Ridley Scott's Gladiator II is Campy, Spectacle-Rich Fun With an Epic Performance from Denzel Washington

It turns out that Ridley Scott is good at directing movies.

When I started reviewing movies over a quarter century ago, back in the halcyon days of 1997, I was terrified that I’d be assigned to write about a movie and would be struck with a debilitating case of writer’s block.

I was tormented by visions of myself trying to review something utterly foreign to me and feeling lost and overwhelmed. This was connected, in my neurodivergent brain, to other fears that kept me up at night in a perpetual state of low-grade existential terror.

I was scared that I would be having an unstructured conversation and get so nervous and intimidated that I wouldn’t know what to say and would start weeping uncontrollably and throw myself on the floor.

This utterly unfounded concern was particularly pronounced when it came to the crazy-making world of telephone conversations. My frazzled and fraught brain nursed a bizarre yet strong conviction that I’d be on a particularly stressful phone call and, again, start crying uncontrollably and hurl myself on the floor in a frenzy of utter despair and conclusion.

I would like to write that my fear that I’d be so overwhelmed by some task or phone call that I’d freak out and revert to a baby-like state is pure, unjustified paranoia.

But the truth is that I was autistic then, just as I am autistic now, and two of the ways that we deal with feeling overwhelmed is by shutting down or melting down.

When you shut down, your body and brain are so over-stimulated that you temporarily lose the ability to speak coherently and behave in a logical, adult fashion. You essentially freeze.

Meltdowns are what they sound like. You get so overwhelmed that you freak the fuck out and start blubbering and panicking and have no idea what to do or say.

So, even though I did not know it at the time, I was afraid of shutting down or melting down.

I was worried that I’d see something like Gladiator II and be so overwhelmed that, for the first time in my twenty-seven-year career, I would be unable to write a halfway decent review of it.

I am not a sword and sandals guy. It’s just not my thing, so I was not a big fan of the original.

All I remember from it was the iconic scene where Russell Crowe, playing the titular Gladiator, thundered, “Are you not entertained?” I stood up and said, “Not particularly!” Then, I exchanged high-fives with everyone at the theater.

Then everybody laughed and laughed and laughed, and I was jubilantly carried out of the theaters by my fellow moviegoers in triumph.

I know Gladiator primarily as the movie that gave MF DOOM his mask. I’m not entirely sure why DOOM chose to make something from an Academy Award-winning sword and sandal movie so essential to his brand/aesthetic, but he did, so that mask is well represented in my MF DOOM-heavy pop art collection.

My expectations surged when I saw that Ridley Scott, the legendary filmmaker behind Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Matchstick Men, and American Gangster, directed it.

Scott is in his mid-80s but doesn’t seem quite ready for a sleepy retirement yet. In 2021, he released House of Gucci and The Last Duel. Last year, he released his Napoleon movie and followed it up with an ambitious spectacle on an epic scale.

Gladiator II takes place sixteen years after the events of the original movie. Russell Crowe’s badass slave-turned-gladiator is long dead, but his spirit lives on in copious flashbacks to his heroism and constant references to the first film.

Russell Crowe might not have technically returned because his character is dead, but he nevertheless figures prominently in the proceedings.

He lives on in the travails of his son Lucius Verus Aurelius (Paul Mescal), who is hidden by his mother Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) to protect him from assassins in Numidia. The rugged survivor ends up getting captured and enslaved when  General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) conquers Numidia for evil twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).

In the Gladiator movies, effete foppishness is synonymous with debauchery and evil. Geta and Caracalla are sinister snobs who broadcast their contempt for propriety and tradition.

Emperor Caracalla is particularly bonkers. His already warped brain is twisted further by STDs, probably syphilis. At one point, he appoints his pet monkey to play an important role in the government.

In other words, he would be a contender for the Trump cabinet if he were around today.

Unlike his father, Mescal is not a physically intimidating presence, but he has his fearlessness, nobility, independence, and ferocious fighting skills.

He distinguishes himself, for example, by beating a crazed feral ape in hand-to-hand combat. There are a lot of animals in Gladiator II.

The sadists who conduct these malevolent games like to throw a shark, ape, or tiger into the mix to make things a little more lively and dangerous.

These killer critters are realized through CGI. They do not look, move, or behave like real animals. I am fine with that. I’d rather be vaguely distracted by a creature of zeroes and ones mixing it up with real people than have animals be abused and sometimes killed for the sake of macho entertainment.

Denzel Washington is an exemplar of old-school masculinity. So it’s fascinating seeing him cast against type as Macrinus, a sexually androgynous former slave with an insatiable lust for power and status and a sharp mind that knows exactly what it wants and how to get it.

It’s Denzel Washington, as you’ve never seen him before: kind of gay! Washington delivers a big, theatrical, at-time campy performance that reminded me of Marlon Brando.

Gladiator II follows Lucius as he makes his way up the gladiatorial ranks while hiding the secret of his auspicious lineage.

Scott, working with screenwriter David Scarpa and cinematographer John Mathieson, highlights the savagery and brutality of a literal kill-or-be-killed realm where slaves are forced to fight each other to the death for the delight of a bloodthirsty crowd and even crueler leaders.

The veteran filmmaker is peerless in crafting a macho action spectacle on an epic scale. Scott may have been 85 when he revisited a past triumph, but Gladiator II feels like the vigorous work of someone much younger. In that respect, it’s a funhouse mirror version of Megalopolis, with actual Rome and actual Roman politics instead of that funky sci-fi shit Coppola was doing.

Gladiator III is apparently in the works. It seems like a difficult movie for an old man to make, but that’s true of Gladiator II, and he did a heck of a job.

Four stars out of Five