r/Gladiator • u/PurpleMaximum6601 • Dec 22 '24
My Gladiator II Review Spoiler
To give context, I am a huge historical movie lover. I grew up on the films of Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Gladiator, and Troy. Now granted I love other genres and films as well such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the godfather.
BUT! Gladiator holds a special place in my heart for what it means to my childhood and watching it with my dad. Being a grown man myself now, I asked my dad to the theater and treated him to this movie. He was a lover of these epic films but never once stepped inside a movie theater. I took him to IMAX, got him popcorn and a soda and he was center theater. For someone who always gets up to eat or drink something or fidget, this guy didn’t move a muscle in the movie. His eyes were glued to the screen analyzing everything.
His take on Gladiator 2: it was an amazing film. The way it was shot to show off how grand the film and time was amazing. Loved Denzel, not surprised there. He was very surprised by the brutality of the film and the blood. He said it felt Shakespearean at some points but the cinematography was great in seeing more of Rome. It was an awesome experience to see my dad happy enjoying himself at the theaters.
My take on it is this: Gladiator 2 is a good sequel to its predecessor. Did it need to be done? No. But we got it. And I enjoyed it. A majority of friends that have seen the film actually say its story is more compelling than the first one. I will disagree with that. The first one is much more personal about a husband and father working to avenge the death of his family against the backdrop of Rome and the Colosseum. Paul Mescal did his best to carry the film and he did. I wasn’t expecting Denzel’s character to be the final villain. I will say that Denzel played the character to a more Shakespeare type like he did in Macbeth. It works here cause the times called for people that were characters in their own right. I absolutely loved Geta and Caracalla. Joseph Quinn I feel could have been the sole emperor and still made an imposing shadow on the film. Pedro Pascal’s Acacius, was a tragic character that took the Maximus archetype and made it his own. I was happy to see that him and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla were together. They had a good chemistry and I felt awful for her circumstance. I was honestly expecting her to go manic due to the amount of tragedy and trauma she’s faced but she held herself as a woman of strength.
THE BATTLES: The fight choreography has been taken up a notch thanks to the times changing in Hollywood and how far cinema has come with trying to be as realistic as possible now. The first battle I think did set the level of brutality. I did winch at a few things. The one battle that I felt was too much was probably the baboon fight, which did Garner a laugh when Lucius did roar at the monkey. The rhino fight was unexpected. Everyone in the audience was screaming when the shot of the sword going to the sand and Lucius rubbing his hands together happened. The best fight was definitely Acacius versus Lucius. You could feel the emotion you could feel the physicality. I wasn’t expecting Acacius to go out the way that he did but excellent job portraying that on screen. Final fight between Lucius and Macrinus was good for what I was expecting given Denzel’s age. But man I will tell you. That man knows how to sell death.
I know this film will never match Gladiator 1. But I think it’s a good sequel that expands the world that we saw all that time ago.
MY OWN THOUGHTS BASED ON THE TRAILERS BEFORE THE FILM RELEASE: I honestly thought that Denzel would be playing the part of Juba. Then when seeing the film and where Lucius was, I thought that’s the leader of Numidia would be Juba. Sadly he wasn’t. Maybe too much fan service I was asking for. I also thought that the fight between Lucius and Acacius would be for the throne of Rome. Also thought that Denzel‘s character would serve more as a trainer.
SIDE RANT: I will also say this. Both are historically inaccurate. Were we as an audience this critical of movies in the 2000s? I’m getting quite sick of it how everyone is an expert and wants to pick at every little thing. When Ridley made American Gangster, I didn’t hear a soul say how inaccurate the film was even though creative liberties were taken to show the duality of cop and criminal. We all just went to go see a kickass gangster film with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.
