It’s been a full sixteen years since Ridley Scott last summoned the blood-soaked sands of ancient Rome for Gladiator, a film whose shadows loomed large over the genre of historical epics. Maximus may be long dead, but in Gladiator II, Scott’s latest attempt at revisiting the glory days of the empire, the weight of his absence is barely felt. Instead, we are ushered into an absurd world where the stakes of imperial power seem less about the survival of Rome and more about making sure the audience gets their fill of spectacle. If the first film had the gravitas of an opera, Gladiator II is more of a circus — loud, garish, and all too eager to please.
At 86, Scott seems to be reveling in the fact that no one expects him to take anything seriously anymore, and it’s hard not to admire the sheer joy with which he delivers a film that swings wildly between melodrama and farce. The grandiosity that once marked his films now feels increasingly out of sync with the content, and here, Gladiator II might as well have been subtitled Gladiator: Colosseum Drift for the number of wacky action sequences that push the boundaries of the absurd. It’s as if Scott took a look at Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, sprinkled in a little Pirates of the Caribbean, and decided that historical epics were ready for a full-scale identity crisis.
The story picks up sixteen years after the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, with Rome under the thumb of the squabbling Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger), who resemble little more than whiny variations of the Winklevoss twins from The Social Network. These two, predictably, are mere puppets to the power-hungry Macrinus (a gleeful Denzel Washington), a former slave who has climbed the social ladder with Machiavellian cunning and a flair for theatrics. Meanwhile, the long-lost son of Maximus, Lucius (Paul Mescal), has been living the wild life of a warrior-turned-slave, eventually finding himself brought to the Colosseum where he must fight against nature’s deadliest creatures in a series of ludicrously over-the-top gladiatorial games.
If the film’s plot doesn’t sound like a collection of half-formed ideas drawn from the dregs of Hollywood’s action-movie playbook, you’re not alone. For all the pomp and circumstance of the setting, the narrative here feels strangely derivative. Lucius, with his rugged, noble air and mysterious past, could be swapped out for any generic hero from the early 2000s sword-and-sandal cycle — his arc, a riff on Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, filled with vengeance, redemption, and, inevitably, the restoration of Rome. But the true driving force of Gladiator II isn’t its tired plot or even the political intrigue that shuffles uneasily through its veins. It’s the action, absurd and relentless, that propels the film forward.
And what action it is. Gone are the human opponents of the original film, replaced by a cavalcade of increasingly ridiculous foes: killer monkeys, a gigantic rhinoceros, and even a flooded Colosseum populated by a baker’s dozen of sharks. Yes, sharks. It’s a sequence straight out of a Vegas-themed nightmare, with weaponized Roman slaves swinging from ropes and trying to stab their way through pirate ships in an aquatic frenzy. It’s a moment that feels less like a battle for survival and more like a high-stakes Looney Tunes episode. The brutality is still there, of course — rivers of blood flow, gladiators are maimed, animals are unleashed — but it’s all wrapped in a package so over-the-top that the absurdity never lets up long enough for any of it to land with the weight of genuine threat.
Here’s where Gladiator II falters. The film simply cannot decide what tone it wants to strike. The more serious moments — familial betrayals, Macrinus’s rise to power — come off as laughable instead of tragic. Denzel Washington, by far the most charismatic performer in the cast, is the lone bright spot, his performance veering dangerously close to camp in a way that almost saves the film from itself. Every time Washington enters a scene, he owns it, gliding through with ease and magnetism that makes the rest of the cast look like they’re sleepwalking through their lines. If only the film had embraced his sense of fun fully — Gladiator II might have worked better as an action-comedy. As it stands, though, it’s a shy three-hour epic without the weight or coherence to justify its length.
Ultimately, the movie drags on far longer than it should, wasting its best moments on long stretches of forgettable melodrama. The story peters out just as you expect it to build to some grand, final confrontation. Instead, we get more fights with animals. What’s missing here isn’t just emotional depth, but the understanding that you can’t have it both ways — a film like Gladiator II needs either high stakes or high camp, but not both, and certainly not in this confused, mish-mash of a script.
Perhaps Gladiator II would have fared better had Scott leaned more into the absurdity, embracing the popcorn spectacle it could have been rather than struggling to balance epic themes with winking, self-aware action. In the end, though, the franchise’s next logical step is clear: If this film can throw killer sharks into the Colosseum, why not dinosaurs next time around? And maybe, just maybe, Vin Diesel could show up to settle the score. Because at this point, Gladiator II seems to have already crossed into the realm of the completely unhinged, which is just how Caligula would have loved it.