I Finally Saw GLADIATOR So I Could Be Properly Disappointed By GLADIATOR II

GLADIATOR II (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2024)

Nearly a quarter of a century after Ridley Scott’s historical epic GLADIATOR ruled the box office, and swept the Oscars, comes this highly anticipated sequel, opening everywhere today. But it wasn’t highly anticipated by me as, despite all the hoopla, I never got around to seeing the original until earlier this week. When I got an invite to an advance screening of GLADIATOR II, I decided it was time to catch up. I found it on a streaming platform (Paramount Plus), and finally got to see what all the fuss was about.

 

I can’t say that the 2000 GLADIATOR will make any dent in any of my mental lists of greatest movies, but I could see why it was an award-winning crowd pleaser. Highly enjoyable was its star-making turn by Russell Crowe coming up against Joaquin Phoenix in another break-through performance in a richly shot ancient Roman revenge adventure enhanced by a stunning Hans Zimmer score. It didn’t matter that it was a pretentious presentation with weak dialogue, and obvious plotting, it worked as overblown epic entertainment, and I’m glad to have now caught up with it. 

 

Sadly, all the elements that made the first film so successful are sorely lacking in Scott’s GLADIATOR II, which opens with an animated sequence laying out the basic story points of the original, which, because of the many call-backs, I’ll call GI for the rest of the review. I really don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the sequel concerns the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus, but an actor I was previously unfamiliar with, Paul Mescal plays the lead, Lucius, who was played as a kid in GI by Spencer Treat Clark. The only folks from GI to reprise their roles are Connie Nielsen as Lucius’ mother, Lucilla; and Sir Derek Jacobi as a much more minor Senator character, Senator Something.

 

As the film follows the story beats of GI – big opening battle, hero’s wife gets killed, slave becomes lauded gladiator, colossal Colosseum fights, family drama, and final showdown – we get the new characters, Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a Roman general who is married to Lucilla, and appears to be inwardly tortured; and, more interestingly, Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who at first, seems to be simply rehashing the blustery former slave turned wealthy merchant part Oliver Reed played in GI, but he turns out to be the film’s central baddie here.

 

Since sequels are programmed to attempt to top the original’s highlights, the Colosseum set pieces are even more over the top with scary CGI baboon, rhinos, and most ridiculously sharks when they fill the venue with water to restage a naval battle with two warships facing off. Now historical record does show that the Romans did have outlandish events like this, but that the water in the Colosseum wasn’t deep enough for sharks. Since this was one of the movie’s most engrossing scenes, I’m going to let it go. It's hard to complain about unnecessary CGI sharks when the entire affair is unnecessary.

 

Anyway, as the lead Lucius, Mescal just doesn’t have anywhere near the gravitas or the charisma of Crowe’s Maximus; and as the antagonist, Washington has swagger aplenty, but his role is underwritten, giving the audience little to grab onto. Same could be said for Pascal, who brings what he can to his worried warrior persona, but again, like every other player here, doesn’t have much pull. 

 

Despite that it shares the same cinematographer with GI, John Mathieson, the look of GII is far less spectacular. Gone is the crisp panoramic imagery, replaced by a washed out less engrossing landscape for which us to go through a lesser telling of the same story. GI had memorable movie moments – Maximus yelling “Are you not entertained?” at the crowd, Phoenix’s Commodus sneering, “It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed” -  but I can’t remember a single line from GII just two days after seeing it. And unlike Zimmer’s work on GI, I can’t recall any of Harry Gregson-Williams’ score either!

 

So this uninspired sequel is director Scott’s third collaboration with screenwriter David Scarpa after the mixed bags that were ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (2017), and NAPOLEON (2023), and apparently the third time isn’t the charm. I doubt GII will leave much a mark on pop culture after it gets chewed up and spitted out this weekend, but since I’ve been wrong about the masses not wanting big, flashy empty machismo before, I won’t be surprised if it hits big. 

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MEGALOPOLIS: A Weird, Pretentious Blend Of Bad Acting And Beautiful Imagery

Now playing at every megalopolex from here to New Rome:

MEGALOPOLIS (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)

It’s been three days since I took in a screening of the legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s highly anticipated, and highly dreaded big, ambitious epic MEGALOPOLIS, and I’m still processing the damn thing. I’ll just jump in – it takes place in New Rome, which is New York City in a world in which the Roman Empire never ended, and concerns a visionary architect, Cesar Catilina, portrayed by Adam Driver.

