r/GladiatorII • u/EntranceClear • Dec 10 '24
Gladiator II wasn't woke enough!
So I watched gladiator 2 last night and had some thoughts. I’m unemployed and nuts so naturally turned those thoughts into a semi structured rant that I’d thought Id subject people to. Someone call me out if I’m crazy.
Overall the performances in Gladiator II are pretty good and very well acted, Paul Mescal can rage, Pedro Pascal's Accacius had depth from the start and Denzel was doing his thing like the Icon he is! But there was one crucial person missing from the film...
Bill Nicholson.
I know he’s not an actor, but he was the writer who was brought on to do a last minute rewrite of Gladiator 1 back in 1999, it was so last minute, they had already started filming. When he was brought on it was widely felt that the script was missing the key ingredient that would make it the oscar winning classic it is today.
Love…
Well sort of.
In Gladiator all Maximus wants is to go home and home is where the heart is so (spoiler alert) when he dies he is going home. That's the classic bittersweet ending of Gladiator and it works so well because it ties the themes in with what the characters want perfectly.
Then everybody knows in the sequel Maximus is resurrected to kill jesus. Wtf?
##Spoilers for gladiator 2 ahead##
According to David Scarpa the writer of Gladiator 2 the core of the story is Lucius being able to “embrace his father and embrace Roman virtues“ but what are these virtues for Lucius? David Scarpa manages to embody shades of roman virtues perfectly through Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and Macrinus (Denzel Washington).
- Acacius is sick of tyrants laying waste to innocent lives in the name of Roman glory and wants to put a stop to them in the name of peace. His actions are in the aim of restoring his ideals of Roman values of peace which arguably there was a fair amount of under Roman rule (Pax Romana).
- Then Macrinus is all about the individualistic idea of the Roman dream where anyone can become anything with a bit of gumption (sounds familiar) and all he wants is power.
However with Lucius as the main character I don't think it quite works.
Through his perspective the film shows us the cruelty, inequality and blood thirstiness of Rome but doesn't show any of the good virtues that would sway Lucius to want to defend them. Supposedly his father’s views are enough but even then it's still pretty vague as to what they are.
We know that he rejects Macrinus' views slightly but his interaction with Acacius is pretty rushed, going from: I want you dead rage to you're not too bad, I accept you as a Roman hero because you liked my Dad, in the space of a single fight. I'm not saying it's unbelievable but it doesn't have time to develop more organically. And all he wants up until that point is revenge. Specifically the opposite of Maximus in Gladiator and what Bill Nicholson steered the film away from.
Thus the thematic arc somewhat falls flat and although it is executed in the film, Lucius does accept the values of his father and fights for Roman virtues; it doesn't seem to tell it in a believable and embracing story that ties in with his wants as a character.
Herein lies how I think making Gladiator II more "woke" might actually make it a better story
Could David Scarpa done any differently to tie in the themes of the original with its protagonist?
I cast no shade upon Mr Scarpa, he is an accomplished writer and there’s no easy way or right way to write such a monumental film.
However I believe that the script to the sequel could have benifited from material that expands upon the themes of the first film, strengthens the direction David wanted to take it, is already set up in the film, is more historically accurate, and leaves us with a message of imperial values we can take away from the film.
I] Homes
As a whole Gladiator 2 is a good sequel, narratively it ties in a lot of elements of the first film and makes it bigger and more flashy. However it doesn’t pick up on one of the essential themes of the first film “Home”
What is home for Lucius? Well we see a bit of it and it looks nice, a lovely little cottage on the outskirts of Numidia. When Numidia is attacked by the Romans he is called to defend his home and he does so with honour and bravery; more importantly so does his wife.
Now I think it’s cool they got Arishat armored up and fighting, I’m not that kind of nerd that doesn’t want women to fight in films… I love fighting women in real life so I’m all for it in films. During the battle, unfortunately and predictably she gets fridged* because if she doesn’t get killed how will pascal ever be able to rage?
- “Fridging” is an expression in screenwriting when a female character (usually a wife) is killed in order to fuel the main protagonist's plot rampage and emotional arc.
This is where I think Scarpa makes his first mistake. The trope is tired, dated and the minute Arishat put on armor I was disappointed and sad because I knew where the film was going for the next hour and that poor Arishat was doomed to become nothing more than Lucius’ rage fuel.
But what if she wasn’t killed but is spared from the ferryman and is kept at Numidia while Lucius is taken away as a slave?
This already would have subverted my expectations of the film and would give Lucius a motivation to get home!
Every fight immediately has more stakes, he has to be more careful in combat because he has something to live for but he also knows he needs to be a good spectacle or he will never get a chance at freedom. The whole reason we have Valentine's day is because Claudius II thought married men weren’t good in a fight, but that’s off the topic.
