Let’s dive into Gladiator 2, as everyone seems to be sharing their thoughts. I held back initially, understanding that many saw it as a simple action film meant for entertainment. It didn’t seem fair to nitpick historical inaccuracies when nobody expected a documentary. I knew what I was walking into, and I didn’t want to be “that guy,” rolling my eyes like an insufferable purist.
The screenplay, penned by David Scarpa (also behind the recent Napoleon movie), sets the stage for disappointment. Ridley Scott’s epic historical works once pushed boundaries with creativity and depth, but here, Scarpa has crafted a script seemingly tailored for an audience with minimal expectations—unapologetically aimed at mainstream consumption in the U.S. and China. If with antiquity one might excuse some liberties due to its distance in time, the sheer inaccuracy in Napoleon defied reason given the exhaustive documentation available on the man’s life.
I attended Gladiator 2 prepared to enjoy its spectacle, open to artistic licenses and grandeur. Yet even with that mindset, the film’s relentless shortcomings were hard to ignore.
What annoyed me most was the audience condescension: Gladiator 2 seemed made for a public familiar with only the most superficial clichés about the Roman Empire—caricatures birthed in the 19th century. Rome, depicted as a seething cesspool akin to Gotham City, populated by immoral, greedy, and degenerate elites. In contrast, the film casts the gladiators as virtuous proletarians, exuding decency and proto-socialist ideals. The simplistic “good army versus tyrannical rulers” narrative pits a portion of Roman soldiers as righteous rebels against the wicked Severan twins. The film’s stale, anti-imperial tone is more evocative of outdated 18th and 19th-century Enlightenment and Romantic myths than recent, nuanced scholarship.
Ridley Scott, whose storytelling brilliance has waned, seems trapped in formulaic action sequences with grand visuals, void of substantive storytelling or insightful detail. The original Gladiator had its share of creative liberties, but they were woven with enough finesse to be palatable. In contrast, this sequel stumbles under the weight of superficial spectacle.
The film’s saving grace? Its cast, particularly Denzel Washington, who commands the screen and breathes life into a story otherwise marred by mediocrity.
Now, to the ludicrous: The spectacle in the flooded arena featuring sharks—massive ocean predators somehow transported to Rome. How were these creatures kept alive, transported from the sea, and maintained in saltwater until showtime? The logistics of filling the Colosseum with seawater would have been fantastical at best. Furthermore, naumachiae (mock naval battles) weren’t staged in deep waters; the pressure from such volumes would flood the amphitheater’s underground areas. The “ships” likely skimmed over mere inches of water, pushed on wheels.
Another baffling moment: Denzel’s character, Macrinus, reading what appears to be a newspaper, written on papyrus with striking red headlines. The concept is anachronistic and out of place.
Equally absurd was the café scene under a portico, where Macrinus and another character share wine as if in a modern Italian trattoria. One could almost imagine Denzel ordering in fluent Latin, “Un mezzo di vino rosso, prego!”
The Severan twins are so overblown in their villainy they verge on parody. Historically, they were of North African descent, their heritage tied to the Berber tribes. Yet in the film, they appear red-haired, distinctly British. If realism mattered, a Berber-like appearance would have fit, perhaps with Pedro Pascal portraying Caracalla.
The film opens with the siege of an enormous, unnamed fortress in Numidia. Yet by this era, North Africa was firmly under Roman control, with the Severan family itself hailing from the region. The anachronistic weaponry—helmets resembling Phrygian caps, Celtic designs from the 4th century BC—was another glaring oversight.
Numerous scenes, shot in Malta, expose Renaissance-era bastions (circa 1550) with gun embrasures, betraying the film’s historical veneer.
While these gaffes are disappointing, they pale compared to the film’s outdated narrative—a post-Enlightenment, quasi-communist view of Rome as a tyrannical state contrasted against noble rebels. It’s a theme that disregards decades of modern historical research challenging these tropes, yet it persists, kept alive in popular culture and cinema.
