The following contains spoilers for Gladiator 2.
Going into Gladiator 2, I was pretty sceptical. While the trailers had dazzled me with their awe-inspiring, Colosseum-flooding spectacle, I was privately doubting the necessity of a follow up to one of the best movies of all time. The first Gladiator movie has a definitive ending, bucketloads of emotion, and a place in the pantheon of film history. What else possibly needed to be said?
Well, as it turns out, quite a bit. Gladiator 2 picks up on similar themes and ideas to its predecessor, pulling them to a natural conclusion – and bringing Maximus’s story to the poignant close I never knew we needed at the same time.
From the outset, Gladiator 2 looks all set up to be a revenge story. Paul Mescal stars as Lucius, a man living a simple life, whose wife is killed brutally in a battle waged by Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius. Lucius ends up a gladiator fighting to survive in the arena, striving for vengeance all the while. Sounds familiar, right? The genius of this sequel is twisting the story away from a straightforward revenge quest and into a wider mission to save Rome from itself. This loops neatly back to what started the whole, bloody story in the first place: Marcus Aurelius did not believe his son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) was a fit ruler, and so he tried to crown Maximus (Russell Crowe) instead. The dominos that fell from that decision led to Maximus killing Commodus in the Colosseum, and, later, Maximus’s son Lucius facing his own fate in that same arena.
Echoes in eternity
Lucius is presented as the last hope of Rome, and the last gasp of Marcus Aurelius’s dream – which Maximus died for. Famously, Maximus pledged to have his revenge “in this life or the next.” While Maximus killed Commodus, avenging his murdered wife and son, Gladiator 2 makes it clear that Marcus Aurelius’s dream never came to fruition after Maximus’s death. Tyrannical twin emperors rule and plan to expand their empire, forcing Acacius to slaughter entire villages as part of their conquest, while Rome itself suffers under their rule. Through Lucius, though, Marcus Aurelius’s dream is at last realized: Maximus finally completes his revenge in his next life through his own son.
Although, it’s a little more complicated than that. Gladiator 2 brings in some much-needed ambiguity via Denzel Washington’s Macrinus. Late in the movie, he reveals that he was a slave under Marcus Aurelius’s rule – in that vision of a perfect Rome, he was subjugated and suffered, so how perfect was it really? Lucius fights Macrinus regardless, because Macrinus is a tyrant in the making who engineers the death of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla and ruthlessly manoeuvres his way into power. But this twist to the tale gives Lucius’s victory – and so Maximus’s sacrifice – even more weight: Lucius fights for a dream of Rome that can surpass what even Marcus Aurelius envisioned.
When Maximus dies, he dies only with the hope that the Rome he leaves behind can be saved. At the end of Gladiator 2, Lucius, who now carries that hope on his shoulders, kneels in the very place Maximus fell and asks his father to speak to him. It’s a complete, full circle moment that feels, to me, like the ultimate ending of Maximus’s story. Until I saw that moment, I’d never realised that Maximus’s tale didn’t feel quite complete.
And, aside from everything else, Gladiator 2 is just an excellent movie full stop. Ridley Scott brings all the spectacle and bloodshed of the original again, and the new characters are fantastic additions: Washington steals the show as his scenery-chewing, delightfully nefarious villain, while Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger bring unexpected pathos to their megalomaniac emperors. I can’t imagine the Gladiator story without them, either.
All of this means I’m unsure if we need a third film, since this once again feels like a very definitive ending (Scott told our sister publication Total Film that he’s already working on a threequel: “I’ve already got eight pages. I’ve got the beginning of a very good footprint.”).
But, then again, I thought the same about Gladiator 2. So, if Scott does return for more, I’m willing to be proved wrong again.
Gladiator 2 is in UK cinemas now and US theaters on November 22.
For more, see our Gladiator 2 review for our verdict, or see whether there’s a Gladiator 2 post-credits scene worth sticking around for.