Ridley Scott’s follow-up to his 2000 Best Picture winner may make you wonder if we’ve lost the ability to treat muscular historical epics seriously.
Photo: Paramount Pictures

While watching I thought a lot about men Gladiator II last week, and so did everyone else, it seemed. In the hazy, shell-shocked aftermath of the presidential election, as everyone searched for explanations as to why Donald Trump won so decisively, the conversation turned to men. Men who vote so differently from women, who rail against feminism, and who, faced with a mainstream culture that no longer guarantees their dominance, would rather choose to withdraw, leaving them forever in danger of leaving sliding into a pipeline of the digital manosphere that ends with them being dumped at the goblin-like feet of Andrew Tate, who celebrated the presidential results by declaring that patriarchy was back. How are we going to reach the men?experts worry, as a whole group of liberals online have insisted that the answer is to come up with some kind of blue-state response to Joe Rogan, never mind that Rogan himself is unlikely to have any committed political leanings to his podcast will attribute. Amid it all, Ridley Scott’s follow-up to his powerful 2000 hit, about a Roman general turned arena fighter, opens against Bad like a Barbenheimer reprise – except that Gladiator IIdespite its Best Picture-winning legacy, is so disappointing you might think: Huh, maybe masculinity really is in crisis.

I can’t say the problems all started when Hollywood ceded romanticized historical masculinity to RETVRN accounts that insist brutalist architecture is bad and eating massive amounts of raw liver is good. But I wouldn’t say that’s completely inaccurate either? The trick of movies like Gladiator And Master and commanderwhich came out within a decade of each other in what now feels like the last stretch in which these kinds of throwback epics consistently gained traction with mass audiences, is that their bloodshed and grand speeches hosted a lot of sentimentality – about honor and dying for what you’re in believes, sure, but also about men who unapologetically enjoy the camaraderie of other men. I knew a boy in high school who would burst into tears whenever he talked about it Brave heartwhich was a testament to the fact that the weepyness of Mel Gibson’s 1995 drama was as much of an appeal as the brutality of its fight sequences. Gladiator ends not with the body of Russell Crowe’s Maximus being lifted into his place as a soldier of Rome, but with fellow warrior Juba (Djimon Hounsou) burying his friend’s family memories in the floor of the Colosseum and vowing that they will see it each other ever again.

Unfortunately, it’s the closest Gladiator II has to Juba is a character played by Peter Mensah, who dies as soon as the film leaves Numidia, which is attacked by Roman legions at the start. That kingdom, on the north coast of Africa, is where the film’s exiled hero, Lucius, ends up after being secretly sent out of Rome by his mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), following the death of his father, who makes explicit in the sequel, was Maximus. In the 2000 film, Lucius was played by a young Spencer Treat Clark, while in the new film he was played by a considerably beefed-up Paul Mescal in his first major studio role. The Irish actor, a usually intriguing presence, doesn’t so much hold the screen here as he disappears into the commotion. Of all the ways he feels out of place, perhaps the most fatal is his complete inability to resemble someone other boys would follow to their death. Mescal’s career to date has been heavily defined by women – from his breakthrough role in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal people for the role in Charlotte Wells’ feature film debut Nazon that made him a favorite of critics – and he excelled at playing elusive objects of desire. But he is terrible at giving the rousing speeches that were so iconic Gladiator and that Gladiator IIwith a clumsier script written by David Scarpa, tries to recreate. His instinct is to downplay these moments rather than roar theatrically, which is a problem, especially when saddled with somewhat confusing catchphrases like “Where we are, death is not!”

It’s easier to imagine the audience chuckling than crying Gladiator II – as the first film showed, these films require a seriousness that this new one simply cannot sustain. Instead, like Scott and Scarpa’s latest collaboration, Napoleonit tends to land in an awkward place between unintentional and intentional funniness. Fred Hechinger, who plays half of a pair of tyrannical emperors with Joseph Quinn, gives a performance so great that every scene turns into a joke. Denzel Washington fares a lot better as the devious villain Macrinus, delivering some enjoyably unpredictable line readings (I was partial to “I own… your house. I want to …your loyalty”) and flashes a wolfish grin as he begins to realize that the slave he bought to fight is far more valuable than he could have imagined. Although Lucius is the designated heir to Rome and to the franchise, Macrinus has a backstory that is so much more compelling that you begin to root for his ruthless rise to the top, especially given Lucius’ reluctance to assume leadership or the position to recognize that his mother had. and her husband, the general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal, in a kind of surrogate Crowe role), have been called in. Macrinus is at least motivated, while Lucius reads indifferently until the script forces him to make an abrupt decision. shift in loyalty. When Macrinus talks about the anger he sees in his new fighter, it takes all of Washington’s might to make an observation that is patently untrue. At his best, Lucius looks like someone who sulks for a long time.

I wasn’t fond of it Gladiatorbut I appreciated the melodramatic conviction at its core, the way it was unabashedly emotional about grief and justice and restoring order to the world. Gladiator II echoes elements of the first film, including talk of the “dream of Rome” as a more egalitarian place, but while that idea is more central to the plot in the sequel, it feels even more abstract. Rome in this film is not solid enough to be saved or destroyed; it is a series of historical interiors that the characters pass through. Only when characters fight does the film come to life. The best battle sequence is the agitated opening scene, in which Marcus leads a fleet of ships to conquer Numidia, erecting built-in towers so his army can scale the walls and kill the soldiers trying to defend it, including Lucius’ archer wife. There are also clashes in the Colosseum involving a rhinoceros steed and a recreation of a naval battle that floods the arena. Scott, the old pro, manages to give these scenes a cruel vitality that overcomes any thoughts of how the Romans supposedly got live sharks in the water. But the tension of the action scenes only underlines the hollowness of the rest of the enterprise. Sure, we don’t all spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire, but those who do deserve better than this.