Gladiator II is a visually underwhelming waste of Paul Mescal

"What we do echoes in eternity." So said Maximus in Gladiator. Unfortunately, that's also true for many actors in the mainstream American film industry. Many performers find themselves unable to escape the gravitational pull of the past when inhabiting major studio features. Previous projects “echo in eternity” as studio executives try to replicate creative lightning in a bottle.  Last month, for instance, Rachel Sennott showed up in her first big major studio movie, Saturday Night. She’s previously made a name for herself in 2020s indie cinema playing original, messy characters in Shiva Baby, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and Bottoms.

For Saturday Night, though, Sennott was asked to impersonate Rosie Shuster. She was only mimicking a historical entertainment figure rather than crafting something new. There's no end to the talent flowing within Sennott's veins. Yet, like so many young arthouse actors, getting called up to the cinematic “big leagues” means just parroting figures of yesteryear. This phenomenon manifests again in Paul Mescal headlining Gladiator II. Over the last two years, Mescal has crushed it on the arthouse circuit with his unforgettable Aftersun and All of Us Strangers performances.

Such richly idiosyncratic works inspired Paramount executives to decide the best use of his talents was to just grunt and reverently murmur the name “Maximus” in a Gladiator sequel. The past will never let any of us go. Not even someone of Mescal’s acting talent.

Mescal plays Hanno in Gladiator II, the renamed Lucius Verus, son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), from the original Gladiator. After the events of the first movie, he was sent away from home and eventually found settled in Numidia. Now an adult, he's become a married man and a fierce warrior. As Gladiator II begins, his land is invaded by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal). This man brings a massive bloodthirsty Roman army to Hanno's domain. Hanno and his soldiers put up a glorious fight, but this land is conquered. Even worse, Hanno's wife dies during the carnage. Hanno finds himself taken captive along with other Numidia survivors and sent to Rome to serve as a slave.

Back in Rome, the muscular Hanno proves himself worthy in hand-to-hand combat thanks to his memorably brutal dispatching of a baboon. That slaughtering catches the eye of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a manipulative owner of gladiators that offers to purchase Hanno. Macrinus is trying to carve out a good relationship with Rome's sibling leaders, Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Hanno’s skills in the ring, and his potential to put on a great show in the Colosseum, could aid that pursuit. However, his newest purchase is not interested in being somebody’s lapdog or servant. Hanno has his own ambitions in mind, beginning and ending with slaughtering Acacius.

The best word describing Gladiator II is “uninvolving”. Screenwriter David Scarpa returns to the Gladiator universe with a generic revenge mission, two wicked emperors trying to out-kooky one another, and some early behind-the-scenes political machinations echoing similar material from the Star Wars prequels. It’s all too derivative and predictable, which undercuts the sweeping quality one should get from a historical epic. Only Washington's exceedingly lively Macrinus performance lends a discernible pulse to the on-screen material. Otherwise, the characters and plot points unfold with minimal flair.

Such familiar screenwriting would be more digestible if Gladiator II didn’t look so flat visually. This Collider piece helpfully illustrates two principal (though by no means exclusive) ways many mainstream American movies are shot. One of those methods is coverage-based shooting, which boils down to filming sequences with tons of cameras. There are minimal ideas for how a scene will “look” on set. Key visual details will be hashed out in the editing room. Given how quickly Gladiator II director Ridley Scott shoots his movies these days, it’s no surprise he opted for coverage-based shooting on this tentpole.

That approach proves an Achille’s Heel for Gladiator II. Coverage-based shooting isn’t an innately inferior way of filming movies. However, it does feel at odds with the spectacle Gladiator II aims for. The camera keeps cutting around ultra-cramped medium and close-up shots, with Scott and editors Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo refusing to let shots linger for long. There’s also an odd visual motif where characters rarely inhabit a single frame. A film like Clemency exudes preciseness in this kind of detail to suggest isolation between in-universe characters. Here, though, Hanno contentiously talks to an off-screen Macrinus in the same filming style as Lucilla intimately conversing with an off-screen Acacius.

