As we inch into October and autumn, we’re also approaching the holiday movie season, which means trailers for the big holiday movies, like Gladiator II. I liked the first trailer for this film a lot, especially the glimpses of what looks like a potentially great Denzel Washington performance. This second trailer, though…

 

It’s not that all of a sudden, Gladiator II looks bad. It does not. It still looks beautiful and epic and well-acted. The expression on Pedro Pascal’s face when he says “for the glory of Rome” is perfect. Completely dead-eyed, physically, mentally, and emotionally wiped out by the atrocities perpetuated in the name of “glory”, absolute chef’s kiss of perfection acting moment. (One of my Roman Empires is thinking about how much the Roman Empire sucked.) But damn, this trailer gives EVERYTHING away.

 

It's a common fault of trailers, most recently Salem’s Lot is guilty of this. The new Gladiator II trailer just lays out a little too much plot, particularly around Denzel’s character’s plan to usurp power. It’s one thing to cut a trailer that highlights him as a shifty guy with something up his sleeve, it’s something else entirely to cut a trailer that clearly establishes: 1) his plot, 2) how he’s going to achieve it, and 3) the lead character’s direct impact on said plot. It’s too much! The mystery is gone. We’ll talk more about Thunderbolts* tomorrow, but please note for comparison’s sake how that trailer does not spell out major plot points, it’s basically just character introductions and vibes. Trailers should really be like, 90% vibes, 10% information.

Still, Gladiator II will be one of the big films of this year, and maybe a big factor in the Oscar race, too. Certainly, at this time, everyone is keeping a Gladiator II spot open on their Oscar bingo card. Gladiatorwas a Best Picture winner, which means its sequel is automatically assumed to be a contender, unless and until the film itself proves otherwise. But Gladiator II does have another hill to climb, which is that back when Gladiator won Best Picture (2001), the academy was a lot more copacetic with blockbusters. 

 

That was, in fact, the tail end of the era in which the academy regularly nominated and even awarded popular films with major Oscars. Something changed in the 2000s, though, and we now have ten Best Picture nominees because all of a sudden, the academy stopped nominating films like Gladiator (and most notably The Dark Knight, which is the film that really prompted the “ten nominees” conversation). Today, Gladiator II’s path to a nomination—assuming the film is as good as it looks—is almost guaranteed because of the ten-nominee roster. But can it repeat a Best Picture win?