Gladiator 2 Spoiler Free Micro Review

This is a somewhat niche reference but stay with me. Imagine you are watching the original Gladiator with Ralphie from The Sopranos, and he is fast-forwarding through all the dialogue and character development to get to next action set piece as fast as possible, while boisterously quoting everyone's favourite lines (“strength and honour”, “there was a dream that was Rome” etc.) while spectacularly missing the point. Well, Gladiator 2 is kinda like that.

Rushing to get to the next scene before the current one has even started, unearned payoffs and callbacks, characters that seem to be aware they’re acting out a sequel, plenty of things told but not shown, all with oddly jumbled editing that suggests either Ridley Scott is directing by the seat of his toga or the inevitable extended edition will, like Kingdom of Heaven, “fix” everything and no doubt be considered a masterpiece.

That's before we even get into the actual history…