On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, I had a front-row seat for the fall of the new Roman Empire. No, I’m not talking about the result of the U.S. presidential election. I’m talking about my position in the theater at Gladiator II’s Asian premiere, which served as the centerpiece screening of this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Before the lights went down, Denzel Washington, returning cast member Connie Nielsen, and franchise newcomer Fred Hechinger were on hand for a stage talk with producers Lucy Fisher, Douglas Wick, and Michael Pruss.
The day before, the three actors appeared at a press conference with Paul Mescal, who stars as Lucius, the retconned exiled son of Russell Crowe’s protagonist in the first Oscar-winning Gladiator film. Variety was there (as was I), but there’s a lot they missed, quote-wise. Of particular interest to me were some cast quotes that implicitly drew a parallel between the cinematic excess before Rome’s fall and what’s happening in the world now.
That’s just my takeaway, and it could be the Election Day hangover talking. But at the premiere, as actors dodged questions about the film’s “message,” Wick also chimed in to say, “The one thing that we’ve learned is ancient Rome is a great mirror to our time now.”
‘Prisoners of this new and inevitable decline’
The difference, or lack thereof, between ancient Rome and our world now is something director Ridley Scott touched on, too, in an October interview with Den of Geek. Scott wasn’t in Japan for these two days of Gladiator II promotion, and Paul Mescal was a no-show at the premiere, though he did send in a video message. This made it feel like Denzel Washington was the real star of Gladiator II, and that’s not so different from how it is in the movie, where his performance as Macrinus, “master of gladiators,” somewhat upstages the vanilla main character.
In Gladiator, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) says, “There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.” Gladiator II begins with onscreen text telling us, “16 years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, his ‘dream of Rome’ has been forgotten.” Tyranny now reigns, and “the fall of the great city is imminent.”
What is very much different this time around is the scale of decadence on display in Scott’s vision of Rome, where characters sit in cafes reading anachronistic newspapers, perhaps puzzling over how much their society seems ripped from our headlines. At the press conference on November 4, Connie Nielsen, who reprises her role as Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius, said:
“I think the size that Ridley built, the size of the sets, are pretty much the same, but he has added to the set this sense of excess and vulgarity and corruption to that new Rome. Twenty years have passed, and in those twenty years, Lucilla has watched as every norm of power has been subverted into utter narcissism and self-serving behavior by a very small group of elites. And what you see is how incredible it is to watch a master like Ridley Scott use subtle but unmistakable ways of showing a change that has happened to Rome and to the empire and to all of us that have become prisoners of this new and inevitable decline.”
‘The glitz and glamour before it ends’
Fireballs enliven the spectacle of an early naval battle in Gladiator II, and that’s just a hint of the craziness to come. At the press conference, Paul Mescal talked up the film’s over-the-top production, saying, “We spent about three or four weeks right in the middle of the shoot that was just my body getting run through the mill. It was like, if you weren’t fighting on a boat, you were fighting a man on a rhino. And if you weren’t fighting a man on a rhino, you were fighting a pack of baboons.”
Feral mutant baboons is more like it. The rhinos in Gladiator II aren’t just for arena riding, either. You’ll also see one’s head adorning a platter at a banquet where twin emperors—one mad with syphilis—enthuse over the ancient Roman equivalent of a Mandingo match à la Django Unchained. “To amuse you is my only wish,” Macrinus tells them, and you can feel Ridley Scott hovering just out of frame, inwardly channeling Maximus’ line from the first film: “Are you not entertained?”
In this movie, tigers seem tame as Scott fills the Colosseum with water and sharks and has the costume department put a dress on a monkey. Speaking of costumes, four authentic ones worn by the human actors were on display at Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, the venue for the film festival. The garnet and gold robes belonged to Fred Hechinger’s Emperor Caracalla, the kind of demented ruler who thinks the masses “can eat war” (rather than Marie Antoinette’s cake). Hechinger explained that even the costumes were meant to convey cultural excess in Gladiator II.
