Living in Morocco, we’ve been somewhat disconnected from the vibrant cinema culture of Manchester, consigned to streaming movies on dodgy websites with no shortage of unsavoury pop-up ads. That was until we stumbled across Fes’ Megarama Cinema – a mythical land for a wayfaring Brit, where popcorn is £1.60 and tickets are £4.50. A place where dreams come true. Like saggy-trousered boxer-brandishing teenage boys waiting for the next Supreme drop, we eagerly booked our tickets to watch Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Denzel Washington swordfight in the sand.
When the day arrived, we emerged from our bedrooms at noon, missing school and feeling sorry for ourselves; we decided to carpe the diem and sit in the cinema for three hours, hoping to be entertained. You could say there was a home-cinema feel to Megarama, with a liberal attitude to flash-photography during the film, and a couple leaving half an hour before the end having talked through the first two hours.
Gladiator II started out as all films should: Mescal fondling some wheat and smooching his wife between some freshly washed linen. Boom. We both anticipated a 5/5 showstopper.
Sadly, Gladiator II left much to be desired. Maybe it was the impossibly large shoes left to fill by the original Gladiator, but this film seemed to suffer the same short-fallings that have plagued the action genre in recent years.
Much like in the original Gladiator, there was great potential to explore the drama-fuelled political back-stabbing that was characteristic of Ancient Rome. Denzel Washington’s character – a former slave with insatiable ambition – exemplified this: gliding around Rome’s political class, spreading lies with a glint in his eye, Macrinus was a well-written character, but was also sadly the only character that seemed to offer up this taste for depth within the film. What’s more, Ridley Scott seemed to feel the need to punctuate any of these stimulating back-room plotting scenes with massive rhinos, killer monkeys, and (somehow) sharks.
As such, unlike its 2000s predecessor, Gladiator II seems to have been bitten by the CGI bug that echoes the 2010s dark age of Marvel Studios shoving special effects and paper-thin scripts (no pun intended) down all of our throats – the decade when this blockbuster-factory wreaked havoc on many a begrudged parent who sat idly by and became more and more existential as the 2.5 hour plus films fulfilled their at-best average destinies.
From sharks that wouldn’t look out of place in a FRIV game, to the Emperor’s second-in-command pet monkey, Dondus, the film was rampant with a litany of CGI. We felt that these Hunger Games-esque additions pushed the ejector-button on any sense of historical accuracy within the film. Maybe it was the grainy camera quality of early 2000s film, or maybe it’s the crispness of Pascal’s perfect beard, but Gladiator II lacked the earthy realness that was so charming about the first film.
Of course, this was somewhat soothed by Mescal, who was, for two-thirds of the film, shirtless; this was coupled with a masterful performance from Washington, but then again, the sky is blue. Moments of drama and tension made for an easier watch, but these certainly weren’t found in the drawn-out action scenes and over-done CGI.
On the surface, Gladiator II seems to appease both the blood-thirsty twelve-year-olds, and those for whom their ‘Roman Empire’ is the Roman Empire. However, Scott, trying to hit two birds with one stone, has hit one bird with a boulder. Although the 2010s are thankfully behind us, Gladiator II is proof that action films have a long way to go before they’re good again.
It is with therefore with great regret that we proclaim that we were not entertained, as the hunky Russell Crowe once wanted.
I sat down with director Elias Demetriou to talk about his film ‘Maricel’ which follows a Filipino domestic worker in Cyprus caring for an elderly couple who have a lot of unspoken family drama.
