Gladiator II (2024) Review

 the story: Nearly twenty years after Maximus took on Commodus with the fate of the Roman Empire at stake, his story unexpectedly concludes.

rating: ****

review: As someone who's enjoyed Ridley Scott's stream of historical epics since Gladiator, I figured I was in a good position to understand his vision for its much anticipated and also much delayed sequel.  From Kingdom of Heaven to Robin Hood to Exodus: Gods and Kings to The Last Duel to Napoleon, I found his meditations on the complexities of leadership brilliant.  Gladiator II, I determined, was much the same.

It's not at the same level as Gladiator or Last Duel, but it's not trying to be.  Its sole mission is to finish the original narrative.  Since Russell Crowe's Maximus dies at the end of Gladiator, how exactly a sequel was supposed to happen was always going to be a challenge.  The speculation always drifted in the direction of revisiting Maximus in the afterlife, which for those keeping score who still haven't seen Gladiator II, does not happen.  Rather, the plot follows two key players from the first film as they manage lives caught up in the further turmoils of empire.

Now, Ridley Scott was never playing strictly from the historical record.  He plays fast and loose with facts, as he did the first time around.  Faster and looser, actually.  But his point isn't really fact, but rather searching for heroes.  We don't live in an era chalk full of heroes.  Or rather, we don't spend a lot of time worrying about them.  We actually go out of our way to poke holes in the halos of past heroes, which reckless abandon.  It seems relevant, in such times, to find heroes in a more creative fashion.  Actually, when you stop to wonder why all the heroes are fictional superheroes these days, it begins to make a lot more sense.  Ridley Scott found himself with a Roman superhero the first time around.  Then he simply revisited as closely as he could.

You want spoilers?  The little boy from Gladiator grew up, and through circumstances found himself repeating much of Maximus's arc.  This isn't mindless duplication.  That boy turns out to be Maximus's own child, the product of an affair with the sister of Commodus, once again played by Connie Nielsen.  If you want the compelling reason to have a movie called Gladiator II once again hinge the plot on someone being a gladiator and trying to save the empire, it's really in the dramatic potential fully realized by how Nielsen's Lucilla reacts to the agonies that follow.

Actually, the title gladiator isn't even the one who most closely follows Maximus's arc, but rather the character played by Pedro Pascal, the latest actor beloved in TV roles but constantly struggling for respect in the movies (see: James Gandolfini, Bryan Cranston), who once again acquits himself well, in case you really doubt it.  The title gladiator is played by Paul Mescal, who in his breakthrough role was never going to challenge Russell Crowe, and again, didn't need to.  The draw here is the legacy, and the outcome. Derek Jacobi is the other returning actor from the first film, though he's mostly here as a link and a demonstration of the weakness of the senate, and old man on the sidelines trying desperately to make a difference, but it's just out of his grasp.

The true calling card of the movie is Denzel Washington.  This deep into the review, and it's only here I even mention him, because it really shouldn't be necessary.  Washington's presence is the true distinguishing feature of Gladiator II, its biggest claim to be more than just a sequel to Gladiator.  It's by definition at least as much a Denzel Washington picture just by his presence.  He's showy, but not in a Training Day way.  He's not always dialed in, and he doesn't need to be.  When he has something to do, you know it, and when he's trying to hide, you know it, and that's a new kind of role for Washington, and nothing that was part of Gladiator, and everything you need to know about Gladiator II and its vision of politics pivots around that description.  

It's great filmmaking by extension.  It's utterly gratuitous in its depiction of politics, the cheat code Maximus used in the first film removed, and all the dangers reinstalled.  There are consequential deaths.  There are rewarding deaths.  They're all shocking, effective moments, some of the most deft ever depicted in film, and for that, Gladiator II earns more than it needs to, since without a Russell Crowe to root for, you wonder why you should care, and that's the reception the movie's gotten, and again, again, this is beside the point.

The point is, the story is finally finished.  Good truly prevails, even though we know the empire's rot into oblivion soldiers on anyway.  In the story of Gladiator, Marcus Aerelius had a dream that seemed unattainable, and certainly so when the hero he hoped would help him gain it is dead at the end.  At the end of Gladiator II, the hero is still standing, and so, too, is the dream.  It pivots the narrative to definitive hope.  And that's the point.

These are the times we live in.  We need heroes, even fictional ones.  It doesn't hurt to have them grounded in some grand past in the real world, even if their stories are fictional.  This is a perfect coda, and perfect storytelling, even if it isn't perfect filmmaking.