“Janty Yates, who was the costume designer on the first Gladiator as well, designed this film,” he said. “And working with her was just an utter delight. I remember walking in for the first costume fitting and immediately feeling and realizing that we were going to be dealing with excess here. Rings on every finger, gold all around. You know, this is where greed goes. This is the fall of Rome, but with all the glitz and glamour before it ends.”
Offscreen, Mescal hinted that he and Hechinger might have recently been drinking to excess, in the spirit of Gladiator II. He said they went to karaoke and some bars in Shinjuku’s Golden Gai the night before the press conference. When pressed for details of what they sang, the actors confessed that their karaoke songs included Shania Twain’s “Still the One,” The Cranberries’ “Zombie,” and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” “And the rest is pretty hazy,” Mescal said.
Mark those songs down as the soundtrack to Western civilization’s decline, since Gladiator II’s score isn’t as memorable or evocative as the one Hans Zimmer composed for Gladiator. Then again, what is?
‘Freer to have fun,’ on or offscreen
At the press conference, Fred Hechinger said that, during Gladiator II’s production, they were “working with 8 to 12 cameras” in some scenes. For Denzel Washington, who has some directing credits of his own (such as the Oscar-nominated Fences), this helped him surrender to the acting process and put himself “in the hands of a master filmmaker,” Sir Ridley Scott.
“I could completely trust him and not have to worry about what he’s thinking,” Washington said. “Just be ready for what he might use. There were so many angles … you had no idea … so many cameras … I had no idea where, editorially, he was going to be, anyway. So, it didn’t matter. It freed you up. It made you freer to have fun.”
Having fun off-camera in Tokyo isn’t something Washington had much time for this time around. Over the course of two days, Gladiator II’s producers and cast did acknowledge Japanese cinema, name-checking filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Tokyo Story director Yasujiro Ozu. Washington himself already starred in one Kurosawa remake (The Magnificent Seven) and has another in the pipeline (Highest 2 Lowest). When asked for his impression of Japan’s capital, however, he said, “I didn’t get to see it. No, I was working.” This only led to more questions about where he went and what he ate during his time in Tokyo.
“I didn’t eat,” he deadpanned. “I didn’t go anywhere. [Laughs] No. I went to an excellent restaurant in the hotel. That’s where I went. I haven’t gone out this trip. This is my third or fourth time in Tokyo, so my wife went everywhere for me. She did, I’m sure, a lot of damage shopping, and I thank you for going to the movies so I can make some money to pay for what my wife bought.”
For her part, Connie Nielsen visited the Meiji Shrine, where she mentioned seeing children participate in their “first kimono ceremony.” Her interpreter gave some context for it as a Shichi-Go-San (Seven-Five-Three) event. This festival to celebrate growing up is usually observed by families on a weekend near November 15. It was just one highlight of Nielsen’s trip to Tokyo.
“I went everywhere,” she continued. “As soon as I had a moment, I slipped out of the hotel, and I have to say, Tokyo is just beautiful. I’m also a runner, so every morning, that’s the first thing I do, is to go for a run around the Imperial Palace. And, uh, just absolutely love Tokyo. Every night, we’ve been to one incredible restaurant after another. I don’t want to make a shout-out, but Udatsu Sushi is amazing.”
Located in Meguro, Udatsu Sushi entered the Michelin Guide as a one-star selection for 2023. As for hotels, I’m not sure where the Gladiator II cast stayed, but the historic Imperial Hotel, which turns 135 next year, is a two-minute walk down the street from Tokyo Midtown Hibiya. I crossed through Hibiya Park and passed the hotel on my way in. It’s also within walking distance (or running distance) of the Imperial Palace. You can see a good view of the palace’s outer moat from the 9th floor of Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, where the press center for the film festival is stationed.
