Pop Culture Happy Hour - Gladiator II

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

The new film Gladiator II is a sequel to Gladiator, Oscar-winning swords-and-sandals blockbuster that starred Russell Crowe. It tells a similar tale — a soldier, sold into slavery, becomes a gladiator in the Roman arena. This time out, it's Paul Mescal whose prowess in the coliseum earns him fame that threatens Rome's tyrannical rulers. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film also stars Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhourSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The new film, Gladiator 2 is, as you might expect, a sequel to the 2000 Oscar-winning Swords and Sandals Blockbuster that starred Russell Crow. It tells a similar tale. A soldier sold into slavery becomes a gladiator in the Roman arena. This time out, it's Paul Meskell, whose prowess in the Coliseum earns him fame that threatens Rome's tyrannical rulers. The film also stars Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington, and a few familiar faces from the first movie. I'm Glenn Weldon. And I'm Stephen Thompson.

and we are talking about Gladiator 2 on this episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is NPR Culture Desk correspondent Chloe Veltman. Hi, Chloe. Hi, Chloe. It is great to have you also here, Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadati. Hey, Roxanna. Hello. I am thrilled to have you all together. Gladiator 2 is set about 20 years after the events of the first film. Paul Meskell plays a soldier in a North African kingdom that gets conquered by the Roman general,

played by Pedro Pescal. Meskell's character gets sold to a rich and charismatic merchant who trains Gladiators for the Roman Games. He's played by Denzel Washington. Meskles' gladiator is fueled by rage as well as a desire for revenge. And spoiler alert, if you haven't seen any marketing for this movie, you will learn how Paul Meskles, Lucius,

is linked to Russell Crow's Maximus from the first film. Gladiator 2 is once again, directed by Ridley Scott. It's in theaters tomorrow. Chloe Veltman, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of Gladiator 2? Well, I had very mixed feelings about Gladiator 2. On the one hand, it is good, schlocky Hollywood fun. Cannot deny it, in the fine age old tradition of glistening biceps and flying togas, right?

There are some wonderful things about it. I think Denzel Washington's performance, obviously, is a standout. He brings such glamour as well as a glimmer in his eye to his role as Macronus. And his scenes with Paul Mescal. as our hero Lucius said, I think easily the most compelling scenes in the entire film, in my opinion. Yeah. There's a lot that leaves me wanting in this film.

I mean, basically it's a bloated, kitsch imitation of the original, which I love. It feels like a drag parody of itself, honestly. And the reason I bring this up is because this second film, the narrative beats of it are constantly referencing the beats of the first film, you know, the concept of an insurrection plot that's leaked is in both films. and the trope of the brilliant but jaded military leader who just wants to go home to his family is in both films.

Anyway, lots of other reasons that I had reservations, but I don't want to hog the mic. So let's pass this one on. All right. How about you, Glenn? Are you asking me, was I not entertained? And yeah, I was entertained. I mean, this is such, to Chloe's point, this is such old school Hollywood moviemaking. It's big. The money's on screen.

Scott knows what he's doing. He's a pro, right? He knows how to construct spectacle. He also knows there's only so many ways to do a swords and sandals fight. So that's why we get iterations, right? We get in the Coliseum a sea battle because that actually happened and it's cool to look at. Yeah, I wasn't expecting sharks. Yeah, I don't think anybody was expecting sharks.

I don't think the Romans at the time were expecting sharks because I don't think they happened. I did find myself thinking that things like the sharks looked fake. In the beginning, those shots of the Roman ships approaching North Africa looked a little fake. Those baboons, there's a baboon fight scene. Those mouths opened in a way that mouths do not open. But I sat there thinking not for the first time and probably not for the last time. Thank God for Denzel Washington. I mean, Chloe, I think we're all going to say every time this film started to feel like what it is,

which is a very old-fashioned project, right? Every time it would feel a little stodgy, a little self-important, a little dated, a little thick around the middle. I lost count of the number of queer-coated bad guys we got in this movie. I mean, one queer-coded bad guy, I'm not going to hate the year for that because that's just a little, that's the spice and the paprika. That's a paprika to the gulag. You need that. But like every single bad guy in this movie is queer-coded and that's like, we're still not doing that in 24.

But then Denzel would appear, he would deliver a line of, let's be clear, perfectly serviceable, unremarkable dialogue and put a spin on it and just like stretch out a vowel or hit a consonant really, really hard. And I'm back in. And he's making big choices here. And I want to get some, I want to, I didn't understand this one choice he makes, which is that he's always fussing with his wardrobe. He's always like, like moving his sleeves around. And I couldn't tell what that was meant to convey. Was that meant to convey, A, that he is this ex gladiator from the provinces who is not used to the Roman lifestyle. Or B, is that he's so, he's like living his lifestyle.

