Best of 2024, #6: Gladiator II

The next two movies are both would-be blockbusters that didn’t end up on anybody else’s Top 10 List. I saw this movie with a big fan of the first movie. He hated this one. He was shocked to find out as we were leaving that I liked this one, but I pointed out that him that, unlike him, I disliked the original.

The first Gladiator seemed like an unintentionally comic movie to me that took itself way too seriously. I spent that movie cringing from the over-earnestness. This movie was the opposite: It was ten pounds of fun in a five pound bag. It knew precisely how silly it was, and was all the better for it. So many gladiator scenes! Every ten minutes, our hero was back in the arena, up against more and more outlandish threats (yes, including sharks!)

Ultimately, this was a good old ’50s style sword-and-sandal epic, and one of the best of the genre (Nowhere near as good as Spartacus, of course, but other than that, there weren’t a lot of great ones.) If I had to sum up this movie in one word, it would be spectacle. Like the patrons of the Coliseum, I was given my bread and circuses, and boy oh boy did I need them.

Rulebook Casefile: Capture Real Life National Pain

But I also felt like this movie had more going on.

What do you do when your country is dying? Like, what do you actually wake up and do every morning? Do you try to do something about it? Do you just lament that it’s too late? Do you try to turn the situation to your own advantage?

Most of the characters in this movie want to save their dying country, but all in different ways, resulting in tragic ends for most of them. Living in a dying-if-not-already-dead country myself, I felt for each of them.

My plan right now is to move to Canada. The people in this movie don’t have that option, and they all suffer greatly for it. In this movie, there are no good outcomes. It’s going to be a bloodbath.