72% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 330 reviews)
Runtime: 148 minutes
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Connie Nielsen
From: Paramount
“The protagonist is put through a table by an Angle Slam” was not on my bingo card for the film. Finally, last night was the opportunity to step into the Colosseum & see if GladIIator (to use its title as displayed during the creative opening credits) was at least entertaining. It was, although of course it paled in comparison to the original… the fact that it was a dumber version of the original was regrettable but the expectations were low and by this point I’ve seen many ratings from the mutuals. I didn’t hear that someone used Kurt Angle’s finisher which wasn’t the anklelock so that was quite the surprise.
Not as much a surprise-due to modern movie standards-was that this copied Gladiator’s plot rather closely; another slave becomes a gladiator and instead of one emo incompetent emperor there are emo twin brother emperors--or to borrow a phrase several used, the twins were more like TWINKS, and were about as threatening as a twink. Yes, some emperors in the past were like that, but they were just laughable as bad guys. More believable to me given modern politics: after the conclusion to the original, it was not long before Rome went to hell again.
It's a dopey film which has historical inaccuracies that actually had a kernel of truth to most of them but it was mainly nonsense, this movie’s conclusion certainly wasn’t stirring, and perhaps it started to fall apart/feel choppy in the second half due to the almost complete removal of actor May Calamawy which naturally people freaked out about but I’ll presume it’s not because she’s both Egyptian and Palestinian… the explanation that “the movie was too long already” seems more logical to me than “oh we’re racist and don’t want to upset Israel!”
To move away from a comment I know not everyone will agree w/, Gladiator II was still fine. It avoided a decent amount of the modern tropes I’ve carped about in the past, was a big budget sword and sandal picture when those are rare now, had a nice cast (as many have proclaimed, Denzel was the MVP; Paul Mescal as the lead, on the other hand… he’s no Russell Crowe) and at least the action/pomp & circumstance delivered, at least one obvious moment of CG aside.
Me not hating Gladiator II should be deemed a success.
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