Gladiator 2 is a profoundly disappointing film disappointing because I would love a good action epic these days something we are sorely lacking instead we got a bloed and long uninteresting and at times nonsensical poorly acted Poor Man's imitation of the first film that copies the larger plot beats almost to the level that the force awakens did to a new hope they were so desperate to capture the magic of the first film they ended up copying most of it in a very soulless and inept way let me describe the first film's plot which will actually end
up being a spoiler for the second film because these plot points Encompass about 80% of its Story Only to tackle on an additional plot Arc for the resolution that plays out in an unnaturally enforced way the film opens with the grand battle with a main character fighting in it establishing him as a competent Warrior he is defeated and captured with his family killed by high ranking Roman only to be sold into slavery but then recognized to be a great fighter to be made into a gladiator a role he will use to his advantage to get
revenge against that Roman who killed his family while at the same time there is a subplot to overthrow the corrupt Roman Emperor and give power to the Senate by the use of a Roman army loyal to a rebellious General that the Gladiator gets involved in due to his association with certain political characters two being the same characters in both films but the Insurrection is stopped at a crucial Moment by the Emperor who throws the one responsible for the Rebellion into a climactic gladiatorial battle which just so happens to also be the showdown between the protagonist
and the one who killed their family there are subtle differences in the sequel with a key reversal regarding one character which we'll get into later but the fundamental beats are the same up until the extended plot at the end where the sequel tries to do something clever but fails at it dramatically so the film is really bad a shadow compared to its predecessor and we're now going to get into the details why which will also mean spoilers the true primary failing of the film comes from the protagonist his motivations and how the film pulls it
off all of it is crap the primary motivation comes from the inciting incident of the film the event that casts our protagonist on his journey and is the main catalyst for all his actions going forward a rather crucial thing to get right but Gladiator 2 stuffs this up dramatically what am I referring to the death of his wife which causes his desire for revenge and it is the primary driving motivation for the film and look I'm all for making Fring gr again the narrative practice of killing off a main character to give motivation to the
protagonist but it needs to be executed pun intended in a compelling way as we saw in Gladiator 1 this can be done perfectly the same with John Wick's dog and Uncle Ben for Peter Parker it's more about the main character's feelings and connections with these sacrificial characters than the time they are given to flesh them out I find it interesting that many feminists claim Fring is a sexist Trope but complain when it is done to a male character well in Gladiator 2 it's done with a protagonist wife and the issue with it is not because
it's a female character getting killed off to give the protagonist motivation and to drive the plot forward the issue is it's done in such a way to Rob whatever narrative weight it could have achieved and in this case we have the perfect example to contrast this with in the first film in the first film Maximus is a way fulfilling his duty fighting for his country so his wife and young child might not have to face the horrors of war and are able to live in a safer room his separation has caused Great heartache for a
un to be with them and this desire can be felt by the audience when he learns that their life is threatened he fights with everything he has to return and protect them because they are vulnerable and cannot protect themselves it is his duty as their husband and father and he would die to keep them from Harm's Way But ultimately he fails at this the buildup and hope that he might get there in time is shattered upon finding their poor murdered bodies we feel that pain and it hits hard driving the anger and desire for a
Revenge to the audience that is how you have character deaths motivate the protagonist now compare this to the sequel the protagonist is happily married and is living with his wife without much care or motivations in the beginning this can at times serve well to establish characters and show the two care for each other but compared with Maximus being away and missing his family it is much less effective in the first film we had a motivation for Maximus right out of the gate presenting motivations that the audience can understand and sympathize with connects us to the
character making us invested in that goal and feeling hurt when we are robbed of its desired outcome in Gladiator number two the city where the protagonist and his wife are living is besieged by the Romans and instead of the protagonist sending his loved one to safety where he will stand and fight to protect her because it's a modern day and insulting for women to be protected by a man she Don her armor and joins The Defenders as well you see women can protect themselves they don't need no man in the modern day and that's clearly
