Gladiator II (2024) Ridley Scott - Movie Review

Gladiator II (2024) Director: Ridley Scott, Writers: Peter Craig  (story by) and David Scarpa (screenplay), David Franzoni (characters created by), Stars: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Derek Jacobi, Peter Mensah, Matt Lucas, Runtime: 128min Rated: 14A (Canada) 13+ (Quebec) R (MPAA) for strong bloody violence.

Listen here for audio of radio interviews about films from a Christian perspective with Pastors Ted Giese and Todd Wilken on IssuesEtc.org where Christianity meets culture. (This review contains some spoilers)

Retrograde Heroism: From Virtue to Vice

Gladiator II is set about twenty years after Gladiator (2000) around the year 200 AD. Again, director Ridley Scott gives audiences a man with a secret past and a dead wife travelling on a personal grief-stricken path of vengeance that leads him through the Colosseum’s harrowing gladiatorial dangers to the equally hazardous halls of political intrigue and power within the Roman Empire.

In the first film’s conclusion the gladiator Maximus (Russell Crowe), a demoted Roman General of the murdered Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), kills the ruling Roman Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix)— Aurelius’ deranged and psychopathic son— in Rome’s Colosseum before an audience of 50,000+ spectators. Maximus also dies from his wounds. Commodus is survived by his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) and nephew Lucius (Spencer Treat Clark). Gladiator concludes with a glimmer of hope that Marcus Aurelius’ desire to hand the empire over to the Roman senate could happen. In the afterlife (in Hades) Maximus is happily reunited with his family who had been murdered under the orders of Commodus near the beginning of the film. Ultimately, his love for his wife and dead son, who was around the same age as Lucius, is the driving force for the loyal and principled hero Maximus to face off against the duplicitous villain Commodus.

Gladiator II is an example of a “retcon.” This writing/plot device retrospectively revises a fictional work often by introducing a new piece of information that imposes an alternate interpretation on events previously presented in a continuing story. A popular example of this is George Lucas’ decision to make farm boy Luke Skywalker and senator Leia Organa into siblings revealing this detail to audiences in the third Star Wars film Return of the Jedi (1983) forever making the characters’ teased romantic interests in Star Wars (1977) and their kiss in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) retroactively creepy and weird especially due to princess Leia’s comment that somehow “she’d known all along,” they were brother and sister. Retconning is different from a planned reveal where the filmmakers foreshadow the revelation to the audience.

While the original Gladiator film implies that Maximus and Lucilla had romantic feelings for each other in the past, it also implies that nothing came of it. The fact that Maximus’ dead son is around the same age as the widow Lucilla’s son Lucius only heightens the drama adding to the plot a melancholic layer of what could have been.  

In Gladiator II Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) reveals that her now adult son Lucius (Paul Mescal) is the product of an adulterous sexual relationship between Lucilla and Maximus. This is Scott’s retcon to the original story. Posthumously it changes Maximus from a noble, virtuous, grieving hero into a philandering adulterer too self-centered to realize that Lucius is his own flesh and blood. Scott cuts the legs out from under the character making him morally weak, tarnishing his heroism.    

Sixth Commandment You shall not commit adultery. What does this mean? ‘We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honour each other.’[1]

With Gladiator II Scott follows a similar storyline. As in the first film Lucius, like Maximus, arrives in Rome without everyone knowing who he is and while fighting as a gladiator of Macrinus (Denzel Washington) becomes embroiled in drama centred on the unpopular co-Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Unlike Maximus’ owner/manager Proximo (Oliver Reed) — a former gladiator who had won his freedom fighting in the Colosseum before Emperor Marcus Aurelius — who simply loved the gladiatorial games Lucius’ owner/manager the ambitious nouveau riche Macrinus — a former slave of Aurelius who has risen to the high status — seeks to take the Roman Empire for himself by overthrowing Geta and Caracalla. Ultimately, following the deaths of Geta and Caracalla by the hand of Macrinus, Scott’s film concludes with Lucius and Macrinus engaged in hand-to-hand combat, not in the Colosseum like Maximus and Commodus but by a bridge over the river Tiber outside the city under a triumphal arch topped with a statue of Romulus and Remus (the legendary brother founders of Rome). While many of these characters, apart from Maximus, are dawn from real people none of these events took place as Scott depicts them.    