Roman and American gangsters in the land of opportunism
During the Q&A part of the stage talk, Denzel Washington insisted his Gladiator II character is “not a villain,” but rather, “someone who takes advantage of all opportunities.” Going by that description, Macrinus’ arc plays like a spiritual sequel to Washington’s one previous collaboration with Ridley Scott, American Gangster, which co-starred none other than Russell Crowe. The first trailer for both movies even features music by the same rapper, Jay-Z, as if to show the link. Think of this one as Roman Gangster: the story of a former slave who will do whatever it takes to get ahead in life and enact his revenge on the empire that wronged him.
In American Gangster, Washington’s antihero, Frank Lucas, fancies himself a businessman who’s “just trying to make a living,” but his customers are addicts, and the brand name he’s peddling, Blue Magic, is that of a drug that destroys lives. Frank amasses power, much like Macrinus (who declares quite emphatically, “I must have power,” and, “The only truth in my Rome is the law of the strongest.”) However, as Frank’s family enjoys wealth and prosperity, their Thanksgiving prayers are juxtaposed with images of junkies shooting up. One lies dead of an overdose under a cross as their child cries next to them.
American Gangster is a movie about what happens when the land of opportunity becomes the land of opportunism. There’s an inherent contradiction at play when a country founded on principles of freedom somehow managed to let the slave trade thrive on its shores for its first 89 years (1776–1865). To say nothing of its displacement of Native Americans, whose plight is echoed in what Lucius says of the Romans: “They have no lands but the ones they’ve stolen.”
This is the original sin that corrupts the American dream—coded as the “dream of Rome” in Gladiator II. The dream becomes a nightmare when the culture at large starts to value personal freedom at the “unreasonable expense of others,” as one American Gangster character puts it.
A mob boss, played by Armand Assante, who doesn’t like monopolies, tells Frank they can be successful and have enemies or unsuccessful and have friends. The implication is that you have to be an a-hole a certain amount of the time, or else you’ll just be a nice guy who finishes last. That attitude can be used to justify any kind of behavior, fictional or not, with U.S. voters and viewers giving their favorite antiheroes a pass to act reprehensibly in both strongman politics and the Golden Age of TV.
It’s no different with Frank Lucas than it was with Tony Soprano. They’re each a face of American guilt, which is perhaps best summed up by Crowe’s character, Detective Richie Roberts, who says of Frank: “This man murdered thousands of people, and he did it from a penthouse while driving a Lincoln.”
The only difference with Macrinus is that he’s conscious of the chaos and collateral damage he causes. For him, it’s not enough to get ahead while others are on top. He wants to bring down the whole empire on the heads of those who ran it.
You don’t have to be Nostradamus to foresee the soon-to-be 47th president of the United States doing the same thing. Macrinus believes the gods have sent him to effectuate Rome’s rebirth, and with the president-elect surviving two assassination attempts this year, he may be similarly anointed in the mind of his supporters. But if you consider the disregard he showed for U.S. intelligence agencies in his first term (to give but one example), it’s easy to imagine him collapsing the government from within as he carries out Macrinus-style vendettas on other institutions in his second term.
But I digress. This overriding pettiness and greed (for money, wine, property, power, everything) sets Macrinus apart from Maximus in Gladiator. Maximus was also out for vengeance (“in this life or the next”), but his advancement from slave to victor in the Colosseum had a nobler purpose. Indeed, Macrinus is the very kind of emperor—a usurper of the throne—that Maximus sought to overthrow.
‘Written on one of the tombs on the bones of a gladiator’
The gonzo set pieces in Gladiator II serve to fortify a film that I liked a little better before I went back and rewatched the first Gladiator. In that movie, Maximus vows, “I will win the crowd. I will give them something they’ve never seen before.” Gladiator II likewise pulls out all the stops to wow us Colosseum spectators in new and interesting ways, but having the sequel fresh in mind while I rewatched the original only heightened my awareness of all the other ways it moves through the familiar paces of a 24-year-old plot.
