Sorry, but men deserve better than this

Ridley Scott’s sequel to his 2000 Best Picture winner might make you wonder if we’ve lost the ability to take lean historical epics seriously.
Photo: Paramount Pictures

I thought a lot about men as I watched Gladiator II last week and it seemed like everyone else was. In the dull, shocked aftermath of the presidential election, as everyone scrambled for explanations for why Donald Trump won so decisively, conversations turned to men. Men who voted so differently from women, who fight against feminism, and who, faced with a mainstream culture that no longer guarantees their dominance, would rather opt out, forever leaving them in danger of sliding down a digital manosphere pipeline, ending with them dumped at the goblin-like feet of Andrew Tate, who celebrated the president’s achievements by declaring that the patriarchy was back. How are we going to reach the menpundits have fumed, while a number of liberals online have insisted that the answer is to develop some kind of blue-state answer to Joe Rogan, never mind that Rogan himself would hardly attribute any committed political leanings to his podcast. Amidst all this, Ridley Scott’s sequel to his powerful 2000 hit about a Roman general turned arena fighter opens against Evil like a Barbenheimer rerun – except that Gladiator IIdespite its Best Picture winning legacy, is so underwhelming that you might leave thinking, Huh, maybe masculinity really is in crisis.

I can’t say that the problems all started when Hollywood relinquished romanticized historical masculinity to RETVRN accounts who insist that Brutalist architecture is bad and eating massive amounts of raw liver is good. But I wouldn’t say it’s completely inaccurate either? The trick with movies like Gladiator and Master and Commanderwhich came out within ten years of each other during what now feels like the last stretch where these kinds of recurring epics consistently gained traction with large audiences is that their bloodshed and big speeches sheltered a lot of sentimentality—about honor and to die for what you believe in, of course, but also for men who shamelessly enjoy the companionship of other men. I knew a guy in high school who would start tearing up when he talked about Braveheartwhich was a testament to the fact that the greed of Mel Gibson’s 1995 drama was as much a feature as the brutality of its fight sequences. Gladiator ends not with the body of Russell Crowe’s Maximus being lifted up in deference to his place as a soldier in Rome, but with fellow fighter Juba (Djimon Hounsou) burying his friend’s family mementos in the floor of the Colosseum and promising that they will see each other again a day.

Alas, the closest thing there Gladiator II has to Juba is a character played by Peter Mensah who dies as soon as the film leaves Numidia, which is under attack by Roman legions as it begins. The kingdom, on the north coast of Africa, is where the film’s exiled hero, Lucius, has ended up after being secretly sent out of Rome by his mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), following his father’s death, as, the sequel. makes explicit, was Maximus. In the 2000 film, Lucius was portrayed by a young Spencer Treat Clark, while in the new one, he is played by a much beefed-up Paul Mescal in his first major studio role. The Irish actor, normally an exciting presence, doesn’t hold the screen here so much as he disappears into its tumult. Of all the ways he feels miscast, the most fatal may be his complete inability to seem like someone other guys would follow to their deaths. Mescal’s career to date has been heavily circumscribed by women – from his breakout role in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal people for the role in Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun it made him a critics’ favorite—and he’s excelled at playing elusive objects of longing. But he’s terrible at giving the rousing speeches that were so iconic Gladiator and that Gladiator IIwhich has a clumsier script written by David Scarpa, tries to recreate. His instinct is to underplay these moments rather than roar theatrically, which is a problem, especially when saddled with somewhat confusing slogans like “Where we are, death is not!”

It is easier to imagine the audience laughing than to cry Gladiator II – as the first film demonstrated, these films require a seriousness that this new one simply cannot maintain. Instead, like Scott and Scarpa’s last collaboration, Napoleonit tends to land in an uneasy place between unintentional and deliberate fun. Fred Hechinger, who plays one half of a pair of tyrannical twin emperors with Joseph Quinn, gives a performance so great that it turns every scene into a joke. Denzel Washington fares much better as the intrusive villain Macrinus, showing some pleasantly unpredictable line readings (I was partial to “I own… your house. I lack … your loyalty”) and flashes a wolfish grin as he begins to realize that the slave he bought to fight is far more valuable than he could have dreamed. While Lucius is the designated heir to Rome and to the franchise , Macrinus has a backstory that is so much more compelling that you begin to root for his relentless climb to the top, especially given Lucius’ reluctance to ascend to leadership or acknowledge the position held by his mother and her husband, the general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal, in a kind of stand-in role) is put in. Macrinus is at least self-motivated, until the script demands that he make an abrupt shift in loyalty , he sees in his new fighter, it takes all of Washington’s strength to deliver an observation that is patently untrue.Lucius looks like someone engaged in a prolonged sulk at best.

I did not adore Gladiatorbut I appreciated the melodramatic conviction at its core, the way it was unabashedly emotive about grief and justice and restoring order to the world. Gladiator II echoes elements of the first film, including talk of “the dream of Rome” as a more egalitarian place, but while that idea is more central to the plot in the sequel, it feels even more abstract. Rome in this film isn’t solid enough to require saving or destruction – it’s a series of historical interiors the characters pass through. It is only when characters fight that the film comes alive. The best battle sequence is the frenetic opening as Marcus leads a fleet of ships to conquer Numidia and he raises built-in towers for his army to defeat the walls and kill the soldiers trying to defend it, among them Lucius’s archer wife. There are also Colosseum clashes involving a rhinoceros as a horse and a recreation of a naval battle involving flooding the arena. Scott, the old pro, knows how to give these scenes a wicked vitality that overcomes any thought of how the Romans supposedly got live sharks in the water. But the tension of the action sequences only emphasizes the hollowness of the rest of the enterprise. Of course, not all of us spend much time thinking about the Roman Empire, but those who do deserve better than this.

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