Gladiator ll (Ridley Scott, 2024)

Gladiator, Jr.

(WARNING: plot of Gladiator 2 discussed in close and explicit detail!)

Coming out of the multiplex after a screening of Gladiator ll: 

A: What do you think?

N: Wasn't a fan of the first Gladiator. Not a fan of anything Scott since Blade Runner.

A: That's over forty years ago. 

N: I'm trying to figure out why Scott's films look so ugly now. His first film The Duellists seem inspired by Hogarth and Gainsborough, though I'll bet that's Hogarth and Gainsborough by way of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, which has its fingerprints all over Scott's film (the last image of Harvey Keitel on a cliffside tho is from Haydon's Napoleon on St. Helena). Alien I hear is inspired by Bacon's Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X-- a half-melted creature caught in multicolored acid rain. Blade Runner is every smoke-filled rain-drenched noir ever made, only set in an ultra-neoned supercrowded Hong Kong / Los Angeles. 

Gladiator and Gladiator 2-- ugh. A lot of hard sunlight, a lot of spattered gore, a lot of weightless digital effects; shoot so close you can't identify what body part is hacking off what body part, then shred the shots so no one can tell the footage is crap. 

A: Don't hold back, tell me what you really feel. 

N: I liked Paul Mescal in Aftersun. He was like a maimed puppy there, with depths suggested in his sad face. Here he's more heroic but the depth is missing. I liked Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us, tortured and angry and hiding a bit of tenderness for Bella Ramsey (smart too, because his feelings for Bella's character was his only real weakness). Here he's noble and not much else. 

Only one interesting really is Denzel Washington's Macrinus-- he's playing against his leading-man type and he's the most fun character here (funnier still is the fact that in actual history he really does take control of the empire from Caracalla). Every scene he's in the energy level jumps a level and I'm sitting up paying attention. 

Maybe the best part is when he tells his supervillain origin story-- turns out he has a point. He has a legitimate grievance. I really felt for him. By the end of the movie I was rooting for him to win-- he was so smart and he came so far it made the most sense to me.

A: This is Hollywood, good has to win. 

N: Tell me about it. I kept comparing him to Peter Ustinov's Batiatus in Kubrick's Spartacus tho. Macrinus is devious and goes far and high; Batiatus is an upperclass slave trader brought low, and his machinations are strictly second class. 

A: I like Batiatus more. 

N: I think I know why-- Macrinus is a schemer and manipulator who gradually shows his inner grievance; Batiatus is a coward, a skinflint, and a hedonist who eventually grows a spine. Batiatus (as written in the film) is more human; we relate to him more. He could be any of us, forced against our will to be some kind of hero. Plus his lines are funnier, thanks to Dalton Trumbo, and a little polishing by Ustinov himself.

I remember the commentary to Spartacus: Howard Fast was bitching against Kirk Douglas, Douglas was talking about the production like nothing was going on, and Ustinov was dishing on everyone else. It was the greatest DVD commentary I ever heard. 

A: I never thought Macrinus would win tho. 

N: Why not?

A: Because no one's going to accept someone black as emperor. 

N: Ha! But-- the senators did. They agreed to Macrinus' plan. 

A: What's the movie trying to tell us? That the Romans were smarter than we are?

N: Remember this is fiction.

A: You said Macrinus really did succeed Caracalla. 

N: Macrinus was Berber, not Sub-Saharan African. Let's just drop it. 

A: Okay. Did the movie remind you of anything?

N: Well Gladiator takes off mainly from Kubrick's Spartacus, of course-- fresh gladiator trains and fights and rebels and rises high. Also Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire, which tells part of the same story, and I'll bet you Joaquin Phoenix saw Christopher Plummer's Commodus in Fall and took plenty of notes before playing the character himself (with a lot less subtlety and style).

And the daily life and training and battles of a gladiator remind me of Richard Fleischer's Barabbas, and the difference between a competent and a gifted filmmaker. Scott can marshal large productions as well as the best of them but his action sequences follow the fashion of the times: shaky, with ADHD editing. Fleischer's action sequences show elegance: when Anthony Quinn's Barabbas armed with only a spear faces Jack Palance's Torvald on a chariot with a net, we see Torvald kill two previous gladiators. This doesn't just establish Torvald's methods and sets him up as a formidable foe and rackets up suspense, it gives Barabbas the chance to study him-- either Torvald runs them down, or catches them with his net and drags them behind him. So when Barabbas finally steps onto the arena floor he not only manages to keep his head but come up with a plan to use Torvald's advantages against him. The measured pacing and coherent editing and camerawork not only keeps the action legible but allows us to read the responses of each combatant to the changing situation, the desperate calculations they're making in their heads. 

A: So did you like the movie?

N: Sure I liked it. This and the first Gladiator helped me appreciate even more what geniuses Kubrick, Mann, and Fleischer were. 

A: Sometimes I think you like to watch new movies so you can bash them with older films. 

N: Of course. If I couldn't, then what's the point of new movies anyway?