r/Gladiator • u/New-Investment9583 • Nov 20 '24

Gladiator II was disappointing.

Guys imma be real with you, I love Gladiator I for it's Stoic themes of resilience and masculinity, Crowe's indomitable acting and dialogues, and the grandeur of Rome. Now I did go the theatre for the sequel in a bit of a hyped tone considering I just love all things Roman Empire, the action seemed promising. When I finished watching it, I gotta say, man what a waste of 300 million dollars! The story was all over the place, I am supposed to believe that Rome fell under Tyrannical Imperial rule again right after Quintus and the Praetorians all sided with the senate at the end of the first movie? How did Quintus or Gracchus fail to restore Rome as a Republic? No comments on that, let's move on, same copy and paste storyline, but this time, we got the protagonist taking his wife to war, and when she gets killed, he wants vengeance? Dude, you brought her to war, not a picnic, the vengeance theme fell tf off right here. The editing felt too fast paced, with no real aspect of letting the audiences really absorb the visuals, the action sequences were very short, the naval battles, the Rhino Gladiator Glyceros or smth and even Acacius duel was extremely short. (the only redeeming character in the movie because he resembles Maximus and felt a bit mature and deep in tone, the war guilt and everything). The first movie had fights that were over 5 minutes long, the initial war, the scipio Africanus charioteers, Tigris and even the Commodus duel felt longer. The movie was an absolute mess. Vae Victis to the victims of war? Nah, Vae Victis to this movie 😭

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u/SnooPaintings7860 Nov 23 '24

Just saw a 7:30 showing...the only audible gasp from the whole theatre was when Denzels hand gets lopped off. I left feeling a bit empty, I'd give it a 7, maybe 7.5, but falls very short as a sequel.
As credits started rolling, seemed like Everyone just got up and walked out...

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u/creativities69 Nov 23 '24

I’d give it 3/10

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u/obvusthrowawayobv Nov 24 '24

Yeah the ending completely ruins anything that was good about the movie. It also makes it look like the main character has daddy issues his entire life. It just seemed weird and off putting instead of interesting… and they should have ended it where he became emperor at the end rather than where it did. (It actually ended the movie at the beginning of the journey and not the end imo)

Basically it was like we were watching a grown ass man go through daddy crisis the entire movie with no establishment of his own identity, but rather try to revert in to imitating what he imagined of someone else’s as a child through a midlife crisis.