Over two decades since the first “Gladiator,” the return to Ridley Scott’s Rome in “Gladiator 2” feels strange. Maybe the amount of time between the two, the overwhelming amount of legacy sequels, the standalone nature of the original film or being released alongside the highly anticipated “Wicked” accounts for this feeling.
I am willing to bet it combines all of these to varying degrees. Ultimately though, despite all of these external factors that may be framing this film, I am here to look more internally at how it holds up on its own.
Having the pleasure of watching the first “Gladiator” only about an hour before the sequel, I have no nostalgia for that film. It is indeed a solid film that very much told a self-contained story, so I went into the sequel wondering what direction would be taken.
Unsurprisingly, the sequel starts quite similarly, as Paul Mescal’s Hanno is a leader in his own right of a small army, much like Brad Pitt’s Maximus in the original; however, rather than being in the Roman army, Hanno is fighting the Roman army, led by Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius.
Setting up the revenge tale much quicker in the second installment, Hanno suffers a deep personal loss that puts him on the path of vengeance against General Acacius but only first by rising through the ranks as a Gladiator.
For anyone who has seen the first film, the similarities are apparent; however, it is where this film diverges that makes it interesting. Keeping it vague to avoid spoilers, the film is certainly not a pure revenge plot like the original. Where the original revenge plot took the primary focus and pushed the political intrigue to the side, this film elevates the political intrigue to be the primary focus.
This redirection made the film much more engaging for me, as I believe the first “Gladiator” in a modern context gets lost in the shuffle of much more unique revenge tale films such as “John Wick” and its many other clones.
Instead, the film uses the small number of politics discussed in the original to further explore themes of the cyclical nature of power or the possibility of inherently broken nations.
All of this is not to say the film is perfect. It does choose an interesting route for the continuation of the series that makes for an intriguing narrative, but it does falter.
Firstly, it forces itself to have direct links to the original. Rather than continue the story of this fictional version of Rome we return to some of the same people and artifacts of the original film. The biggest example of this is the return of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla. These connections are not inherently bad, but they do create strange retellings of the original film to justify them, while also simultaneously slowing down the plot to appease people’s nostalgia.
Along with this, and perhaps as a result of it, the film fails to explore fully its deeper political themes. The strict adherence to the “Gladiator” name and original film, for example, results in a lot of gladiator matches, that though fun to watch, also simultaneously had me thinking that the film was contorting the plot around the necessity of these scenes.
Ultimately, the film made me wish it dropped the “Gladiator” name and instead served as a spinoff that leaned into the idea of a historical political thriller, rather than trying to shoe-horn in too many nods to the revenge tale roots that it came from.
“Gladiator 2” is available to watch in theaters now.
