No, you haven’t woken up in Elysium—Gladiator II is really here, 24 years after the release of the original. But does the second installment live up to the hype of its Best Picture–winning predecessor? Is Paul Mescal cut out to be a movie star, or should he just let Denzel Washington handle things from here on out? And what the heck was up with those CGI baboons? Below, the Ringer staff has answers to all of these questions and more.
1. What is your tweet-length review of Gladiator II?
Megan Schuster: Look how they massacred my boy (my boy being the original Gladiator).
Jomi Adeniran: You know that picture of the guy dressed exactly like Michael Jordan but who is definitely NOT Michael Jordan?
Yeah.
Miles Surrey: I came to see sharks in the Colosseum; I got to see sharks in the Colosseum.
Ben Lindbergh: A summer movie miscast as awards bait (not that some movies—like the original Gladiator!—can’t be both). Expect a silly spectacle instead of a Best Picture, and you’ll have a fantastic time. I think the key for me was not rewatching Gladiator, which I hadn’t seen in years. Was the sequel too similar? Probably! But if your franchise history is hazy, this new popcorn flick will feel fresh.
Khal Davenport: Anytime there’s a chance to watch Denzel Washington attempt to take over the Roman Empire, count me in.
2. What was the best moment of the film?
Lindbergh: So what was Denzel’s best moment, you mean? Probably the one where he walks into Thraex’s house and tells him Macrinus owns it.
Surrey: Anytime Denzel did something—and I’m including the press tour.
Schuster: Anytime Denzel was on-screen with the two dippy emperors. That’s a spinoff I would watch! The monkey, the twin jealousy, the syphilis, Denzel convincing one brother to off the other in one simple conversation. Make that Gladiator III (or I guess at this point, it’d have to be Gladiator 1.5, RIP all three of those guys), and I’m all the way in.
Davenport: The duel between Lucius and Macrinus at the end was exciting. Throughout the film, we saw Macrinus’s skills as a schemer, but I found myself eagerly waiting to see his skills as a fighter. I was pleasantly surprised by how capable Macrinus was against a younger opponent who had been actively doing battle throughout the film.
Adeniran: The action was a highlight of the film, and I really enjoyed the fight scene in the palace when Lucius first arrived in Rome. It was gruesome, brutal, and visceral in all the right ways.
3. What was your least favorite part of the movie?
Surrey: You could overlay all the major plot points and characters onto the original movie—Paul Mescal working his way up the gladiator ranks, Denzel as the new Antonius Proximo, psychotic emperor(s) unfit to rule Rome—which does the sequel a disservice because, well, it’s Gladiator.
Davenport: There was all that talk about Macrinus’s past as a slave who fought as a gladiator, but I wish we had a chance to see some of that in a flashback.
Adeniran: Every single time Denzel Washington wasn’t on-screen.
Lindbergh: The way it wasted Pedro Pascal. Then again, we’re not exactly lacking for quality Pascal performances in genre releases. So on second thought, maybe that the Denzel kiss got cut. Even if it was more of a peck than a full-on lip-lock, you can’t rob me of Macrinus mackin’ on someone so soon after Steven Spielberg took our Twisters kiss away.
Schuster: So we just replaced the heavy-handed wheat metaphor of the first movie with a heavy-handed river metaphor in the second? Ridley, my guy, we get it!
Also, they put my beautiful Pedro Pascal in that ultra-boring role?
And had Paul Mescal doing iffy Russell Crowe karaoke (not his fault)?
And cut off the ship battle sequence (which was the only original Colosseum fight of the whole movie) after, like, five minutes?
And had Mescal quell a civil war with just one sorta-OK speech? (How did the soldiers up on the hills even hear him??)
And “the dream of Rome” was referenced an infinite number of times?
(I’m working through a lot here, guys. Sorry.)
4. Denzel Washington. Please discuss.
Davenport: Seeing our greatest living actor wriggle into the upper crest of the empire while donning all of the rings and the finest of robes is worth the price of the movie ticket. He gradually assumes control right before our eyes, which is exactly how I would have written it. Consider this customer satisfied.
Adeniran: 2018 LeBron James.
2019 Lionel Messi.
2022 Steph Curry.
Those are the only names that can compare to the amount of carrying that Washington did in this movie. Every scene with him is magnetic and engaging in a way that is so different from the rest of the movie. It’s wild but not surprising that with all the acting talent in this film, Denzel stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Surrey: A performance so compelling that you don’t even want to root against his character at the end of the film. A more interesting version of Gladiator II would’ve treated Macrinus’s rise up the political ladder as the main attraction—it’s honestly more interesting than everything Mescal gets up to in the Colosseum.
Lindbergh: This movie won’t help him beat the allegations that regardless of the role, he’s always playing Denzel. But maybe it’ll dispel the idea that Denzel being Denzel could ever be a bad thing. I can’t wait for Wakandenzel.
Schuster: He was in a completely different—and much more interesting—movie than everyone else, and he ate. I would listen to him explain politics to me anytime. He should wear only flowing togas from here on out. His line reading of “I own … your house. I want … your loyalty,” all while repeatedly kissing his prey on the cheeks—that’s cinema. He deserved better than that weird death in the river.
5. If you were an emperor of Rome and could have a pet that you named first consul of the empire, which animal would it be and why?
