Whatever Ridley Scott is on, it should be added to the water. A lot has been said — not all of it kind — about the veteran director’s recent films. His work ethic, though, is unimpeachable. Between The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon and now Gladiator II, Scott has spent his 80s making back-to-back epics with the collective running time of a long-haul flight, and serious turbulence en route.
Some of those movies have been really very bad. Yet Scott’s stubborn charm is that you still never know what is coming next, or what form he’ll be on, just that the result will have been made with belligerent swagger. “Are you not entertained?” demanded the first Gladiator back in 2000. With Ridley Scott the answer, even buried in caveats, is generally yes. So it proves again with the sequel.
On form or off, power has always been a favourite theme for the director. Throw in the original film’s enduring popularity, and all roads were going to lead back to Rome eventually. Twenty-four years have passed since Gladiator, but with Scott keeping time, the sequel actually opens 16 after the first film, in which Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius went from general to rebel.