why there were so many women who fought on historical Battlefield and why there are so many protecting the C oh wa wait women rarely ever fought historically in battle but here's a thing even if she was willing to fight a proper real husband who loved his wife would never let her join the battle unless it was truly the last option a good husband must want to protect his family if he doesn't he is a lousy husband and a pathetic man because the best way to protect your wife during a Siege is to not let them
fight in it even if they think they could help women are much less effective in battle and if they untrained can even get in the way but seriously protecting the vulnerable is a greater priority and this depiction that is made to Panda to modern day sensibility leads us to the main reason why this doesn't work and it's based on a very fundamental reason as to why people react with stronger visceral emotion when women and children are threatened compared to men do you know why it's because they are more vulnerable and as a result people instinctively
know they need more protection Society for thousands of years has sought to protect women and children more because they need that protection more than men so when you show a woman throwing herself into battle fighting just as well as a man we feel as though her life is less valuable and needing less protection because she's not valuable enough to be kept out of Harm's Way and because she can seemingly protect herself just fine compare this to Maximus his family were vulnerable they had not the ability to protect thems and he was the only one who
could protect them and we felt that as the audience I cheered for him in in my heart as he raced to save the lives of his family and my heart was broken when the innocent and vulnerable ones he loved most were taken from him and that evil men had prevented him from fulfilling his duty as their husband and father in the sequel the wife of the protagonist gets herself killed by throwing herself into battle and her husband is equally culpable for letting her do it and a more instinctual level because she is not presented as
vulnerable and needing protection we don't instinctively react with wanting the protagonist to protect her because she doesn't even need it and we feel less at her death because it could have been avoided if she was simply kept from Harm's Way and so if her life her vulnerability and her loss meant less for the protagonist due to him letting her fight in the battle why should it mean anything to us it actually amazes me how much Gladiator 2 misses The Mark with the protagonist's primary motive as we break this down the reasons why are clear this
was all constructed because of modern-day woke sensibilities and political correctness it's now problematic for a woman not to be a to protect herself and it's more problematic to depict women as being more vulnerable than men even though in reality we all know they are it's these realities that resonate with the audience it's how stories can feel real and when you contradict reality your story will feel fake and we will not be able to get properly invested in it Hollywood has forgotten that much of heroic story telling is founded on Traditional Values and traditional masculinity the
first Gladiator film knew this that it's a man's role to protect the vulnerable by the way men want to do this and women and children want to be protected these are Universal truths that resonate in the human heart and when we see these truths reflected in story sometimes with Victory and other times with heartbreaking defeat we feel it as we did in the first Gladiator film and when we see these truths contradicted or subverted like the setup of Gladiator 2 it has far far less emotional weight sometimes none at all because we know it's fake
when the purpose of a good fictional story is to create the illusion that it's real it doesn't help that the opening Siege is also one of the dumbest historically based sieges I have ever seen it's honestly so [ __ ] I might do a full battle scene autopsy on shadiversity there is so much to criticize here seriously small Siege Towers on boats and trebuchet existing hundreds of years before they were invented it also doesn't help that the protagonist seemingly gets over his wife's death rather easily laughing and smiling with others not that long after her
death where in contrast in the first film Maximus carries the pain of his family's loss through the whole film unleashing it on comus at the film's climax my name is Maximus desus midus father to a murdered son husband to a murdered wife and I will have my Vengeance in this life or the next but girl boss wife isn't much of an afterthought in this film only given token mentions later and I all by but forgot about her by the end there is an attempt at kind of mixing up the copied plots from the previous film
