“This city is diseased.”

Paul Mescal's Lucius delivers this line off-hand as he’s brought back to Rome in chains, a scene reminiscent of one in Gladiator, in which the heroic Maximus (Russel Crowe) is similarly enslaved. What Ridley Scott depicted in the 2000 original echoes in 2024 with Gladiator II, but the dialogue in question is a coda to not only what differentiates both movies, but to why Scott's pseudo-remake might be necessary in the first place. It's a darker, more vicious film for a darker, more vicious time.

Taking place nearly two decades after the first film, Gladiator II begins with Lucius, the son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) living in secret in North Africa with his wife Arishat (Yuval Gonen). Lucius was but a boy when we last saw him (he was played by Spencer Treat Clark), and the would-be heir to Rome's throne is now a soldier in the local military as it prepares to resist a Roman invasion by sea, spearheaded by the fearsome General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal).

Rome is still the imperial superpower it once was. Little has changed between entries, and between leaders, so history repeats itself. As was the case with Maximus, whose family perished in Gladiator, tragedy befalls Lucius as well, quickly (if inelegantly) setting the sequel on a trajectory remarkably similar to Gladiator as Lucius swears revenge against Marcus, no matter the cost.

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