Gladiator II review: Big entertaining spectacle tries to distract from sequel’s problems

Russell Crowe famously didn’t like one of the most quoted lines from Gladiator — “And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next” — and tried to improvise alternatives until he was convinced to stick to the script.

It’s a quote that is imbued with so much emotional significance and gave Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic a mix of pathos and purpose.

It was always a risky venture to make a sequel because, for some fans, they don’t just like Gladiator, they love it with a fervency and devotion usually confined to big genre franchises with dragons or spaceships.

But follow it Scott has, with Gladiator II, a sequel that comes 24 years later but is set 16 years after Crowe’s Maximus collapsed on the ground of the Colosseum, a husband and father avenged.

Gladiator II is a spectacle in that it has shark attacks (more on that later), deranged baboons that eat your face off, a charging rhino and a scene-stealing Denzel Washington who can’t believe his luck that he gets to swish around in gold-threaded robes.

It is, often, wildly entertaining and funny — intentional or otherwise. But what it doesn’t have is gravitas, and it’s light on the pathos and purpose so crucial to the original.

The story is thus: Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and Maximus’ love child Lucius (Paul Mescal) was sent away from Rome at the end of the first film in an effort to protect him from the schemers of the court. As the grandson of Marcus Aurelius and an heir to the throne, he was particularly vulnerable.

He grew up in North Africa and has made a life in Numidia where he and his wife (Yuval Gonen) are both warriors. One day, an invading Roman armada, led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), sails to the city’s fortresses to claim it for the Empire. Lucius’ wife is killed in battle, Numidia falls to the Romans and Lucius is taken as a slave.

Sold into a gladiator band, Lucius returns to Rome as the property of Macrinus (Washington), a former slave with high political ambitions looking to unseat the two ruling emperors, twin brothers Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius is ice cold to his mother, who is married to Marcus Acacius, the man Lucius wants to kill as the target of all his rage. He is a seriously angry young man.

Rome is in disarray, distracted from their hunger and discontent by the bread and circus of the gladiatorial combats. Either Scott doesn’t care about the irony or he’s leaning into it, Gladiator II is at its most effective as a piece of entertainment during these epic shows in the arena.

Those voracious sharks ready to devour every gladiator that falls off the ships sailing in a Colosseum filled with water: perhaps not historically accurate but a hell of a good time. And it distracts audiences from the fact Gladiator II is rife with problems.

Washington is by far the stand-out performer here. He is delighting in every syllable and every gesture as the tricky politician skilled in subterfuge and plotting. The sneering, the darted eyes, the snake-like movements — when was the last time Washington had so much fun?

The problem with that is he seems to be in an entirely different movie to Mescal’s far more serious Lucius.

Mescal is one of the most talented young actors to emerge in the past few years and the reason the Irish star has been so emotionally effective in the likes of Aftersun — for which he was nominated for an Oscar — All of Us Strangers and Normal People is that his vibe is considered and nuanced.

It’s a quieter, more naturalistic energy, which jars with Scott’s instincts for heightened, big dynamics. So, Mescal is one movie, with Pascal who is probably the most tonally matched with him, while Washington, Quinn and Hechinger’s showy performances are in another. And then Nielsen is off doing a whole other thing by herself.

There’s no consistency in the energies from these varied performances. On top of that, the writing often leans cheesy, and lines of dialogue that weren’t meant to be funny elicit dismissive chortles.

Gladiator II draws on the legacy of the original by aping many similar beats but it is a much clunkier assemblage that works in parts but not as a whole. It’s also more violent and gorier than its predecessor.

But if you adhere to the philosophy of some of the Roman emperors — and modern-day leaders — as long as it’s entertaining and a sensory overload, there’s enough here with which to have a good time. Just don’t think too hard about it.

Rating: 3/5

Gladiator II is in cinemas on November 14