Two Thumbs Down
Gladiator II is a mess of contrivance
The greatest evil is to betray one’s country . . . the second greatest evil is to make a sequel where none was required.
- Dante Alighieri, probably
I don’t go to the theatre often. It’s loud, it’s underdressed (or at least the people are), and after I’ve already paid $13 for a small bag of popcorn, I am asked if I want to pay another $2 for real butter. “How is butter not included?” I ask the popcorn clerk. “There’s butter flavoring in the dispensers if you’d like,” she says. I look in the direction she’s pointing and notice two steel vats that had likely been used to transport liquid strychnine. I pay the $2.
All of this to say that when I DO go to the theatre, I at least want to enjoy the movie I came to see. Sadly, at least last Friday, this was not to be the case. By the end of Gladiator II, even the already faint hopes I’d been nursing had been flung from the Tarpeian Rock like a bunch of common criminals. And I had a popcorn kernel lodged next to my third molar.
There are many ways in which Gladiator the Twoth is an inferior movie in itself. I could go on about the uninspired speeches, the uninspired casting, and the shamelessly derivative plot. The fact that it follows the towering spectacle of its predecessor, however, makes it something almost twice dead — like the middle child who’s athletic achievements are always being compared to those of his radiant siblings’.
Gladiator II is a microcosm of the blight that defines the entire modern film industry — not just in terms of their moral bankruptcy (which is evident) but also in terms of their existential bankruptcy (which isn’t so evident). They not only fail to answer man’s deepest questions, they fail to even acknowledge their existence. Fifty years ago, jazz critic and art historian Hans Rookmaaker could say the following:
Many of the films people see today are good entertainment and often have somewhat of a moral point. Yet they are bad. For they depict as true a world which is limited and superficial, one without God, without the deeper questions in man’s heart, without real matters of life and death, for life and death are reduced to sentiment, or adventures, or crime or violence or cruelty, without any sort of judgement expressed.
This is a good place to start. Most modern films fail not because they aren’t entertaining (they often are) but because they stop at the level of entertainment. One can only assume this is because they believe there’s nothing more to the world than entertainment. They “depict as true a world which is limited and superficial.” But a story that is only entertainment is like a meal that is only breadsticks. Sure they’re nice and cruncy, but they won’t fill you up.
As this pertains to Gladiator, yeah the special effects were cool; and yeah, the bloodthirsty monkey zombies were unsettling. But they’re also not enough. Romantic comedies and hallmark specials do exactly the same thing except they swap out special effects for sentiment. Take The Santa Clause. The film ends with a heartwarming scene where Scott Calvin, now accepted in his role as Santa Clause, gives everyone the gifts they always wanted. See? Charlie is justified, the snow is falling, Neil gets his weenie-whistle — everyone’s happy darn it.
But we’re not really happy. There hasn’t been any actual reconciliation and Charlie still has to grow up in a broken home. We’re conscious of the discord, and it leaves a strange empty feeling in the pit of our stomach.
Close your eyes and just imagine it’s good
It’s clear that Ridley Scott desperately wants us to take his film seriously. But it’s hard to take a film seriously when it’s entirely built on contrivance. And by contrivance I mean what happens when a movie tries to make you feel something that you wouldn’t feel if the movie wasn’t trying to make you feel it.
We’re to believe that Maximus — who, even after his wife was murdered, was faithful to her tiny wooden figure — also had an affair with his best friend’s daughter. We’re to believe that Lucilla is a serial adulteress, a virtuous woman, and a well-meaning mother at the same time. We’re to believe it’s Rome’s fault for killing Lucius’ wife, and not Lucius’ fault for bringing her into battle in the first place. We’re to believe a bunch of disillusioned slaves and fanatical legionaries can be inspired by Mescal’s limp-as-dry-lettuce speeches. We’re to believe General Acacius truly felt bad for Rome’s nasty colonial streak, that an empire can rise from the ashes of self-loathing, and that one more scene of Lucius filtering dirt through his hands will infuse some mote of empathy into our jaded hearts.
The film could maybe have gotten away with one or two of those things, but what we’re dealing with here is contrivance within contrivance. It’s one big boondoggle inception. The viewer can only suspend his disbelief for so long; at some point the spell breaks. We become painfully aware the we are not, in fact, in ancient Rome. Early on, the threadbare cord that was gently lowering us into another world snaps and we plummet, screaming, into the gorge.
The film then tries to make up for its shallowness and dishonesty by appealing to antiquity. Ok, says Scott, I get you. You want more depth. Well then, how about some *HATCHAA!* Virgil (“The gates of hell are open night and day”). How about some *BLAMO* butchered Epicurus (“Where we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not.”) What about *HADOUKEN* some flashbacks from the previous film.
Still not enough. We see what you’re doing there.
Wait! Scott says. How about vague appeals to brotherhood? In what might be called the granddaddy of all contrivance, Lucius, in his final speech, alludes to Marcus Aurelius’ dream of Rome as “a city for the many and a home for those in need.” He then declares that Rome (you know, the one thing uniting them) is dead, and invites the various amped up factions to throw down their weapons in order “to rebuild a new dream together.” After many meaningless (as it pertains to Rome’s context) appeals to “hope” and “freedom,” the camera pans towards the grim and grizzled soldiers as slow smiles begin to sweep over the ranks. Then cheers. “Yaah! Unity and . . . stuff!”
Not only is such a scene patently false (when Rome wasn’t conquering others they were killing each other), it lacks all believability.
Good stories are always true
You can’t glue some wallpaper to an ice-fishing hut and call it a chalet. You can’t smear some lipstick over a corpse’s gums and call it Miss Universe. And you can’t dress up a derivative piece of tripe and call it a cinematic triumph. Well, apparently you can — but you shouldn’t. Bad Variety magazine. Bad.
For most viewers, a general sense of meh prevails. And no one seems to really be able to explain why. I mean, all the elements are there: they brought back some of the old actors, they reused some of the old quotes, they even played some snippets of the old musical score. It’s still Rome. It’s still gladiators. What gives? It’s like purchasing a Great Value™ lasagna from Walmart. All the pieces are there — the cheese, the sauce, the noodles — so why does it still taste like a stack of Costco flyers?
And the answer is that we occupy a much bigger story than a movie like Gladiator II can even recreate, let alone explore. The best films and novels don’t seek to bypass, or reconstruct, the human condition, but to acknowledge it and deal with its consequences. The reason a work like Lord of the Rings is so powerful is that it resonates on this level. Powerful people really are tempted to accrue more power. Ignoring evil will definitely allow it to spread faster. The steadfast courage of insignificant people really can bring down sprawling systems of evil. Once those fundamental things are in place, you can do whatever you want — have a wizard flying on the back of a moth for crying out loud.
The problem is that most modern films are so blinded by delusions of their own grandeur — the grandeur of the human condition, the grandeur of special effects, the grandeur of identity politics, etc. — they miss these fundamental themes. In doing so, they also miss their audience.
RIP Gladiator franchise.
I prefer homemade lasagna...