Not all critics were entertained by “Gladiator II,” the hotly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 historical epic.
Scott’s star-studded second chapter, entering the theatrical arena Friday, picks up years after Russell Crowe’s Roman general Maximus was killed by Joaquin Phoenix’s emperor Commodus in the Oscar-winning predecessor. Paul Mescal stars in “Gladiator II” as Commodus’ nephew, Lucius, who fights in the Colosseum to “return the glory of Rome to its people.” Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, and Joseph Quinn also star, with Connie Nielsen reprising her role of Lucilla.
Though the film currently holds a 74% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with critics attributing much of the success to Washington, others bemoaned its vapid execution. The original boasts an 80% approval rating.
“Joaquin Phoenix’s psychologically complex brand of villainy is much missed. But in the flamboyant Washington, it has a trump card that pays off,” read Time Out’s 4/5 star review.
The sequel is “made from the same DNA, in the same image,” said Tribune News Service, giving the film a 3/4. “It is the only ‘Gladiator’ sequel that could possibly exist and exactly what you expect.”
That burdened the film in Slate’s opinion, which called the film “less a reinvention of the original than a curiously literal retread of its plot beats, characters and themes.”
The Boston Globe echoed those sentiments, dubbing the film a mere cash-grab, and a lazy one at that.
“You would think we’d get something more than a rehash of the first film,” said the Globe of the “corporate greed”-fueled decision to make a sequel.
Vanity Fair and Globe and Mail both called out the hollow nature of the film, with the former finding it “epic in length and spectacle, but not in feeling.”
The latter, meanwhile, considers the CGI-heavy flick more akin to “a bunch of pixels at war with each other, with human stakes left to bleed out.”
“‘Are you not entertained!?’ The answer is no, not really,” said AV Club, nodding to Crowe’s famed line from the original. “No amount of digital gladiatorial carnage or bug-eyed overacting can mask the prevailing air of exhausted, decadent imperial decline.”
