Glad­i­a­tor II review – are you not entertained?!

Fif­teen years after the script to Nick Cave’s pro­posed sequel to Glad­i­a­tor leaked, an offi­cial fol­low-up final­ly rides into cin­e­mas, cour­tesy of Sir Rid­ley and screen­writer David Scarpa (who also wrote All The Mon­ey in the World and Napoleon) and fea­tur­ing con­sid­er­ably less Christ-killing that the Bad Seed intend­ed. The coup of cast­ing man-of-the-moment Paul Mescal as the heir to Rus­sell Crowe’s Max­imus Dec­imus Merid­ius all but ensures legions of Gen Z and Mil­lenial fans will be flock­ing to cin­e­mas, along­side folks for whom the Roman Empire is their Roman Empire. John­ny-Come-Late­ly sequels to Scott prop­er­ties are noth­ing new (Blade Run­ner 2049 direct­ed by Denis Vil­leneuve, Prometheus and Alien Covenant over­seen by Scott) but a Glad­i­a­tor fol­low-up seems like a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing propo­si­tion con­sid­er­ing most of the main char­ac­ters had died by the end of the first film.

This leaves Lucil­la (Con­nie Nielsen), who has shacked up with Gen­er­al Mar­cus Acacius (Pedro Pas­cal) after send­ing her son Lucius – the blond mop­pet played by Spencer Treat Clark in Scott’s 2000 film – away for his own safe­ty. Lucius, now a strap­ping 20-some­thing, lives a sim­ple life in Numidia with his wife, until the Roman army rocks up at the behest of twin emper­ors Cara­calla and Geta (Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn) and start swing­ing swords. After los­ing his wife to one of Gen­er­al Acacius’s arrows, Lucius finds him­self on a slave ship bound for Rome, where he is prompt­ly bought by cheer­ful slaver Macri­nus (Den­zel Wash­ing­ton) who sees his poten­tial as a gladiator.

Per­haps this all sounds a bit famil­iar to those who have seen Sir Rid’s orig­i­nal. A beardy bloke with a vague­ly British accent wants revenge after his home and fam­i­ly are mur­dered at the hands of Rome; said beardy bloke ends up hack­ing his way to vengeance as a glad­i­a­tor. The sequel does hit a lot of the same plot points as the orig­i­nal, with the unfor­tu­nate caveat that – with the excep­tions of Wash­ing­ton and Nielsen – none of the cast are very good. The nor­mal­ly reli­able Mescal is a pale imi­ta­tion of Crowe, although it’s down to the unin­spired script rather than his act­ing – Lucius has lit­tle emo­tion­al range beyond rage, and while this works to grand effect in the ear­ly glad­i­a­tor bat­tle between Lucius and a bunch of blood­thirsty baboons, the wind goes out of his sails quickly.

Much has been made of the scale in this sequel too, par­tic­u­lar­ly the epic Colos­se­um naval bat­tle fea­tur­ing a load of sharks, but these set­pieces are frus­trat­ing­ly short – there’s a lot of build-up to big moments that are over in a flash. Sim­i­lar­ly, ten­sion between char­ac­ters seems to evap­o­rate all too eas­i­ly, mean­ing it’s hard to real­ly see any weight in their words or actions. This, com­bined with the flim­sy con­ceit that a fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt insti­tu­tion can be changed from the inside out with a few good men, means that Glad­i­a­tor II lacks both the grav­i­tas and sim­ple but sat­is­fy­ing nar­ra­tive arc which made its foun­da­tion such a refresh­ing epic.

It’s a case of throw­ing every­thing at the wall and see­ing what sticks; Washington’s glee­ful­ly oppor­tunis­tic vil­lain is fun, but Quinn and Hechinger are giv­ing two half impres­sions of a whole Joaquin Phoenix, and Pedro Pas­cal – immi­nent­ly charm­ing off-screen – has all the dra­mat­ic flair of a dull sword. Despite occa­sion­al flash­es of inspi­ra­tion – the baboon fight, some pleas­ing­ly vis­cer­al gore – this sequel lacks both the impact of its inspi­ra­tion and the fresh ideas nec­es­sary to stand on its own two feet.