by having the main character who killed the gold boss wife being a good guy who only followed his Emperor's order and it being an unfortunate byproduct of the flow of the battle we're talking about Pedro Pascal's character here the general of the Roman army and is actually the one who wants to overthrow the evil Roman emperors and the protagonist desire to kill him might prevent the salvation of Rome it's that and other additional details like Denzel Washington's characters that mixes it up for it to feel like a completely different film right no it doesn't the
film follows so many the same beats that these changes do not fix it feeling very formulaic and being a poor man's copy of the original it also leads to other problems for instance the film wants you to worry about the fate of Rome indeed the plot leads to its near destruction and salvation but what reasons has the film given us to care about Rome little to none but contrary to that we have plenty of reasons to want to see Rome's destruction the protagonist hates it it butchered his home and killed his wife it's full of
corrupt idiots practices slavery and has an oppressive unruly populace the first film at least tried to establish Rome that it might be able to become a Beacon of Hope and civilization in an uncivilized World it did this with Marcus rias's thoughts about what it was and other key moments in the film but in Gladiator 2 I wasn't showing enough reason in this sequel to care about the fate of Rome or for the protagonist to change from hating Rome and wanting to see it burn to suddenly fighting to save it it came across very Hollow and
I had no reason to root for the protagonist in the end you see the protagonist is actually the illegitimate son of Maximus and the emperor's sister from the first film another attempt to link the films together and it felt a little disingenuous and cheap there might be enough hints in the first film to try and justify it but ultimately I still didn't like his choice and the movie seems to try and convince us that because the main character accepts who his real father is and that he cared for Rome as well as his mother that
the protagonist now cares for Rome as well and will regain his Birthright and save Rome even though nothing about Rome has changed to make him want to save it there were some really dumb moments in the fight scenes like unironic pocket sand defeating or Rhino and the protagonist openly trying to kill the emperor in front of thousands of people and no one noticed even though they all saw it seriously he should have been executed right then and there but nah it's fine now there are also some allright bits of choreography But ultimately it means little
because much of a fight scene's enjoyment is only as good as the reasons for it happening unless it's got some of the world's best choreography and spectacle if we don't care about the reasons for the fight we will rarely care that the fight is even happening heaps of people wear armor in the film and it never works until it does almost unreasonably well and it makes it even more annoying due to the contradicting depictions the sequel extends past the copypaste plot points from the first roomm through the use of denzo Washington's character and we don't
need to go into detail about these earlier part part of the film because of it being so generic and similar to the first the protagonist fights as a gladiator and wins gaining much more influence even though it's never explained why he's such an incredible fighter maximum was a lifelong Soldier and a great General and tactician this guy he's just awesome because protagonist Powers oh and this time the film slowly reveals the thing everyone knew from the trailers that the protagonist is really lucious remember that little kid the son to the sister to the emperor yeah
that's the protagonist Lucius Denzel eventually orchestrates a type of coup to gain control and power in Rome now I'm calling him Denzel because that's who the character is Denzel is playing [Music] Denzel and I don't care to remember the character's name it's actually a pretty poor performance by him but it's still the best performance in the movie Pedro gives one of his worst performances that I've ever seen from him but going back to Denzel he gets power thanks to the fact that Pedro's character stupidly mentions his planned Insurrection to his wife who is actually lucius's
mother who was played by the same actress as the first film p mentions this to her with an earshot of a spy that just so happens to work for the guy that is in debt to Denzel's character and so the primary thing that enables Denzel to being out to lead This Crew in Rome is actually achieved through random luck nothing Denzel actually did himself he only gets this information by luck with no real plan ahead of time he exposes the Insurrection which gains the emperor's favor and then convinces the emperor to send Pedro's character into
the Arina to fight Lucius hoping Pedro's death will cause a ride because the people of Rome actually really like this General Pedro's character even though he is now a traitor this leads to one of the big climactic fights of the film Lucius versus Pedro Pascal because remember it was Pedro's character that killed lucius's wife but in the end Lucius forgives him and Spares his life only for Pedro to be shot to death by the order of the Emperors kicking off a riot in the process now I felt nothing with Pedro's character death in the end