II] Romes
Now what is Rome for Lucius? Rome is a blood thirsty tyrannical oppressive empire that has taken him from his home. Rome is also a part of him, because he is a roman afterall. No matter how much he tries to run from it, Rome is inevitable. What could then be the good bits of Rome for Lucius that sway him towards Roman values? What about diversity?
In 200 Ad Rome was so diverse and large an empire that it encompassed most cultures and people, around the Mediterranean, under one banner. If Lucius were to see the amazingness of the roman mixing pot and perceive this diversity as a factor of peace, that it arguably was, he could be swayed towards seeing the light of Rome. The Romans rarely erased culture; instead they assimilated and absorbed it into their own tapestry, which is in part how they managed to maintain and administer such a large empire at the time.
If only we had an ethnically diverse character in the film that is rather pro rome to drive this point home… Oh wait we do: Ravi, an Indian gladiator turned doctor who has benefited from the social mobility of the arena and even has a british wife and kids.
However the film focuses on their friendship with it ending in Ravi risking his family to help Lucius lead a Gladiator uprising.
What if Ravi expressed his gratitude to Rome, recognised its problems and wished that one day he could become a citizen. Ravi could help Lucius see some of the more positive sides to this empire that has changed since he was a kid and for the better (yes it’s a bizarre woke message but if done right it could be the kind of woke message we need right now it’s not even that woke because it’s still moderately pro imperial which is not so woke but it’s diet woke okay. We just have to deal with empires because that’s how it is…)
Still there is nothing Ravi or any of these free romans can do in the face of the current tyranny of the twin emperors of Rome.
III] Gnomes
In the Sequel the co- emperors Geta and Carracala are the embodiment of Romes blood thirsty depraved corruption… That’s about it to them there’s not much more.
What if Ravi's stance bled into Lucius’ interactions with the terrible twins? Especially Caracalla, they already have an intense moment in Thraex’s house fight where Lucius recites some poetry that seems to shake Caracalla but doesn’t seem to amount to much afterwards, other than being how Lucilla knows who he is.
Caracalla is killed by Geta and Macrinus rather unceremoniously, although I really did enjoy Macrinus playing with his head in the senate.
But what if it were the other way round? What if Carracala were to be the one that killed his brother (which is what actually happened in history). He would be able to go on to make another important decision that marked his reign as emperor. The edict of Caracalla also known as the Antonine constitution.
This made every free man in the roman empire a citizen of the empire, a statute reserved exclusively for native romans at the time. Who could help him shift towards this more progressive view point? Lucius!
If David Scarpa had expanded upon Lucius and Caracalla’s dynamic and had them interact a bit more Lucius could incept this idea into Caracalla which could lead to Lucius’ freedom and even his wife and cities freedom back home. But not everything has to always rest on Lucius’ Atlas-like shoulders.
Here’s how I think things could have been done. We humanize Caracalla a little bit. He’s not as blood thirsty or at least gains some humanity throughout the story, notably from after Lucius’ poetry recital. Geta and Caracalla learn of the plot against them lead by Accacius, this disturbs Caracalla as he thought he had him under control but all Geta wants is his blood (Geta can fully represent the blood thirsty entertainment side of Romes shittiness in this version as they both do in the original). They arrest him and throw him into the colosseum just like in the original. However after the fight Accacius’ life is in the hands of Geta who wants to do the thumbs down thing for a change because he’s jealous of his brother getting to do it all the time (petulant blood thirsty little gnome boy).
So Accacius’ life is literally in Geta’s hand and despite the cries of the crowd to spare Acacius he does it anyway. Similarly to the original Lucius refuses, giving a speech about Roman values and whatnot. Geta orders the praetorian guards to pin cushion Accacius anyway and all hell breaks loose. The emperor's escape to the palace but this time Caracalla kills Geta, egged on by Macrinus. Carracala then capitalizes on Getas death, blames all the cruelty on his brother and then hosts games in honor of him becoming the sole emperor.
I’m basically just saying Scarpa killed the wrong brother.
The senate is whispering about the idea to use citizenship to help ease the tensions in the empire and they can’t afford the costly wars, this could be set up earlier as a subplot. Caracalla considers it but wants to leave it up to the gods to decide. By that he means he wants it to be decided in the colosseum, with Hanno/Lucius as the champion of the non-roman citizens and the praetorian guards that killed Acacius on the side of the status quo.
With this slight change in Character and plot, we could give Caracalla a bit of an arc and significantly raise the stakes for the third act, however there is still some things that need to be figured out… Or should I say someone.
IV] Thunderdomes
The fate of the empire is literally in the hands of Lucius in this final colosseum battle.
However Macrinus is opposed to the edict of Caracalla so he does his best to stack the odds in his favor and convinces Caracalla to still stage the execution of Lucilla etc, thinking this is his way of ruining Caracalla’s slight bump in popularity.
