Gladiator II Review

Gladiator II is one of the biggest movies of this year, and the sequel to an amazing 2000 film starring Russel Crowe. The original Gladiator left everyone breathless with its realism, action, and animosity. The expectation for the second film was very high, with many doubting if it could even live up to the greatness of the first. With the same director, Ridley Scott, and a different main actor (because the primary character in the first Gladiator dies), this film was set to be a huge massive hit before it even came out if it turned out anything even remotely like the first. After seeing the trailer, the CGI in it seemed flawed and not-that-good, although the setting in it seemed great. I saw that Denzel Washington was in it, and I knew that black people were rare in ancient Rome, and almost never having any high position of power, of which he does have in this film, so this was an unrealistic part.

The movie overall was good. The realism was unbelievable, all the settings and costumes were totally realistic and just incredible. This is set to win the award for best costumes. The plot of it was decent. It captured much of the grandiosity of the first film. It was an epic tale of a gladiator, who is fighting for his life because he has to, and comes out on top. There were soooo many people that were involved with making this movie. It's a wonder that they were able to put it all in together in concert. The scenes of ancient rome were incredible. The plot goes well, and keeps us guessing. At the beginning of the movie, it starts with an animation sequence, which is a rehash of the first Gladiator film. It was a little weird if you ask me, as it's like watching a cartoon at the beginning of this big epic movie. Most people don't want this in my opinion. The main character's wife gets killed at the beginning, which makes us invested in him. The film is not overacted, which is good. The next thing about the movie is that it has too many men wearing make up. It is a stark difference to the first film, which had maybe 1-2 male characters with make up on in it. It is in fact a realistic part about ancient Rome, there were men who wore makeup. But it is too different and off putting of a thing to put in this movie. The Roman emperors were wearing makeup. They are almost female-like characters. We are not supposed to really like them, but still. For men who wanted to come see a manly movie about gladiators with a bunch of badass characters, then they see all the guys wearing make up, it's just a little weird and they don't necessary like it. The movie has many battle scenes, which are great and excellently choreographed. The settings of the ancient roman houses again are unbelievable. The columns on the buildings are huge, and they show the internal lounging areas of the houses, which I liked a lot about this movie. This was not as much in the first Gladiator really. Another criticism of it is the scene with the CGI baboons. You could tell they were computerized. I'm not sure why the director took such a risk with completely computerized characters in the first gladiator battle scene like this. It is another big contrast to the first movie. There was virtually no cgi in the first movie. This is what made it so realistic and incredible. The animals here almost didn't even look like a real animal, but like a made up one, with huge sharp teeth and a weird shaped head. They also had cgi sharks in the indoor water battle sequence, which was unrealistic, how the heck would they import sharks all the way from the ocean to the colosseum? That's hard to do even in 2024. The water battle in the colosseum was real, they did actually do that. But the sharks in it were just fake. It's next to impossible to catch those things and import them all the way to the colosseum and keep them alive until the games. There was another part where this woman pushes a stone in the wall, and it moves, and makes the door open automatically. This goes without saying that is just fake as shit. This is so impossible. Overall the actors in this were a little old I think, too. The main actress was a 60 year old woman, who was in the first film, which makes sense to have her in this.

The initial battle of this film was not bad. It was an ocean battle that was very realistic. The acting in Gladiator II was great. Denzel had many memorable lines which we could take with us and reflect on. This was similar to the first film. There were several characters who did this actually. This was one of the greatest things about it. An unrealistic part was having Denzel's character Macrinus be of such high rank in Roman society, because he was a black person. It's not racist, it's just the way it was back then, there were virtually no high ranking black people. Having a black person be in the running for emperor was completely and totally out of the question, and would never happen under almost any circumstance in ancient Rome. But Denzel's character was great, and perhaps the best part of the film, despite this fact. Overall the film is almost an instant classic, just from its historical realism, and well-choreographed action. It is amazing to look back in time and see how they lived back then. Ridley does such a great job bringing other time periods back to life.