Gladiator II (2024)

For those of you that have been waiting (I can't say that I've been on tenterhooks) it's nearly twenty-five years since Ridley Scott rebooted the swords and sandals genre of film making with the multiple award winning Gladiator. Do we need a sequel considering Gladiator's pretty finite ending?

Absolutely not, but that doesn't mean that people haven't been trying to bring a second Gladiator film to our screens for a long time, including a Nick Cave script that supposedly still exists somewhere on the internet that sees Russell Crowe's Maximus delving into the depths of hell to maim and stab etc, etc.

Crowe apparently didn't like it; and eventually dropped out of proceedings altogether, paving the way for Paul Mescal to don the sandals but most importantly for many- going sans shirt for a large part of the running time. Derek Jacobi is back as Gracchus, Denzel Washington steps in to play a glorified version of Oliver Reed's Promximo from the original, and Connie Nielson also returns as Lucilla.lso returns as Luci

So in the end what finally hits our screens is not so much Gladiator II but Gladiator Again, minus Russell Crowe. You liked Ridley Scott's Gladiator? Well, have another one.

Mescal's Lucius is Lucilla's son, all grown up since the original and we learn that he was swiftly ushered away from Rome in the minutes after Maximus' death at Gladiator's end (spoiler alert). Apparently it's dangerous for him to be there what with the death of his Uncle Commodus and Maximus, and all of this nonsensical plot detail is totally irrelevant when it comes to Gladiator II's main intention- that is, to entertain its audience.

Thank God then, that despite essentially being more or less the same film as its predecessor, Gladiator II enthrals by the bucket load. I've said it before, but nobody builds worlds like Scott, and Rome once again here looks sensational- the Colosseum is stunning even as it's peppered with CGI for various sequences (including one in which it's flooded and sharks enter the arena- I kid you not) and we open with a spectacular battle sequence as Pedro Pascal's Marcus Acadius attacks Numida where Lucius and his wife Arishat are living. Arishat is killed in the attack, and Lucius is taken away into slavery. Sound familiar?

Scott, once again, knows how to shoot a battle- and although it's hard not to wistfully remember authentic looking practical effects and natural seas, these are fairly minor quibbles in a sequence that is engaging and bloody. The film then follows almost the exact same path as you'd expect- there are two mad twin emperors who are ruling Rome with a lust for blood, one more idiotic than the other- but with none of the strange menace that Joaquin Pheonix's Commodos brought to proceedings previously, meaning that their rule just seems fairly silly rather than threatening.

Denzel Washington is in scene stealing form as Macrinus- a former slave who now holds ambitions of ruling Rome, and buys Lucius to fight for him in the Colosseum. Washington revels in every minute of screen time he gets, and thankfully there's plenty of it as he works his way up the ranks offering advice to the emperors that serves only to drive his own personal cause.

Mescal is also as terrific as you'd expect, bringing real vigour to a role that in other hands may have lead the whole thing into farcical parody, (the film genuinely resembles various cuts of Tinto Brass' Caligula at intervals) and despite that fact you can almost sense your brain swiftly choosing to skirt over plot holes or ignoring your own eyebrows raising themselves as things become ludicrous, it's hard to answer no to Maximus' infamous quotation of "Are you not (still) entertained?"

Gladiator II flies by (despite being sat amongst one of the worst behaved audiences I've ever been party to) and even though it is impossible to really justify the film's existence -nearly twenty five years after the original- the fact that it keeps you thoroughly entertained and was apparently shot by Scott in just fifty-one days, is some achievement. 7.2/10