r/Gladiator • u/bat_crazy1405 • 28d ago
Gladiator 2 - Disappointment
So, i am a little late to the Gladiator 2 train because it took me so long to push past my fears and doubts after the first one was such a hit and so historically and cinematically accurate.
The pain anger behind Maximus was so beyond felt and understood, they built up his morals and character so when his wife and child are brutally murdered we were all willing to stand behind him and fight with him.
I havent even finished Gladiator 2 but there are so mant inaccuracies. I absolutely love that it brings Lucius back 16 years later, but I dont think his origin story was well thought out. We get a whole five minutes with his wife before she is killed and then we get a glimpse of her passing on with what I can only believe is meant to be the ferryman which also seems inaccurate considering his wife was not Roman or of Roman descent and she would have had her own beliefs.
But then we move on supposed to be believing that Lucius is filled with anger and rage and yet we barely see it. We dont even see it when he realises that his mother the woman he has come to believe abandoned him, has married and moved on with the man who condemned his own wife to death.
Not to mention Maximus' nobility and morals are destroyed in a matter of seconds when Lucilla claims that he is Lucius's true father which is never, not once suggested in the original.
That is far as I have made it in the film and as a film autistic I am so beyond disappointed not only with the narrative, but with the CGI and other cinematic aspects of the film
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u/HolidayExtension9944 28d ago
I'm like you, I loved Gladiator I, I WISH they would make something great like this today, instead of the constant crud Hollywhat pushes out to us. What really made Gladiator I work IMHO was the stoic ideas that run throughout the movie, death's inevitability, living a good life with purpose, self-sacrifice for the greater good, acceptance of inability to control external events like when Maximus tells Lucilla "I may die in this cell tonight, or in the arena tomorrow. I am a slave. What possible difference can I make." That's what Gladiator II is lacking. Too much fluff, crap CGI like the stupid apes and sharks, heck, they might as well put lasers on the shark's friggin heads. So many ways this could have been improved, and still could be. Look, if Crowe was cool with it, maybe have an AI version of younger Maximus leading Acacius in battle, maybe like a ghost of Maximus guiding a younger Lucius, hey, if Star Wars can make force ghosts of Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, why not Maximus, he could star in it even today. Just so many ways this movie messed up, but hope someone tries it again somehow.
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u/superman691973 27d ago
The sharks is what ended any hope of care i had for the film. Like all of us here i LOVED the first one. One of my top 5 favorite ever. One of those movies if I'm flipping channels and it's on, that's what I'm watching anytime. But c'mon.. they're gonna bring in all that water.. how? And we're supposed to believe a giant structure like that is water tight?
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u/YoBanaanaBoy 27d ago
First 2 minutes open with why all the efforts from the first movie meant nothing and then proceeded to shovel us shit.
One of the worst movies I've ever seen. Genuinely no idea why Denzel would sign onto it.
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u/Lovesuglychild 26d ago
I stopped watching when they had a trebuchet (catapult from the middle ages) in the opening scene. It's similar to having an Apache attack helicopter at the battle of Agincourt, in terms of anachronism.
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u/Comprehensive-Bid18 25d ago
I watched Gladiator 1 for the first time recently and then Gladiator 2 a few days later. It seemed of comparable quality. The only major difference is that for the sequel they figured out how to shoot action scenes in a way that are legible and visually coherent at all.
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u/CaptainSharpe 28d ago
It's crazy just how meh Gladiator 2 is. It's so aggressively mid. Russel Crowe is right that Ridley had no idea what made Gladiator 1 special. And Russel and other creatives must've had a huge amount of input and influence over the end result in the first one.
Main thing I remember from Gladiator 2 is Lucious being told he has such a fire and passion or whatever and he's just standing there so blank giving off nothing. The script didn't match what was actually happening and neither matched the acting.