Without getting into spoilers, it’s enough to say that many of the same things that happen to Maximus in Gladiator happen to Lucius and General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) in Gladiator II. There are beats so familiar and scenes so similar that they feel paint-by-numbers, as if this weren’t just a remix but a remake (or maybe a half-drunk karaoke rendition). Early on, for instance, while Denzel Washington sits in for Oliver Reed, we see the same type of training drill, where Lucius takes blows from a sparring partner and refuses to pick up a weapon, just like his father did.
Lines of dialogue are also recycled, such as, “What we do in life echoes through eternity,” Speaking for the audience, Lucious muses, “I feel like I know those words,” and at that, the script admits, “I can’t take credit. It’s written on one of the tombs on the bones of a Gladiator.”
In a way, the whole movie is. With all due respect to Peter Craig and David Scarpa, who penned the script, that last line might as well be describing the secretarial screenwriting process for a legacy sequel like Gladiator II (or Top Gun: Maverick, which Craig also co-wrote).
There’s another line where Caracalla says, “Crown him with laurels,” and it feels like the movie does that with callbacks and flashbacks to Gladiator. If I could write my own Rotten Tomatoes blurb for it, and I had to do it in 25 words or less, I’d say:
“Gladiator II is a fun yet formulaic sequel, where ace performances prop up a plot that rests too comfortably on the laurels of its predecessor.”
Lucius, son of Maximus
At the film festival, Denzel Washington talked about how Connie Nielsen was there representing “the OG.” (Not the Original Gangster, American or otherwise, but the Original Gladiator.) Her character’s storyline retroactively changes the viewing experience with that movie, too.
At best, making Lucius the son of Maximus is an embellishment of the first film, where Spencer Treat Clark (Unbreakable) plays the young Lucius. At worst, it’s the contrivance of a cash-grab sequel that still manages to overcome the constraints of an IP-obsessed Hollywood and be more entertaining than it has any right to be.
Either way, the sequel’s “Son of Gladiator” angle complicates the relationship dynamics between characters in the first film. It somewhat weakens Maximus’ righteous foundation as “father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife,” since it turns out he had another son of about the same age with another woman, anyway.
Having said that, Gladiator II is a cut above the usual legacy sequel, and seeing it on the big screen was a refreshing break from the usual superhero fare Hollywood is pumping out these days. As it stands right now, I’d much rather watch Pedro Pascal and Joseph Quinn in this than the fourth Fantastic Four movie.
It was a privilege to be invited to the Gladiator II premiere, to see the cast in person, and to hear about the filmmaking process and their experiences in Tokyo. I’ll give the last word to Wonder Woman’s mom, Connie Nielsen, who addressed Lucius being the son of Maximus during the Q&A part of the press conference. When asked whether she knew there was going to be another story about him while shooting the first Gladiator, Nielsen said:
“No, I did not imagine it, and I did not know that. But I did know … in my mind, I kept as a secret … you know, actors, we use secrets sometimes when we are doing scenes, to just put something out there that maybe the other person doesn’t know, but it creates some weird experience in the scene. And in the first Gladiator, there is a scene where I introduce my little son to Russell [Crowe], and when we’re doing that, I kept as my secret that that was his son. That that was Maximus’s son. Because I was so angry, on behalf of the real Lucilla, that she had been married off to her step-uncle when she was just 16 years old. And I just found it so unfair that, in my mind, I made a story that before she had been shipped off, she had had a beautiful moment with Maximus, who at the time, was probably some lowly soldier. And who obviously would not have been allowed to date her or be with her, ever. And so, in my mind, that was her revenge over all these men who were telling her what she should do with her life.”
You can see for yourself whether any of that made it onscreen when Gladiator II hits theaters, first in Japan on November 15, then in the U.S. on November 22, 2024.
The film festival venue, Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, seen from Hibiya Park.