WW84 (2020) Review

rating: *****

the story: Wonder Woman learns and helps others see the danger of wish fulfillment.

review: Sometimes, I admit, if a movie receives overly glowing praise I start to look for reasons other than the movie itself. It goes the same for negative reviews, of course. Generally I will outline all the reasons I did, or didn’t, like a movie in my reviews for this very reason, total transparency. Wonder Woman was a movie that received glowing reviews, in large part, I always suspected, because it was what people thought the DCEU should be like. I hate message reviews. If you like a movie, like it for its own merits. So I kind of put off watching it for a while, and maybe as a result of all this I wasn’t overly wowed by it. 

Well, I was certainly wowed by WW84. Absolutely. This is the kind of confident achievement I expected from the first one, a bold statement that also works as a full spotlight for Wonder Woman herself. So yes, it works on at least two levels.

I suspect part of why people in general aren’t wowed by it is because it hinges itself on a message that seems to fly in the face of all current logic. It seems to say that getting what you want, and perhaps even deserve, might inherently be a bad thing. Most of the people casting wishes in the movie are asking for seemingly good things. Well, as the old saying used to go, careful what you wish for. Funny enough, the movie even references the equally old curse of the monkey’s paw, a magical solution that comes with a terrible price. Genie magic traditionally comes with the same catch, which Disney’s two versions of Aladdin are careful to explain, too.

Yet when Wonder Woman does it, it might actually seem like a bad thing. We’re in a strange era of empowerment at the moment. Somehow in order to be seen as worthy, everyone has to fit into some sort of stereotype. Wonder Woman is of course a woman, and as such empowerment should simply mean she’s a powerful woman. I mean, right?

Except this is a woman who embodies truth, not power. She literally spends the whole movie fighting bad guys while simultaneously going well out of her way to rescue bystanders. Her idea of heroics isn’t to collect all the laurels (I’m almost sad that from the point we next see her she’ll have acquiesced to being a public figure) but merely to do the right thing.

Her rival in the movie has a similar attitude until jealousy leads her to forget it. That’s telling, too. The villain is motivated to make a success of himself. Both of them quickly lose sight of what they stand to lose well before they hold any real power as they pursue that “better version” of themselves.

The opening scene itself is edifying. The young Wonder Woman is so caught up with the idea of winning a competition that she overlooks both the fact that she is by far younger than her opponents and that her shot at victory only happens because she takes a shortcut, even if the opportunity presented itself by accident and not design. We never really see how she overcomes impatience except that in the present she has spent some sixty years leading a lonely life of little outward acclaim and convinced she’ll never love again. And maybe it’s the idea of patience itself that’s the point.

Patty Jenkins is a miracle of visual splendor in a movie that in a lot of respects looks like something we’ve seen as far back as Superman: The Movie. Yet she never once settles for something less than extraordinary. The whole movie pulses with vigor, packed with deliberate, calculated intention.

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine have even better chemistry this second time around, Gadot that incredibly rare idea of a humble superhero, Pine the movie star who never shies away from taking a backseat. Kristen Wiig, who never quite became a movie star despite killing it in Bridesmaids, pulls off her expected (and superhero movie trope) goofy origin mode into an increasingly credible threat. Pedro Pascal, who has become a geek darling thanks to The Mandalorian, is the best ‘80s throwback with his bad hair and cheap but flashy suits. Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen of course remain perfect elder Amazons.

Even the name of the movie was well-calculated. “WW84” can of course be extrapolated as “Wonder Woman [in] 1984,” but also “World War 1984,” or even simply “World War 84,” by which the movie acknowledges Wonder Woman’s WWI origins, and the wars that happened, and nearly happened, in the time between. It seems somehow forgotten that in 1984 the Cold War was in fact still happening. I don’t think that’s Reagan being depicted as president, meanwhile, or doesn’t have to be viewed as such. The nuclear race was raging long enough that just a few years later the most famous single comic book story (Watchmen) hinged itself on the apocalyptic outcome everyone had dreaded since at least the ‘50s.

It’s the kind of experience that isn’t about superheroes being cool. It isn’t a movie set in the ‘80s that tells you so by steeping itself in ‘80s music. It’s a movie set in the ‘80s, drawing on that time period for certain elements but is otherwise a movie about what makes Wonder Woman unique, what makes her special, what makes her, at last, worthy of starring in big budget movies. 

And you wonder what took so long. This isn’t an entry in the DCEU, this is its own experience, fitting in with things we’ve already seen, but most concerned with showcasing a vibrant new take on an increasingly well-worn genre, in which we think we’ve seen it all. If WW84 is any indication, we certainly have not. The best may in fact be yet to come. And WW84 is now in the conversation for the best we’ve yet seen.