Gladiator II

The movie has some strongpoints: Denzel's and Quinn's performances, the way the City looks and some of the battles in the Colosseum. Like all Ridley Scott's movies after KoH, the last good one, it adresses an audience who is only there for the nachos and the thrills and knows nothing about history, warfare or common sense.

To be fair, Ridley really can direct huge movies that look good. But the writing, the ending...Scarpa really should find a hobby.

Being such a fan of Gladiator I wanted so much for this one to be decent that I concentrated on the strong points and until the last 30 minutes hit this was a decent effort. The ending is nevertheless an utter mess, it's senseless and unpleasant, an overthetop insult to common sense.

The producer's money would have been better spent elsewhere. Mine too.

The incredibly bad: the monkeys, Caracalla's character, Macrinus 's fate after a good buildup, the sharks, attacking a city's walls by sea with siege towers, the way the roman legion looks, the Praetorians, the last speech, the uninspired use of the score... A word about Paul Mescal: he doesn't shine but really, how could he, with such writing. I think his performance was strong, I felt the emotions, he does good in the arena....really not his fault.

Ridley, you have fooled me for the last time.

The sad thing is: the ending in this one makes Napoleon seem ok 😔

Visuals are stunning, sets and costumes look reach and amazing. Pedro Pascal is great in every scene, he's really selling all the emotions with such subtlety and minimalim. And that's about it what I've found good here.

Main actor is one of the huge problems, he always looks pale, like he is not really acting and has no real emotions. He was supposed to grab our hearts from scene one, however it somehow didn't happen. Film lacks some more time at the begining for the audiance to meet and fall in love with him, so that his motivations are more believeble and his story be more emotionally relatable.

Another huge issue is the story that goes everywhere, plot of Denzel Washington's character is just bizzare and bloated, diallogues are shallow in general...

I expected worse, but anyhow this movie left me feel numb...

The biggest problem with this movie is that it's essentially a soft reboot. If you've seen the first one, you'll quickly realize that you're watching something you've already seen. And once something becomes a repetition of something great, it's almost impossible to recapture that same level of greatness. Mescal, Washington, and the rest of the cast do their best, but this movie relies heavily on nostalgia. For the most part, it repeats the structure of the original story and follows all the clichés typical of sword-and-sandal films: the plot, the betrayal, the arena fights-you name it. The irony is that people who haven't seen the first one will probably enjoy this movie far more than those who remember the original.

If ever a film did not need a follow up, it's Gladiator, some films are just not meant to have sequels, Gladiator is definitely one of those.

Not bad, but not good either, the main question I have, is why, why was this made, is the creative magic at Hollywood now dead, can we soon expect Titanic 3, or Halloween Junior High, film making just doesn't feel free flowing or exciting right now.

I quite liked Denzel Washington's over the top performance, it was quite fun, Sir Derek Jacobi was great for the time he was on screen.

There are two big flaw however, one it's trying to hard to compete with its superior predecessor, everything done here, was done better in the original and secondly, Paul Mescal just wasn't right for the role, he just didn't have the presence of gravitas, Crowe was totally superior in every which way.

The sharks, what can you say about those sharks, proof that this felt like a made up story, the original felt like a tale from history, this felt like it was conjured up during a drunken Saturday night.

It's worth seeing, just don't expect too much. I went on a Saturday night in Cardiff, and there were six of us in the screen, Wicked was packed.

5/10.

I just watched the movie in a theater. It is full of entertainment battles ( although a little too much spectacularly blood ), the story line it's in the same path as the first ( you are not amazed cause you practically know what is going to happen ) with some changes here and there. Not the depth of the first one, you don't get the emotion of the firts one. The music it's not on the same level, Zimmer is a master and Gregson-Williams didn't catch that cloud. Mescal did his best (he's not Russell Crowe), and Denzel did what Denzel does, giving his character a whole other dimension. It's not bad, but you're not going feel the same way you felt after you watched The Gladiator back in 2000.