Dan Snow (popular historian and BBC television presenter) while watching the trailer for Scott’s Napoleon (2023) pointed out a number of historical inaccuracies in that film including how Marie-Antoinette “famously had very cropped hair for the execution, and, hey, Napoleon wasn’t there,” along with the fact that “Napoleon didn’t shoot at the pyramids” during the Battle of the Pyramids and how the Battle of the Pyramids didn’t happen at the famous Pyramids. Scott’s response? “Get a life.” Snow conceded that while these were inaccuracies, they all looked “cool,” so there’s that. Gladiator II is likewise filled with “cool” things like a gladiator mounted on an armoured battle rhino and sharks attacking gladiators in staged naval battles in the Colosseum. While these are tantalizing close to real events they are not recorded in history as such and are there because they are cool images and make for cool cinematic moments in a film centred on the excesses of spectacle.    

For audiences seeking an ancient Roman sword-and-sandal style “bread and circuses” level distraction of a popcorn flick Gladiator II will easily fit the bill. Unfortunately, while Scott took liberties with history in Gladiator he has taken even more liberties with Gladiator II. The question is why? Is it simply because he likes things to look “cool” or does he have other reasons? For example, ‘Romulus and Remus’-related imagery also shows up in the Scott produced Fede Alvarez directed Alien: Romulus (2024) which was shooting at the same time as Gladiator II. Is this a coincidence, or is there a reason for this? In an age when the actual history of the people portrayed in these films is readily available why make changes messing around with the timelines of history and who murdered who and for what reasons? The cynic asks if these discrepancies and coincidences are there to generate free publicity from curmudgeons or do they serve a higher purpose?

For Christian audiences it would be good to remember that during the first century AD, well before the events of this film’s historical context, both Saint Peter and Saint Paul along with many other Christians were martyred in Rome, some under the watchful eyes of pagan spectators. While Scott is not obliged to include every aspect of the Roman Empire in his film there’s little reference to Christians in Gladiator II even though Christianity was on the rise in the Roman Empire around the year 200 AD. Historically significant men like the Ante-Nicene Fathers Justin Martyr (AD 100 – c. AD 165) and Polycarp (AD 69 – c. AD 155) the Christian bishop of Smyrna had already left a mark on the empire’s growing Christian population. That said, Scott does include the following dismissive comment when one of the emperors says he wants someone crucified, and Macrinus responds, “Crucifixions are for thieves and Christians.”

Christian viewers will also want to contemplate what they believe concerning the afterlife. Scott presents a thoroughly pagan depiction of the afterlife complete with visions of the dark boatmen who ferry souls across the river Styx to their final abode in Hades. Jesus in the Revelation to Saint John says of Himself, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). By the year 200 AD there was a growing Christian response to the pagan idea of the afterlife spreading through the Roman Empire in which the dead had not yet faced divine judgement as they had presupposed but were still awaiting the Judgement of Christ Jesus.

On the whole Gladiator II is a prime example of why audiences need to remember not to get their history from historical Hollywood epics. Sometimes directors are clearly not that interested in accurately portraying recorded history. Viewers on the fence about Scott’s Gladiator II and looking for a nostalgic experience may be better served by revisiting Gladiator which is certainly the sharper, more charming and virtuous of the two films.

Rev. Ted Giese is lead pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; an award-winning contributor to The Canadian Lutheran and movie reviewer for the “Issues, Etc.” radio program. Follow Pastor Giese on Twitter/X @RevTedGiese. Check out our Movie Review Index!

[1] Sixth Commandment with explanation, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, page 14.