With the backdrop of skyscrapers that shine like gold, under an endless yellow sky, Cesar aims to rebuild the city into some glorious shape-shifting utopia out of some magical substance called Megalon, but he’s opposed by Mayor Frank Cicero (Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito), but lo and behold, the mayor’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls in love with Cesar. 

 

On the flashy sidelines in what seems like endless partying is the scene stealing Aubrey Plaza as a blonde, gold-digging news anchor named Wow Platinum (she said on The Daily Show that she “watched a lot of Fox News to research my role as a corrupt journalist”), an actor that Coppola remarked was cast because he was “cancelled,” Jon Vought as Cesar’s uncle Hamilton Crassus (crass name for a crass character), Dustin Hoffman as Crassus’s confidant Nush “The Fixer” Berman, Crassus’s son Clodio (Shia LaBeouf, who just gets creepier with age), and Clodio’s sister Cladia (SNL’s Chloe Fineman who called he character a “coke whore” on Late Night with Seth Myers). 

 

Lawrence Fishburne, whose third ever film credit was as a 17-year old Larry Fishburne in Coppola’s 1979 vietnam masterpiece APOCALYPSE NOW, grandly narrates, and plays Cesar’s assistant and chauffeur. Another member of the cast with major history with the director is his sister, Talia Shire (THE GODFATHER, and ROCKY series), as Cesar’s mother, but she isn’t given much to do. Neither does Jason Schwartzman as one of the Mayor’s men, he’s Coppola’s nephew so it was nice he was invited.

 

Oh, and somehow Driver’s Cesar has the ability to stop time, simply by yelling “Time, stop!” Now this is a compelling used element, and amazingly shot by Coppola veteran, cinematographer Mihai Mălaimare Jr., and the movie surrounding it is gorgeous-looking, but it is never explained, and doesn’t make any sense in the narrative, but I’m not sure if it’s supposed to. Like many things that litter the screen in this strange story, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be saying.

 

But if you let it wash over you, there’s a lot of lush imagery and stunning set pieces to get lost in. One such mesmerizing sequence involves Grace VanderWaal as Vesta Sweetwater, a Vestal Virgin pop star, is harmonizing with an army of multiple versions of herself hanging from the ceiling of the coliseum, and I’m watching thinking, I don’t know what any of this means, but it looks fantastic!

 

After a 9/11-style disaster involving a fallen satellite, the building of the new Megalon-enhanced paradise goes forward, while LaBeouf crazily tries to f*** with Cesar’s reign as hard as he tried to f*** with the fourth Indiana Jones movie, and Plaza’s Wow Platinum (love that name) gets caught up in her own web of manipulations.

 

Unfortunately so much of the acting in this overblown opus is stilted, awkward, and unconvincing. Driver fares the best as his protagonist has an intense gravitas to him (even breathing a little bit of new life into Shakespeare’s done-to-death “To be or not to be” soliloquy), but Cesar is a broadly drawn magazine image for a character, and there never feels like there’s a back story or much depth to the guy. Coppola’s camera obviously adores Emmanuel as Cesar’s love interest, but her dialogue all seems like she’s narrating the film to herself, and it’s a bad thing when her blankness at times recalls Sophia Coppola’s miscast turn in GODFATHER PART III.

Plaza’s Wow Platinum (again, primo moniker) is definitely the most engaging persona here as she’s so unlike any other character the great deadpan actress has played, and feels like she’s in a much more interesting movie than everyone else.

Now, as for the movie’s meaning and/or message, it is obviously Coppola’s attempt at an allegory about how the crumbling of society in our modern times is historically embedded, but I’m not sure how the abstract architectural adventures of Cesar really makes any purposeful point. I may someday though.

 

But at this time, I can’t in good faith recommend MEGALOPOLIS. It struck me as a pretentious, badly acted, poorly paced, messy, cringingly weird, but eye-poppingly beautiful piece of catastrophic cinema made from what I bet is one of the nuttiest screenplays ever (written by Coppola himself with no help!). It does say something that I would watch it again as I feel like I may get something out of another viewing, but I really don’t think casual non-film geek movie-goers will connect to this perplexing passion project, and make it a hit. I’ll be very surprised if it does well at the box office this weekend.