He's like living large. He's loving this whole, his toga and he's trying to, you know, fix the drape of his robe. I couldn't figure out what he was trying to say, but I didn't care. because while he was on screen, I loved it. Every other time he wasn't on screen, I was like, okay. My theory is that he always wanted something a little fancier. He was a striver. Yeah, maybe that's it.

So the robe doesn't fit because he wants a fancier one. Didn't know what he was doing, didn't care. All right, how about you, Roxanna? I love that Glenn mentioned that because I'm writing a piece explicitly about how Denzel handles his wardrobe in this movie. Good. No joke, I am. I wish I could just talk about Denzel because I don't really find anything else about this movie very, compelling. I think that he is, of course, doing the best acting, but also just from like a narrative

level, you put Denzel in a movie. People are going to want to follow Denzel. Like the dream of Rome, I don't care. Denzel is here and he is such a natural leader. Yeah, I just, I think there are a lot of things about this movie that are incredibly odd. Even putting aside the old fashioned nature of it, It feels like there is a hole in the middle of this narrative where it just doesn't make sense to me what the goals of certain characters are or what happens to them midway through the movie to make them change their minds about what they're doing. I mean, it's very just let's take Gladiator and redo Gladiator 20 years later. And that was not really cutting it for me. And it's disappointing because like I think Ridley, I love the last duel. Kingdom of Heaven is like an all-timer. I think that of course he can do these large-scale

movies really well. But I think somewhere here the characters got really lost, and I just couldn't find myself caring about anybody, again, but Denzel. Denzel good. Denzel great. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, though, he did have a much better written part than pretty much everyone else. In the film, I mean, he got to have some real nuance. I mean, you see this a lot more in Gladiator 1, there's much more nuance to the characters and the film has such amazing dramaturgical punch. Every action seems to come logically out of what preceded it. You know, every bit of gore and violence. It makes sense within the framework of that film. This one, it all just feels it's flashy and splashy and I don't really understand why characters

are making these speeches, except, of course, for Denzel's character. You know, he's a complicated guy and that comes across in the writing. But I mean, poor Paul Meskell, having to do deliver these really empty, banal, military speeches. Strength and honor. I mean, I'd much rather listen to Russell Crow go, you know, unleash hell once, and that's enough, you know. Yeah, but do you think that Mescal has less depth and nuance than Russell Crow did in that film? Because I'll agree with you. I'm not used to seeing him in anything where he doesn't, he's not called upon to be wounded and soulful.

And I like that in coming to this film, he didn't lose the wounded soulfulness. He brought that to this action character. I do think he's better at the more intimate scenes. And I just don't think he has the voice emotionally or physically to deliver some of those stirring speeches, right? I don't think he did that as well. But I thought he was a lot more nuanced than Russell Crow's character was. Oh, goodness. I completely disagree with you, Glenn.

I mean, I feel like all Paul got to play in this movie was rage, basically. I mean, this is an actor who has so much range. I mean, he's still very young and he's had this meteoric rise. But everything I see him in, there's such subtlety to his performance. And I just don't think he was given a chance here. I just think the writing was so much better in the original Gladiator movie that Russell Crow really did get to show a lot more of the nuance, I thought. All I was going to say is I think this movie also suffers from the problem of really having like two protagonists, right? Because you have Paul.

But then you also have Pedro Pascal's character who is sort of more of the like Maximus character and that he is someone who is. who is like a military veteran and he is feeling uneasy about what Rome has become and what the future of it could be. So I think there's also the problem that for me personally, I didn't think Paul sold the rage element very well. And I also just think that this movie is like oddly divided between what Paul's character is doing, what Pedro Pascal's is doing, what Denzel is doing. There's a lot of like conflicting motivations that I think just didn't add up to a ton of actual character development. Yeah. Right, because Pedro gets to be noble and stoic and do some badass fighting, and that's pretty much it.