Even when the tones change from scene to scene, Gladiator II refuses to let two characters inhabit the same frame. There is no underlying meaning between this visual detail. It's just a symptom of rushed camerawork and no memorable blocking. Meanwhile, the big spectacle sequences involving fighters in the Colosseum are also a visual wash. For starters, there’s a bit too much of a clean computerized sheen to these sequences. None of the digital critters our heroes contend with (baboons, sharks, rhino’s, etc). ever look super realistic, which immediately undercuts the danger Hanno is in. Even more egregious, though, is the weirdly unprecise cutting in these sequences. A conceptually absorbing duel between two boats in a flooded Colosseum should be a memorable display of carnage.

Instead, Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson keep framing the skirmish in overly tight shots and messy frantic cutting. These details absolutely annihilate the emotional urgency of one of Gladiator II’s grandest sequences. Refusing to let images on-screen simmer or pull the camera back is so strange given the genre this blockbuster occupies. Historical epics ranging from Lawrence of Arabia to The Northman to countless Cecil B. DeMille movies are all about grand tableaus rich with detail. Gladiator II, meanwhile, is a fragmented experience. It can’t be bothered to capture two people in the same shot, let alone properly pull back the camera on man vs. rhino duels.

With minimal grand imagery to speak of, there’s just not much in Gladiator II to grab your heart and soul. Poor Mescal is asked to just do a rehash of Maximus from the original Gladiator rather than creating an original character. Mostly, Mescal is asked to be sullen, look reverently at props belonging to Maximus, and bellow. As any thirsty person on social media knows, Mescal's got the physicality to spar in the Colosseum. However, it’s hard to appreciate any of his fight choreography skills given Gladiator II’s editing. How do studio executives and producers watch Mescal’s masterful physical acting in just that Aftersun hotel room scene alone and decide that the best use of those talents is Gladiator II? That’s like seeing Al Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park and deciding he should be a random villain in Magnum Force.

The rest of Gladiator II’s cast isn’t much to write home about, alas. Joseph Quinn’s most impactful on-screen detail, for example, is that when he screams as Emperor Geta, he inexplicably sounds like he's doing an Lin-Manuel Miranda impression. If this bratty ruler had bellowed "Gmorning Gnight!" before he put his thumb down for Colosseum fighters, I'd automatically have given Gladiator II five stars. The big exception among the unmemorable performances is Washington, who has lots of fun playing the constantly plotting Macrinus. Everyone else in this movie is either channeling performances from the first Gladiator or too stiff for their own good. Washington, meanwhile, concocts a unique personality rife with cheeky energy.

Washington is also decked out in some of the best costumes in Gladiator II, which come largely courtesy of Janty Yates. If there's any eye candy worthy of a classic historical epic in here, it's in these nicely realized garbs. It’s especially fun seeing Macrinus stroll around in more colorful robes compared to the traditional Roman white toga’s the emperors and other high-ranking Romans don. This subtle detail nicely reinforces Macrinus as an outsider in a society he’s keen to obtain a higher status in. Like the costumes, Arthur Max's production design is also laud-worthy.

24 years after it first hit theaters, Gladiator has garnered the sequel it deserves in Gladiator II. By that, I mean Gladiator II is another handsomely made but emotionally inert historical epic. No solid outfits or sets, nor even a thoroughly enjoyable Denzel Washington turn, can mask Gladiator II’s hollowness. They also certainly can’t distract from a visual scheme that makes an “epic” sequel feel much too small. At the center of this underwhelming enterprise is poor Paul Mescal, yet another arthouse darling asked by Hollywood to just regurgitate the past. “What we do” may “echo in eternity”, but it’s highly doubtful Gladiator II will “echo” in your brain long after you leave the theater.