Gladiator II (2/5 Stars)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.”
Errol Morris

Edward Gibbon’s landmark The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-1789) is distinct from most history texts in its general direction. Most histories start at the infancy of a civilization and follow it through to its maturity. The Decline and Fall starts at the maturity of the Roman civilization and follows it aaaaallllll the way down. The best and most famous of its historical characters are all at the beginning and as the story continues they get worse and more obscure. There are many reasons why the Roman Empire declined and Gibbon’s book has several thousand pages of them, but I will very briefly outline the very basic problem that occurred after the death of Marcus Aurelius (circa 186 A.D.) and continued for the next 100 years until the advent of the reign of Diocletian (circa 284 A.D.). The authority of the emperor rested on the army, and, more specifically, the Praetorian Guard which was that part of the army that was stationed in Rome. Starting with the reign of Commodus and moving forward, many emperors were killed via the honorable usurpation of a crazy tyrant or the dishonorable assassination of a competent prince, but no matter how the transfer of power occurred, the first thing that the new emperor would do would be to pay off the Praetorian guard with a donative, basically a bribe for the army’s loyalty. This first act of business was so ingrained and predictable that it created a moral hazard. After all, the more the army assassinated emperors, the more they benefited financially. For those 100 years, there were an estimated 30-35 emperors/usurpers, only one of which, Septimus Severus, died of natural causes. The rest were murdered.

[Gibbon tells of an extraordinary interregnum after the murder of the Emperor Aurelian (circa 275 A.D.) wherein the army asked the Senate to recommend a successor and the Senate, in turn, asked the army to recommend a successor, and this back and forth went on for eight whole months while the throne remained entirely vacant. Nobody wanted the death sentence.]

Surely, in this context, there is a prurient, exploitative, and lurid story to be told in blockbuster cinematic form. There isn’t really a moral to be found in the circuitous killing of so many princes over such a long period of time, which itself presaged only a further and total decline in the empire, but at least the story would have no lack of sensational violence. It may come as a surprise then that Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, a story that takes place circa 211-218 during the reigns of Geta, Caracalla, and Macrinus does not use any of it. The most this movie takes from history is the names of those three emperors, but the real crimes of these men are not explored and their interactions with each other, though dramatic and fatal in real life, are not shown and indeed cannot be said to even inspire the plot of the film. It is just generally bewildering to me that the writers could have such a mountain of material to work from and disregard all of it in favor of a storyline that, essentially, could only appeal to an audience entirely ignorant of the historical context in which the movie supposedly takes place.

Modern dramatists come across a very basic problem with interpreting material that either originates or takes place in the past. Shakespeare is a good example. There is always this temptation to update the language and locate the action in venues that are more easily identifiable. The problem is that the best thing about Shakespeare is the language, not the plot, and if you are updating the language, you lose what brought you to the material in the first place. The fact is that the past is old and hard to understand. To truly appreciate it, the audience needs to go to the past, not the other way around. The best Shakespeare performances are those that strip out all distractions from the words themselves and focus almost entirely on helping the audience understand what is being said.

Gladiator II could have been a much better movie with this approach. As it is, the plot concerns Lucius, the son of Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe’s character in the original) becoming a gladiator about twenty years after the events of the first film. He is a jaded malcontent that speaks derisively of the Roman Empire and yearns for his grandfather Marcus Aurelius's “Dream of Rome” in which power is returned to the Senate and the empire is once more based on freedom. There is a subplot in which a returning army is going to overthrow the corrupt duo of emperors Geta and Caracalla and enthrone the daughter of Marcus Aurelius (Connie Nielson, still alive from the original, where apparently she totally got it on with Russell Crowe and bore his son. I think we all missed that part) as the rightful heir to Marcus Aurelius with the presumed plan of returning the empire back to the old days of the Republic.

That bullshit plot is historically absurd. The Roman Senate was not a model of republican virtue and indeed had very little semblance with our modern institutions. The Romans did not believe in freedom and certainly no emperors, generals, senators, or sons and daughters of any of them would have paid lip service to a plan to expand "freedom" by granting more power to the Senate. Nor does this confused conspiracy have even internal logic. One cannot support freedom and republican virtues through the assumed authority of hereditary power. And there is no reason to believe that the daughter of Marcus Aurelius has more right to rule than the duo of emperors who are also the sons of emperors. Besides, I very much recall that in the original movie (and also in real life), Marcus Aurelius’ main mistake was giving over the empire to his worthless son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) instead of adopting a competent successor like Maximus. But here we are to assume that Lucius has some legitimate claim to the throne based on who his father and grandfather is. The movie ends with an incredible confrontation and denouement that suggests the “Dream of Rome” has a plausible chance of becoming a reality, perhaps as soon as the next movie. Of course, in reality, the Roman Empire declined and fell. Indeed the very next emperor after Macrinus, Elagabulus, was a teenage orgy enthusiast. He does not make an appearance here and is sorely missed.

There are good elements to the movie. I for one have no problem with the absurd spectacle of an armored Rhinoceros or a naval battle replete with sharks within the Coliseum. Those were fun. Also fun was Denzel Washington’s machiavellian portrayal of Macrinus. While all the other characters are enunciating their lines in “swords-and-sandals” fashion, he just chews through his dialogue as if this was the sequel to Training Day. He didn’t get the memo on how to act in the ancient past. Also, with one exception, this is a good example of color blind casting. Given that race didn’t matter in the Roman Empire (citizenship certainly mattered, but that wasn’t based on race), it doesn’t affect the inherent drama of any particular scene by having a black man play a character that historically wasn’t black. And since Denzel Washingon is one of our best actors, why not hire him to play what, in this historical context, should be a race neutral role. The only exception to this is the plot point, found in this movie but not in history, that Macrinus was once a slave, which for no apparent reason, makes Denzel Washington’s blackness seem relevant when it isn’t.

I’m not sure what the point is in morphing the distant past to pander to modern sensibilities. Most movies take place in the present and already do that. One of the best things about a movie that takes place in the past is that it can provide the modern audience a new experience, a story about humans that have an entirely different worldview. A very good example of this is the recent TV series Shogun, which is a fictional account of feudal Japan that takes pains in helping the audience understand what characters living in early 1600s Japan thought, felt, and were motivated by. I don’t think any of us would condone ritualistic suicide the way that feudal Japan did, but with a well produced story, the audience can understand why the characters do it and how it affects the plot. 

You don’t have to agree with characters in order to find them interesting. To only value the past to the extent that it justifies our actions in the present is a narcissistic, narrow, and numbingly tedious way to interpret historical events. After all, if there is no difference between then and now, then there is also no novelty in setting a story in Ancient Rome. And if all one considers important about the the past is that which comments on the present, then history does repeat itself, but only because one is too vain to consider those elements that are different. This is why movies made by Communists are so stupid and boring. Ridley Scott is usually better than this.