 

I will say it would probably make a good double feature with the new re-release of CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT, as MEGALOPOLIS often plays like that decadent yet prestigious porno (produced by Penthouse Bob Guccione’s no less), but without the mass orgies. 

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The Best Of Film Babble Blog (A Self Indulgent 20th Anniversary/Birthday Post)

Film Babble Blog has been AWOL since my DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE review last July as things have been hectically busy lately, but I’m back to make a self-indulgent post on my Birthday. I’ve been meaning to do something to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of this blog (first post was March 12, 2004) all year, and I finally came up with compiling a list of my Top 10 favorite posts.

 

Among the movie reviews have been assorted articles, lists, and interviews and this what I consider the cream of the crop. By the way, the pic at the top is from Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY (I just wanted to have a lavish big screen party scene image, the movie isn’t even mentioned in any of these posts).

So let’s get right to ‘em (click on the highlighted titles to read the posts):

 

1. In Memorium: My Dearly Departed Cat Squiggy (September 14, 2014)

Of course, #1 would be honoring my first adoptive cat, Squiggy, who passed away 10 years ago (Sept. 12, 2014). This remembrance might be too icky for some who are not cat or pet people, but I think most folks will appreciate the sentiment. Squiggy lives!

 

2. William H. Macy Chats With Film Babble Blog About His New Film KRYSTAL (April 12, 2018)

Over the course of Film Babble Blog’s first two decades, I didn’t do many interviews, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk to the great William H. Macy. He was promoting his second film as director, the odd Rosario Dawson vehicle KRYSTAL, and it was an insightful, fun phone chat with the acclaimed actor. 

3. Ingmar Bergman: The Woody Allen Angle (July 31, 2007)

 

When the iconic Swedish filmmaker Igmar Bergman passed ion 2007, instead of doing a standard obit, I decided to do a deep dive on his influence on the films of Woody Allen. Now Allen is a controversial figure these days, but this film geek’s noting the many elements whether they be thematic, technical, personal, or personnel that Woody Allen has borrowed from the movie master still holds up to me.

 

4. Apocalypse Then (September 11, 2021)

My 20th Anniversary recollections of the week of the tragic events of 9/11, which started off with a Birthday viewing of the then new APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX is one of my favorite pieces as it captures my what my world felt like during that sad, shocking time when it felt like the world stopped.

 

5. That Time Orson Welles Ended His Career (And Life) On An Episode of Moonlighting (December 30, 2023)

I was reminded of the legendary filmmaker’s final moments in front of a camera when Hulu started streaming the hit ABC series, Moonlighting, late last year and I exercise-bike binged it. It’s an interesting tale of how fortunately the late, great CITIZEN KANE actor/writer/director had one last gasp meaning that his ridiculous voice turn in the 1985 animated TRANSFORMERS wasn’t his last credit. The Film Babble Blog favorite Welles was also featured in the posts, A Birthday Tribute To Orson Welles With 10 Welles Wannabes (May 5, 2008), and Classic Cinematic Cameo: Orson Welles in THE MUPPET MOVIE (MAY 6, 2022). 

 

6. That Time THE BODYGUARD Soundtrack Saved Nick Lowe’s Ass (August 12, 2021)

An amusing look back at a happy happening involving the great British singer/songwriter benefiting greatly by the use of one of his classics (albeit a cover) on the best-selling soundtrack of the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner hit, THE BODYGUARD. 

7. The Legacy Of Mrs. James Bond 007 (September 10, 2020)

Much like the Bergman post, I was wanting to pay tribute to a legendary figure who had passed (in this case Diana Rigg), but through an specific angle that most obits mentioned but didn’t fully investigate. Another post in this same vein is: How James Bond Was Indiana Jones’ Father Long Before Sean Connery Played Indiana Jones’ Father (October 31, 2020)

 

The final posts are lists, which I’ve done a lot of over the years. A few of these were featured on the Internet Movie Database when they used to update a “Hit List” on their main webpage. That got my page a lot of action back in the day, which I miss now.

 

8. 20 Great Modern Movie Cameos (6/5/07)

9. 10 Definitive Films-Within-Films (7/4/07)

10. 10 Movie Soundtracks That Think Outside Of The Box Office (9/01/09)

So there you go. Hope you enjoyed this trip down Film Babble Blog’s memory lane.

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