Adeniran: I’m picking a tiger, and I’m naming him Jaquarious. Who’s gonna step to a freaking tiger? Nobody, that’s who.
Surrey: My cat, Lizzie, who would rule with an iron paw. (I will be asked to drop delicate cuts of meat into her mouth like they’re grapes.)
Schuster: Obviously one of the sharks, even though I have 25,000 questions about how ancient Romans could have plucked sharks out of the ocean and gotten them into a Colosseum that … I presume was somehow filled with salt water? I know Rome was advanced for its time, but the shark transpo technology seems like a reach.
Lindbergh: The same animal I’ve appointed first consul of my IRL realm: the noble miniature dachshund. Dachshunds didn’t exist in imperial Rome—or anywhere else in the ancient world, for that matter—but if Ridley can have anachronistic sharks, surely I can have a hot dog.
Davenport: As much as I’d want to say a rhino or some other massive beast, I am also a person with three cats in my home, so I imagine some feline companion would be by my side. With all the humans running around like they own the place, having a chill, feline first consul kinda fits.
6. It’s roughly AD 200, and Gladiator II has a Roman nobleman reading a newspaper 1,200 years before the invention of the printing press. What do you think he was reading about?
Schuster: I like to think that it was a Page Six–esque tabloid about the sex lives of the twin emperors. We know they were getting around—the people deserve to know with whom!
Surrey: The latest over/unders for the gladiator battles.
Davenport: I’d guess something like a review of the Severan Tondo, a contemporaneous panel painting about the Severan dynasty. Or a match recap of the gladiator battles from the previous night.
Lindbergh: I don’t know, but historically speaking, it had to have been fake news.
7. What’s your outlook on Paul Mescal’s future as a blockbuster movie star?
Lindbergh: I actually like a soft-spoken, low-affect action star who lets the pyrotechnics supply some of the explosiveness, and it’s refreshing that Paramount didn’t make Mescal get Marvel-movie shredded. But I didn’t find him fully convincing in this particular part, however Roman his nose (and however Irish the actor who played Lucius’s granddad). Sad boys are ascendant, so he’ll be back in blockbusters. I’m just not sure swords and sandals are his strength.
Schuster: I am a certified Paul Mescal stan—have been since Normal People, will continue to be for a very long time. I don’t think he’s an action star, even though he was better in this role than I expected him to be. Could he be a future mainstream movie star? For sure—put him in a spot where he can be #vulnerable and allowed to #emote and he will shine. I don’t need to see him getting swole and taking a bite out of a freakishly CGI-d ape, though.
Davenport: I think his future in this realm of moviemaking shows promise. He destroyed how many opponents throughout this film’s runtime? As a fighter alone, Mescal appears to have the goods. Give him the right role in an ensemble action flick and he may be on his way!
Adeniran: One miss doesn’t put you into a slump, and one make doesn’t take you out of it, so there’s a lot of game left for him. That said, maybe the big-time warrior king isn’t the right role for him. He’ll have many more opportunities to prove himself, though, and I think he’ll make the most of them.
Surrey: He’s a good actor; I’m not sure he’s a good movie star. It didn’t help that Gladiator II gave us brief snippets of Russell Crowe from the original movie—now that’s a movie star.
8. What is the biggest lingering question you have after watching Gladiator II?
Schuster: Why wasn’t this better? Whyyyyyyy? (Also, what happens to Dundus now that Emperor Caracalla is dead?)
Adeniran: CGI aside, was that monkey attacking Lucius based on a real species? Because I’m not a primate professor, but in all my years spent watching Animal Planet and National Geographic, I have NEVER seen a monkey that looked like that. The CGI was god awful, so maybe that played a part in it, but at least I could recognize the baboons! Someone please tell me, it’s keeping me up at night.
Lindbergh: When we left Lucius, the dream of Rome was resurgent. Unless Ridley is so committed to messing with history that he’s planning a permanent Pax Romana—a pretty popular what-if—then something has to happen to bury the republic for good. How will the dream die? Will it be Dundus’s doing?
Surrey: Once again a gladiator has emerged from the Colosseum with a promise to restore Rome to its former glory. What’s to stop the city from devolving into chaos and corruption again?
Davenport: Does Lucius acquire magical powers every time he touches that dirt? I understand the symbolism, but it just made me groan after a while.
9. Ridley Scott says he’s developing a script for Gladiator III, continuing the adventures of Lucius Verus. What would you like to see from this movie?
Surrey: I would like Gladiator III to be Nick Cave’s idea for a Gladiator sequel, in which Maximus fights his way through the afterlife. Sixty-year-old Russell Crowe squaring off against Roman deities … I’ll crowdfund this project if I have to.
Lindbergh: Maximus didn’t make it out of the arena, but Lucius survived. Now, perhaps, he’ll be the dog that caught the car—the car, in this case, being the ruler of Rome. I’m hoping his newfound proximity to power turns him into the type of tyrant he fought so hard to overthrow. Give me Mescal’s emperor arc; I have to hear him say, “I am the senate.”
Davenport: Longer depictions of naval battles in the Colosseum, to be honest. If you’re gonna do it, do it!
Adeniran: A movie that isn’t 100 percent identical to its predecessor. Just give us something different, anything different, please.
Except for the CGI monkeys. Never change, CGI monkeys. Never change.
