As Paramount and Skydance finally agree to a merger, here comes the first trailer for what will be the last big film of the Paramount Pictures era, and it’s a doozy.
Gladiator is a nearly perfect film, one of Ridley Scott’s true opuses, which splits the difference between art and entertainment without ever feeling like it’s laboring for either. The idea of a Gladiator sequel seems impossible—why mess with the best? Why risk tainting a great cinematic legacy? Except something about Ridley Scott films always lend themselves to sequelization (see also: Aliens, Blade Runner 2049), and it’s not like the Roman Empire ever lacked for drama to mine for the big screen.
The trailer for Gladiator II is making big promises I REALLY hope the film can deliver on. It looks INCREDIBLE. Set decades after the events of the first film, Paul Mescal stars as Lucius Verus, last seen as a child watching Maximus kill his uncle Commodus in the Colosseum in Rome. Since then, Lucius has been sent into exile, but he’s dragged back to Rome as a prisoner turned gladiator. Paul Mescal looks great, both as an actor and a hot dude on screen (flip to the second slide):
Connie Nielsen returns as Lucilla, Marcus Aurelius’s daughter, and Pedro Pascal stars as a Roman general who once trained under Maximus. Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger star as the young co-emperors of Rome, Geta and Caracalla, respectively (don’t google them if you don’t want to spoil the movie for yourself). But you know who leaps out the most in this trailer? Denzel Washington.
Obviously, Gladiator II is going big on spectacle, and new technology means Scott can pull off sequences like a flooded coliseum staging a boat fight. I am already dreading the sheer amount of historical horse murder he’s about to put us through! But it’s not the action or Paul Mescal’s seething rage-fighting, or Pedro Pascal looking like the Kendall Roy of Rome that is most interesting here, it’s Denzel plotting and planning in the background. Look at him. He is SCHEMING. He is MACHINATING. He is CONNIVING. He looks AMAZING, and the silky way he’s curling through this trailer, manipulating everyone, is FANTASTIC. Denzel plays Macrinus, a sort of arms dealer to Rome, and again, don’t google that name if you don’t want to ruin the film for yourself.
Gladiator II is due in mid-November, which means it hopes to be a holiday hit, the film everyone will elect to see during the long Thanksgiving holiday in the US (a big moviegoing holiday). Based on this trailer, it should be able to deliver, and send Paramount Pictures out on a high note. It’s the end of an era, and Gladiator II is here to entertain.