because I was given so little to care about him in the first place or for the Revenge that Lucius was after in the midst of the riots Denzel sews division between the twin Emperors getting the crazy one to kill the other with his help to which he is then appointed as the leader of the Army in Rome ah but Lucius was given a ring by his mother the one that once belonged to Pedro's character as well as Maximus before him with it Lucius can now somehow prove his Heritage and people just instantly believe him giving
him the keys to his escape and he sends the ring with orders to the army that Pedro once commanded and was going to use to take over Rome and overthrow the emperor yes with this ring and a message that promises he is Lucius the leader of Pedro's Army luckily obeys he gives no actual proof I mean the Emperors could have taken that ring off Pedro's body and sent it with a fake note but nah it works out fine I mean heck of it was that easy to gain control of a whole Army no wonder Rome
is near utter chaos and defeat the crazy Emperor organizes one last gladiatorial match where the protagonist was fight to protect his trapped mother helped by the other Gladiators he set free he fights off the Roman soldiers trying to to kill her as well as trying to kill certain Senators rest in peace that good senator from the first film that I can't remember the name of but in the process another Riot erupts and Denzel uses the confusion to murder the crazy Emperor as well as lucius's mother shooting her but my question is why why on Earth
did Denzel want to kill lucius's mother she wasn't a threat to him indeed he had no reason especially when he could have just shot Lucius who is a threat to him Lucius was standing right out in the open completely vulnerable Denzel know he has a claim to be the next Roman Emperor and that he is a legitimate threat to his power grab but no instead Denzel kills the mother and gives one of the only men who could legitimately take power away from him a reason to want him dead if you say Denzel was actually aiming
for Lucius because Lucius was sitting in front of his mother and just missed hitting the mother by accident why doesn't he take another shot at Lucius who just continues to stand there instead denzo reacts with job done goal completed aiming for the mother and just leaves and really Denzel's only Security in position was the emperor without that Authority reinforcing his power there's no way the army or the rest of the Senate would obey Denzel's character this should have been the end of his power but lucky for him everyone now treats him like is the next
Emperor because a story needs a villain seriously Denzel's character just bumbles through this film with everything magically working out for him never even losing a bet having the Emperors react exactly as he would want and having people forget reality and giving him the throne effectively in the end under Denzel's command the city's Army rides out to confront Pedro's Army Army that Lucius had ordered to march on Rome but Lucius rides out between them to stop the battle but Denzel instead of using any intelligence to manipulate or negotiate his victory I mean all he needs to
do is challenge lucius's claim as to who he is or use his army or power to kill Lucius instead Denzel decides to risk it all by taking on the unbeatable Gladiator half his age where Denzel was shown to not have had any recent fighting experience yes he was a fighter in the past but he an old man now fat and unpracticed but because this is the main Showdown Lucius really struggles to fight him I mean Denzel even technically wins but Lucius is saved by literal plot armor like literally plot armor his leather armor the type
of armor that's usually depicted in this film to do nothing suddenly becomes mithil and is unbreakable seriously pick aide but in reality a sword could bust through a hardened leather curest with this type of attack and leverage but like I said in this instance it's literal plot armor impervious Lucius gets up keeps fighting kills enel and then he returns to mourn his mother's death kneeling down and grabbing some of the Coliseum sand in his hand where the film ends without any more closure than that in the end this felt like a pointless unneeded film that
ultimately fell remarkably fat it's got nothing on its predecessor and nothing worth recommending it it might even sour you a bit on the previous and Superior film it feels like this was made as a not so cheap cash grab the result of a creatively bankrupt industry that can't think of anything new but instead looks to past successes and like a parasite lives off the fumes and life force of Greater Works that it is incapable of making in the modern day Gladiator 2 is a disaster of a film but hey it's not the worst thing I've
seen we're not near rings of power levels of abomination and stupidity it has impossible action in it at times so I am interested to see if this will be successful because terrible films have been successful before but I do not recommend this film if you want a great film that set in Rome about a gladiator on a quest for Revenge that follows these beats in a much more Superior way well you know exactly where to look and as always stay on watch [Music]