Should we talk about the fight scenes in more detail? I mean, it's a succession of fights, really. I mean, I really feel like this could equally be a video game, right? This movie, just go from one, especially when it gets to the part where there are sharks circling the ships. Yeah, there are definitely battle scenes where I definitely would compare this movie a little bit to Furiosa. Oh, okay. Mad Max saga where you're like, I'm not sure this movie needed to exist, but they certainly poured an absolute metric ton of resources into pulling it off and kind of gave you kind of these escalating ever more kind of out there battle scenes. You know, Ridley Scott at this point is really just showing off in kind of quick succession after the last duel and after Napoleon, you know, which as flawed as I felt those.

films were, the battle scenes were riveting. I felt these battle scenes, to me, like, there was a little bit of a cap on how much I was going to fully buy in to a 20 years late Gladiator sequel. There's just like a little bit of a cap on it. I would compare it almost to like, when we talked on this show about Transformers 1 and it was like it was like a Transformers prequel and I was like, well, you know what? I enjoyed this about as much as I was going to enjoy the origin story. of the Transformers. Like, I liked the original Gladiator. I didn't necessarily feel like it was a story that needed to be told beyond that original movie. But if you're going to, I felt like it was a pretty effectively crafted, as several of you've said, kind of old school blockbuster, Hollywood, big battles, gladiatorial combat, big performances.

Denzel Washington is going big. He's going for that Oscar run, no question. And for me, I sort of came out of it like, well, that's about as much as I was probably going to enjoy a 20 years late sequel to Gladiator. I'm surprised y'all didn't have as much fun at it as I think I did. Well, I saw Gladiator in 2000 in the theater and proceeded to spend the next 24 years, never thinking about that film again. So I think we should do a little service journalism here. I'm glad that I went back the day before I saw Gladiator to rewatch Gladiator because it turns out there are some callbacks here, including some. precisely recreated shots

that would have taken up, you know, time on screen that would have just zoomed past me because I don't remember the first movie at all. So it's worth it if you forget the movie. But Chloe does not forget the first movie. Chloe loves the first movie. So how did this hit you? You know, one of my favorite things

about this new Gladiator is that sequence at the beginning, the animated sequence, where they go back and they replay moments from the previous film. Yeah. Like you, Glenn, I had rewatched the original Gladiator shortly

before going to see the new one. And it was amazing to me, just to think about how fresh that movie still felt to me and how the sort of intellectual questions it asks about what is the nature of leadership, what does it take to be a good leader, what happens when you have a leader who focuses on spectacle versus policy, for example.

All these things actually I was thinking about. And this second movie, you know, in hearkening back to the first in those ways, it does sort of hint at these ideas, but it doesn't achieve them in the same way. I liked the references to the previous film, but the problem is, it is that all it made me think is how this new one is found wanting in almost every respect.

Yeah, I think as also someone who really enjoys the first one, I mean, how can you not when it was on TNT every Saturday for like 20 years? I do think that this movie really over relies on Maximus as a character, because I think that is part of the reason for why the Lucius character feels very much like a shadow of that. And also why I don't think the film's politics work, right? Like, we have these very spectacle, obsessed twin brothers who are, like, running Rome into the ground. And there was a part of me that thought, like, in 20 years, there was nothing that you guys sort of done to come up with another idea for how to rule. And I understand that part of this is historical. I get that. But again, I just, I think the first movie's idea about what a free roam is and what men deserve and the dignity of life, I think all of those are very, very distinct.

And I just am not sure that the second movie does anything past. Remember what Maximus said about those things? We're also sort of saying the same thing about those things. I think Roxanna nailed it with that too many bad guys critique. Because this is, if you think about it, it's the classic superhero sequel critique, right? Too many bad guys. Right. Like, in the first film, the rivalry between Comedus, the Joaquin Phoenix character and Maximus, the Russell Grove character, was pulpy as hell, but it had a heartbeat.

It felt real. And you understood where Comedus was coming from, why he turned into this venal loser that he was. Here, the person he's most angry at doesn't necessarily deserve that anger. and there are all these other people kind of in the mix kibbiting from the sidelines, and that just takes the heartbeat out of the film. I think it's really fascinating. Ridley has almost become a filmmaker who I think just doesn't like people very much based on these latter alien movies.

And I almost felt like a contempt for humanity in this. Like, okay, you guys deserve a better ruler, but also people not so great. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. And I guess that runs through several of his most recent film. I just kind of came out of this. Like my thumb was kind of wavering like and then I went, ah, thumbs up. So I'll be very curious to see how this film is received by audiences because the first

film was such a massive crowd pleaser. People have really, like it became kind of a staple film for dads the world over. Yeah. And I feel like to me, I expect this movie to be embraced, maybe not on that scale, but kind of appreciated as at least two and a half hours of grand spectacle flawed, though it is. I think we can be safe in the assumption that the nation's dads are going to be talking to their kids at Thanksgiving. Hey, did you see that Gladiator, too?

We like that Gladiator, too. Well, we want to know what you think about Gladiator 2. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH. And on Letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show, Roxanna Haddadi, Chloe Veltman, Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes, sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hufatima and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all tomorrow.