THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – WHY NOT
Upon release, Gladiator (2000) resurrected a genre we didn’t think we really needed anymore: the peplum, a veritable machine for producing spectacle and testosterone—what if, for Ridley Scott, it was basically the same thing? However, I thought the filmmaker was on the path of self-criticism adapted to the times: I saw him trying to get his hands on a chivalrous post-#metoo film (The Last Duel2021), where he liquidated the last remnants of toxic masculinity. It will follow Napoleon (2023)depicted as a big chubby baby lost in the landscape of his own ambition. The film made much of the barrenness of Joséphine de Beauharnais, who fell into disgrace because she was unable to produce offspring for her man. Precisely, it is a matter of victorious and perfectly realized parentage which is the heart Gladiator II : sons exist and they continue the work of the fathers. We are quiet.
We are sixteen years after the events of the first part where Maximus (Russell Crowe) was stabbed by Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal), the son of Maximus, who was left behind as a child, has become a warrior who lives with his wife in Numidia, an ancient kingdom in North Africa. As the film begins, Roman soldiers, led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), are invading Numidia. They kill Lucius’ wife and take him prisoner. Reduced to slavery, the young man follows in his father’s footsteps: courage in battle allows him to become a gladiator at the circus games. As his mother, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), enlightens him about his origins, Lucius confronts Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), bloodthirsty brother emperors who rule Rome with an iron fist. Against a backdrop of political tension and internal conspiracies, the warrior is on a mission to return Rome to its people.
Political negotiations, virilism and hemoglobin, war scenes and bloody arena fights. If Gladiator II it was an attraction, it would be a time machine. Nothing has changed in the realm of firefighter academicism bathed in the formalin of its old values. Peplum, or when the world and the show were simple, clear, decipherable. Women are non-existent. There is one, passive, maternal and plaintive. On the other hand, men are men, they fight, betray, love and suffer in a burst of hemoglobin and deafening sounds of swords piercing flesh, severing an arm or a neck. To play Lucius, Ridley Scott did not choose Paul Mescal by chance. The 28-year-old young actor, noted in the indie film After the sun and the series Normal peopleembodies a very contemporary type of gentle masculinity. Go through the film as if enrolling in a refresher course. The film is his Hollywood baptism, which transforms him into a mad superman.
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