Terrible story, terrible effects, and the lead actor was no Crowe. I almost fell asleep during the last half hour.
shareI don’t know about all that but it’s an uninspired iteration for sure, Gladiator 2.0, similar to what The Patriot was to Braveheart.
GII had its moments but as a whole its mediocre narrative wise.
The Patriot was at least watchable and had cool battle scenes, this was a horribly edited/directed mess
shareOne of the worst movies ever made, people have such standards these days they would award this anything less than a 10/10 on the shit’o’meter 💩
shareIdk seemed like Scott was just trying to make a fun action movie rather than a deep drama which I think he succeeded at especially with the ultra gory parts.
shareI saw it over Xmas. Certainly a bad (and also boring - I fell asleep for 10 minutes somewhere in Act II) film but at least it was competently directed and good production values and cinematography. It was unfortunately just missing any sort of "hook" for the audience and just played things by the numbers. This applies to most recent Ridley Scott movies actually. It was also reluctant to deviate too much from the formula of the first movie, which itself was largely stolen from FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Would it be too hard to try and be a little more original? BARABBAS was a much better movie about gladiators, and it was focused on a fat middle-aged man who falls into gladiating because he feels guilt that Jesus died instead of him. Much more interesting than here in GLADIATOR II, avenging another dead family, and now it's ludicrous as we're expected to believe that the exact same thing happens to men who were father and son.
The most baffling part was the casting of Denzel Washington in a movie about ancient Rome. I know he's based on a character who was actually from (North) Africa, but would it be so hard for them to find a good Algerian/Moroccan/Tunisian actor? They wouldn't have the name value, but also wouldn't have been as expensive, and Denzel just does not fit the period or region at all.
Morgan Freeman fit a lot better into Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves because he actually played it as a foreigner and looks vaguely Tuareg or something if you squint hard enough. Denzel played it as though he stepped right off the set of Training Day and got into a toga.