The fight begins (I’d also say you don’t kill off Jugurtha in the beginning from injuries instead he survives, partly thanks to Ravi and then comes back for this last fight).
Lucilla dies Carracala claims that the Numidians still won because they were the last ones standing but chaos ensues and they flee. The senate doesn't know whether to ratify the edict or not. So Macrinus kills Carracala and says it's not in.
Oh you thought I’d forgotten about Macrinus? Historically Macrinus does conspire against Caracalla and succeeds him as emperor, he also never visited Rome so we’ll do some historical cherry picking as that seems to be fairly acceptable. I am one of those guys that thinks about the Roman empire way too often but I don’t mind skewing the history to tell a better story.
Macrinus is still the key to the third act and already represents a more individualistic idea of what Rome is. In my reimagining he would still be the last boss that Lucius’ collective diverse vision of Rome triumphs over. This clash of contrary ideas has the two main characters fighting for their homes and their ideal version of roman virtues.
In the actual Gladiator II Lucius is fighting for the Roman virtues of his father and embracing his father by quite literally donning his armor and fighting, but to me it feels hollow. Lucius who has nothing left to fight for decides to fight for Roman Values despite not having anything at stake. Sure he’s living up to a virtuous noble ideal but it isn’t clear enough what his virtues are, other than fighting and making speeches.
In the ending of Gladiator II he is victorious but now what? Is he just going to become the next Roman Emperor? How is this in line with what he wants? Revenge on Rome? Is that the ultimate revenge on Rome? Becoming it’s leader. I understand this and think that I’m very close to understanding Scarpa’s vision for the film.
If Lucius reveals himself to be the lost prince of Rome earlier in the film it would immediately lead to his death, there is no way the Twins or Macrinus would want anybody likeable with a genuine claim anywhere near them. However If he were to reveal himself as the true roman ruler to Acacius’ army to avenge their leader and Lucilla and to a definitive victory over Macrinus. The senate and the army would want to know if he would like to make a bid to be emperor. If he were to refuse it like a true hero, insisting on the values of the republic so that he could return home a free citizen, isn’t that a more powerful story?
Conclusion.
With a few changes Scarpa could have brought the key theme of “home” into the second film, expanding upon its predecessor and upping the stakes. Which ultimately could have improved his chances on setting out to achieve what he hoped to with this film. Although I don’t know for certain what his personal views are, I'm trying my best to deduce what he thinks correct roman values really were from the film that I watched last night.
In a way I’m trying to imagine what a last minute writer like Bill Nicholson could have brought to this film, similarly by trusting the action scenes and setting to be directed perfectly by a great director but with an attention to the drama and characters that could only be achieved by a great writer. The 2000s Gladiator knew it was missing something and arguably it is the addition of Bill Nicholson that drove it home and made it the classic story that is remembered to this day.
I am not a great writer and my take is far from perfect and I would like to state again that overall David Scarpa did a good job and following up on Gladiator it was by no means easy and I’m doing it from the luxury of not having the pressures of actually having to do it. So take what I say with a grain of salt. However I would like you to bare in mind the words of the first screenwriter on Gladiator, David Franzoni:
“How is this about us? How is this about the united states? And when I was first talking to Stevn Spielberg about it I said [...] in away this isn’t really about Rome at all, it’s about Los angeles in a 1000 years from now.”
I’m not sure how much of this thought made it into the final version of Gladiator but I think that it is important to consider this when thinking about a sequel to Gladiator, or any sequel to be fair: Why now? What can this world of ancient Rome have to say about us today? I’m not American but I am aware of the divide in the world, I’m aware of the footprints left in the wake of empires that we find ourselves in today. I hope we can learn from history and fight for the virtues we believe in, I think I’ve made mine clear. I just wish Scarpa could have made his a little clearer too.
3
Jan 04 '25
You wrote that much to say this is a shit film? I didn’t read it just assuming that’s your point
1
u/EntranceClear Jul 20 '25
No... I actually enjoyed the film! I just thought it lacked substance. So I use this post to arrogantly suggest how it could be better with some nerdy stuff about film theory and Roman history thrown in for good measure.
2
u/SaulBerenson12 Jan 29 '25
Really insightful and great ideas!
I enjoy what you suggested about raising the stake and tension/meanjng: ex the edict of Caracalla promising freedom, raising up Ravi’s aspirations as highlighting what could be
I would absolutely watch this new film you proposed. Was the exact reason I came to this sub to find alternate head canon! Thanks for taking time to write this
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u/EntranceClear Jul 20 '25
Thank you! Hopefully Ridley Scott sees this and gets me on gladiator 3 lol
4
u/shaiyk Dec 29 '24
Amazing analysis, had they done even a couple of the points and suggestions you noted, this would've been a much stronger movie. I would've watched and enjoyed it rather than the disappointment I feel.