For a film to become a popular culture classic is highly unlikely, if not almost impossible. There are few that manage to establish themselves in the collective imagination. That just an image, the chord of your soundtrack or a phrase are enough for people to know what you are talking about. Gladiator It is, without a doubt, one of them. When the Roman cinema was dead and buried, Ridley Scott came up with a vigorous update that, supported by new technologies, reconstructed ancient Rome in a story of revenge that was a box office success – with more than 465 million dollars grossed. around the world – and criticism.
Gladiator It was the big winner of the 2001 Oscars, winning five awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe. It was the transversal film. The one that had pleased everyone and even then one sensed its power to penetrate people. Time has proven that decision right. While few could name several of the most recent winners of Hollywood’s Academy Awards, everyone knows that Ridley Scott’s film won.
More importantly, we remember its soundtrack, specific shots like the one of the hand caressing the wheat, or phrases turned into hymns like those “Strength and honor” or “What we do in life has its echo in eternity.” In the step of Gladiator The popular icon has also had a lot to do with sport. The film’s masculine epic of sacrifice and dedication was adopted by many soccer teams and coaches, who took the film as an example to motivate their players. In 2009 it was discovered that Guardiola used images from the film to stimulate Barça in its best years.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Gladiator It is the typical movie that any athlete repeats as their favorite when they are given those hackneyed tests at the World Cup or Olympic Games. It is because its message was simple and resonated, and it gave them hope in their competition: if you fight hard, if you make an effort, if your values are honor and strength, you will achieve what you set out to do. A praise of meritocracy that also hid a conservative message that has been embraced by hordes of incels, who also repeat “Strength and Honor” as a motto or even have it tattooed.
Gladiator Over time, it has been placed in a deserved space in the history of cinema, but also in one always on the verge of parody. That film was also a product of its time, and its hyperbolic epic and masculinity already bordered on kitsch. Elements that should undoubtedly be taken into account if someone, in their right mind, made the suicidal decision to make a sequel to a film as successful and loved as that one. But we all know that Ridley Scott has never cared about logic, and over the years he seems to have become a kamikaze.
He has decided to undertake the project of continuing the franchise in a film that makes the main possible mistake, not understanding that film as one that captured the zeitgeistthe spirit of the moment. Trying to repeat it now was to expose the film to what it is: an involuntary parody of everything that made it a classic. Let’s be clear, Gladiator 2 It is a film that falls into ridicule on so many occasions that many people will even wonder if Ridley Scott is intentionally seeking that tone of satire. It is not possible for a Roman drama to have such kitsch moments so constantly. But anyone who knows Scott knows that there’s no way he could have taken Gladiator 2 like a nonsense, like the gag of Saturday Night Live who he becomes over and over again by trying to replicate his best moments over and over again.
This attempt to replicate everything without appearing to be so is clear from the plot of the film itself, a carbon copy of the first part. If there the narrative arc of Máximo Decimus Meridio was his fall as a general and his rise as a gladiator, here that story is split in two to accommodate the two stars of the film. It will be Pedro Pascal who stages the part of the fall as a general; while the fashionable actor, Paul Mescal, will be a barbarian who will be reborn as a gladiator and will become the nostalgic link with the first film. No sign of trying anything minimally original.
Added to the narrative laziness of a script that seems to be written with artificial intelligence is Ridley Scott’s commitment to the worst disease of the sequels, the ‘bigger and more expensive’. Gladiator He was spectacular in his battles, in his combats, and he managed to put the viewer in the arena of the coliseum. Here, due to its tendency to excess, it falls into the implausible and, once again, into involuntary parody. It happens with the scene of some digital monkeys that look like those of Jumanji, and it reaches paroxysm with naumachia, a powerful idea weighed down by the idea of putting sharks in the coliseum (yes, don’t ask how they took them to the coliseum because you won’t get an answer), turning a wonderful idea into a nonsense. That tendency to excess is also in his violent joy. There are amputations, beheadings, and all kinds of excesses that seem more like whims. The only way to save all this would have been to embrace and be aware of the kitsch of the proposal. But that moment never came.
The schizophrenia of the film is also noticeable in the cast of actors, each one in a different register. No trace of Pedro Pascal’s charisma, who seems lost and directionless; Paul Mescal takes each phrase too seriously, assuming the false epic of the film; The villainous duo of Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn as Caracalla and Geta go overboard trying to copy what Joaquin Phoenix did in the original. Only Denzel Washington seems to understand the balance between the three-ring circus and the boring dialogue. Just how you pronounce “politics”, Marking the ending in a sly way in a scene that caused the audience to laugh, he demonstrates more knowledge of what is going on there. It is true that his role is the most enticing for it.
Of course you have to give enough nods to the previous film. Starting with the narrative, which although it is implied in the trailer we will avoid revealing, although it is impossible not to highlight that bust that supposedly looks like Marcus Aurelius, but clearly wants to reveal the relationship between two of the characters. And continuing through the shoehorned moments so that the mythical phrases enter the scene – of course you will hear again “Strength and honor” and “What we do in life has its echo in eternity” -; and many more.
They also repeat the values that moved all their characters, and it is here where Ridley Scott returns to anger and love as the driving force of society. Two concepts stale 20 years ago and more stale now. It is not the collective. It is not the will to make policies of change that causes the revolution, but something as simple as the will to take revenge for the loved one.
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