. Full of promises that not enough people will buy. It’s built on this era in which Rome is really struggling (which it was, historically, after Marcus Aurelius died). There are angry mobs, homelessness is given deliberate screen time. But the story keeps driving at democracy — the return of a Republic to the Roman Empire. And yet, if recent history (see: the Harris/Walz campaign) has taught us anything, it’s that a struggling people prefer a strongman to fix their problems.
And even worse, any time they’re making a speech in Gladiator Two, it feels like they’re lecturing you (see: the Harris/Walz campaign). Successful Roman politicians were either really good generals, really good orators or preferably, both. They’d go out and rile up crowds in an attempt to further their political agendas. That’s exactly what Marc Antony did after the death of Caesar. And, to be fair, what Russell Crowe did in the first Gladiator movie. But nobody does that here.
And come on, they’ve got Paul Mescal, this sweet little thing to replace Russell Crowe, who very famously fought around the world. When Mescal does deliver a punchline (“wood or steel, a point is still a point”), it’s so much that you have to laugh at it. Just like you laughed at that scene in Napoleon where, Joaquin Phoenix comes into the room and grunts because he wants to have sex with his wife.
But then again, do you care? Are you entertained? I was. It’s an over-the-top movie. And that’s what I wanted. And, Sir Ridley Scott, sir, I want more of them.
A battle of Lepanto movie would bet perfect because Cervantes fought in it and Ridley Scott could do it as a frame tale and use Cervantes as the narrator.
Katie Hill, by the way, is the worst person to go to the movies with. No more than two minutes in, she leans over to me and whispers “what year is it here?” I roll my eyes. A few minutes later, when the female lead appears, Katie leans over, whispers “how is she connected to that other guy?” — somebody please add this to her Wikipedia page. I can’t edit anymore because (despite the fact that I actually give them money every single year) Wikipedia cut me off from editing after I kept changing the pages of medieval popes to make it sound like they were wizards.
It turns out Nick Cage originally wrote the alternative Gladiator Two script called “Christ Killer” in which Maximus begins in purgatory, he’s then resurrected after the Roman gods tap him as an “eternal warrior”. After his resurrection, Maximus (I guess, still, Russell Crowe?) has to end Christianity (for the Gods) by killing Jesus and his disciples. During his mission, Maximus is tricked into murdering his own son. Like the Ancient Mariner, he’s cursed to live forever, He then fights in the Crusades, World War II, and the Vietnam War; with the ending revealing that in the present-day, the character now works at the Pentagon. I stole a lot of that from Wikipedia, but lmao, awesome right?