ANCIENT ROMAN BLOCKBUSTER

SCOTT THROWS EVERYTHING INTO THE ROMAN COLOSSEUM FOR GLADIATOR II

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The extended opening scene sequence depicting the Romans invading a city from the sea puts all the necessary emotive elements into play to make for compelling narrative twists and turns in Gladiator II (2024)

Director Ridley Scott makes the narrative familiar to the original Gladiator (2000) but everything is more intense and dynamic with a runtime of 2 hr 28 m.

The sequel occurs 16 years after the last storyline ended.

Connie Nielsen reprises her role as Lucilla, the unhappy princess of Rome, daughter of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius ruled the empire last time around.

Scott makes the two stories sequential with certain intertextual references just short of cliché, to fill in a time gap, if you can create cliché with just two two films after all those scenes from the first film were absorbed into the collective consciousness from 2000 onward.

Derek Jacobi returns as Gracchus, but he has a minor role in the background as a member of the Roman Senate.

Paul Mescal plays the rebellious soldier defending his city against the Roman sea invasion. Yuval Gonen plays the love interest, Arishat, who is killed off early during the battle to create a reason for all the emotive drive in the film of Mescal’s gladiator character.

Mescal goes on to play Arishat’s vengeful husband who is taken prisoner by the Romans after the battle and who is quickly sold off and eventually finds himself in the gladiator ring of the Roman Colosseum.

The slave owner, Macrinus, likes gambling and making money, and finds that those prisoners filled with rage make the most profit for him in the gladiator ring.

Denzel Washington finds a suitably challenging role as Macrinus, a player in the emperor’s games who has found his champion to take to Rome.

Washington transitions his character as the personality of Macrinus becomes better known and more deeply emotive. Macrinus is initially presented as a sportsman who only wants to entertain the crowds in Rome and make money gambling on the games while doing so. But as success finds him, the entertainer’s ambition grows.

Washington ever so softly makes a few scenes self referential as the accomplished actor is noticeably surrounded by a cast of actors with less pull at the box office. Scott incrementally involves Washington in the script until the camera begins to revolve the narrative around him.

Pedro Pascal plays the Roman General Aracius center stage in a closely parallel narrative that involves Lucilla and the story about what has become of her and her family since the last movie, other than her and her family having being pushed out as the emperor’s heirs.

Joseph Quin, as Emperor Geta, and Fred Hechinger, as Emperor Caracalla, are left to create characters that personify the growing grotesqueness of Rome – in that the grotesqueness of Rome has not changed but perhaps has only gotten a bit worse since 2000.

The narrative has a few subplots that tie the two movies together and reiterate several common themes such as vengeance, family betrayal, human frailties and politics.

The gladiator theme provides an impressive visually compelling storyline, particularly with the enhancements in Computer Generated Imaging, and the slightly more aesthetically pleasing camera work of the director.

Scott can tell a suspenseful story along an interestingly compelling storyline in a large screen format.

The film does the 2.10 theatrical sound and images of the IMAX theatre good service. The sound fills the theatre as much as the projection of colorful images.

And in contrast, Scott uses black and white film to shoot the psychotropic scenes such as those of the supernatural world, and those flashbacks to 16 years ago in gladiator time.