Gladiator II

I am not entertained

I am still a fan of Scott’s. Well, was, until very recently. I even trudged through Prometheus. And Covenant. I’m a masochist. I deserve a good spanking.

Scott’s always had a situationship with historical accuracy, at best; see Last Duel, Napoleon. But now he’s gone and ghosted it. And slept with its mother. In its own bed. Live-streamed on Twitch. Because why not.
Female legionnaires? Zombie baboons from Hell? Gladiators riding rhinos shouting lasers out of their arses? (whose arse is up for debate). Football? Seriously?
To be fair, female gladiators had been a (rare) thing, because why not? Gladiator games, especially into the 3rd century, were pretty much American wrestling, if a fair tad bloodier, but mostly kayfabe. So, yeah, women, for the same reasons.
Except by the purported time of this movie, they had been banned because morality.

Washington is a pro, as usual, but out of place. The real-life Macrinus did manage to briefly claw his way into power despite his non-noble birth. But he couldn’t have done it with a black skin.
Pascal plays himself, as usual, so, Eternal Eunuch. Despite the hefty run time, his balls don’t drop. Also, why is he everywhere when that kind of money could hire an actor? And he’s a Roman general, too; who were well-known for general foppishness. General of the Emo Empire.
Maximus Redux is, well, present. He does a fairly good job of shouting while looking like a wet, miserable dog. And breathing, also. He breathes. That about wraps it up. But his character benefits from Chosen One Powers. Surprisingly, he’s not female.
The rest of the cast is better than Pascal, which is neither difficult nor enough.

So yeah, black-washing, female empowerment, so-called progressivism, and heavy recycling of the previous plot.
As anything with Pascal in it, it’s anti-male, smash-the-patriarchy, and much ado about nothing (literally; in Shakespeare’s time, ‘nothing’ was slang for an absence of dick). Polar opposite of the original.

Seats were stiff. Popcorn was crap. An evening wasted.

Edit: regarding the omnipresence of xir Pascal (no gender assumed), rumour apparently has it that it owes to his overt political pandering for the Party of the Ultimate Good (PUG?), but also to his checking of diversity boxes (ie: non-white, non-male) while being "white-passing".
The sheer and very literal racism of the morally superior never ceases to amaze.

ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT!

The opening battle scenes sets the tone for the bad writing immediately. A city built literally right into the ocean surf deep enough to allow
large ships to sail right up to the walls unimpeded. There are no double walls to repel invaders as was common. Massive breach towers raise up
magically out of nowhere on the ships. Next is the laughable baboon gladiator scene. The CG looks terrible and the baboons look like something out of a zombie movie. It's historically inaccurate and baboons are many time stronger than humans, there is no way a shackled person is going to win in a 1 on 1 against an angry baboon. It gets worse when the Rhino riding gladiator shows up. Then the utter nonsense that is the gladiator filled ships battling it out in a shark infested water filled arena. WTF! This is NOT a sequel but a shameless remake and a soulless copy of the original. Pascal is horribly miscast and just not good here. His character is annoyingly pathetic and spends most of the movie looking like he's about to cry. Mescal as the lead is boring and a far cry from the performance put op by Crowe. Washington again is miscast and appears to embrace the stupidity by comically hamming it up most of the time. Everything is so over the top ridiculous and unrealistic it might as well have been marketed as fantasy
and throw in some dragons to fight as well. Then there is the woke. DEI everywhere again. Black people were not common in Rome at the time. The Numidian people shown as very diverse with a lot of blacks were not in fact black. Macrinus was North African and not black so casting Washington for a historical character is race swapping. While Rome did incorporate North African people into their empire they were white not sub Saharan as shown here and there were not black people in the Senate. There are also females shown in full legionnaire outfit fighting along side the men. There were no female Legionnaires in Ancient Rome.
I've seen people mention female gladiators. I didn't see any but maybe I missed it somehow. Overall unless you are one of those people that like to slow down to stare at a car wreck I would not recommend wasting time on this.