A Review: Gladiator 2 and the24 Year Wait

I went to see Gladiator 2 on Sunday. For the first twenty minutes, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Gladiator 1. Paul Mescal is your friendly neighbourhood Numidian Guy, married to a wonderful, soon-to- be-dead Numidian Gal. Their lovely home is beaten to the beyond by the Romans, led by Pedro Pascal as a general in dire need of a holiday. Numidian Guy, captured and grieving for his wife, is sent – you guessed it – to the Colosseum. And he is – you guessed it – consumed with Rage. Yay! 

Once we escape the Gladiator 1 rehash, though, this movie hits its stride, and personally I loved it. We’ve been hit with a deluge of sequels and remakes lately, with this one hitting screens 24 years after the original. Most of us would say we’d prefer something new, something fresh. However, director Ridley Scott seems to recognise that sometimes, we want kind of the same thing but just more of it. This is in no way an insult, because this movie is Entertaining with a capital E. Paul Mescal commits to the bit, giving a genuinely believable, understated performance in a film which seems to have made it its mission to be OVERSTATED. The kill count is in the thousands! There’s actual sharks! And also mutant monkeys! And for some reason, it works. As the famed philosopher Harry Styles once said, This Movie Feels Like A Movie – and no movie has ever Movied as hard as Gladiator 2. 

So yes, Paul Mescal is great as our new gladiator – and so is Pedro Pascal, as a weary, please-let-me-retire, surprisingly sympathetic army general. My personal favourite, however, has to be Denzel Washington. His character (which I won’t spoil) lends a level of intrigue to a movie that doesn’t have a ton of plot twists. As a bonus, he doesn’t even attempt to hide his American accent and is so believable that I didn’t notice it till halfway through. It’s a movie that demands to be seen on a cinema screen – a refreshing thing to see in the age of ‘I’ll just stream it when it’s out on Netflix’.

So, now for my complaints. I only have one main one, really, and it’s not even specific to this movie. I beg of all male action movie directors – please stop introducing a Lovely Wife for 23 seconds, killing her off almost immediately and then expecting us to care about her character. And if anyone is foaming at the mouth about spoilers, this particular Lovely Wife lasts about 5 minutes (a record!)  so you’re not missing much. I understand that our gladiator needed motivation to go do Gladiator Things – but there are surely more interesting ways to do it than killing off one of your two female characters. 

So, would I have fleshed out the character of the Lovely Wife, or cut out the first fifteen minutes completely? Yes. But that does not make it a bad movie. Maybe, it makes it a good movie. It’s very self-aware of what it is – Gladiator isn’t trying to teach you life lessons, it’s trying to see how many components you can put into a gladiator naval battle before it gets too ridiculous (answer – as many as you want. Have I mentioned the sharks?). Overall, go see it – the cast is brilliant, the fight scenes are so believable I actually winced several times, and also Denzel Washington is there! Are you not entertained? *leaves* 

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