Special Episode - Gladiator II with Dr Lindsay Steenberg

WARNING! This post and episode both contain spoilers!

In case you somehow missed it, the hotly anticipated sequel to Gladiator (2000) hit the cinemas in November 2024. Gladiator II follows the story of Lucius Verus, the child of Lucilla and the hero from the first film, Maximus. Nope, we did not know that was a thing either.

Poster for Gladiator II, Source: https://deadline.com

After being separated from his imperial family following the death of his uncle (the Emperor Commodus), the adult Lucius ends up in the arena. His owner is Macrinus, an actual historical figure who served as emperor briefly in the third century CE. The film follows Macrinus and Lucius as they navigate the complicated political world of Rome under the Emperors Caracalla and Geta. Will Lucius be able to rid Rome of corruption, once and for all? (Dramatic music)   

Joining us today to discuss the film is the delightful Lindsay Steenberg.

Special Episode – Gladiator II with Dr Lindsay Steenberg

Dr Lindsay Steenberg is currently a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University where she co-ordinates the graduate programme in Popular Cinema. Her research interests are violence and gender in postmodern and postfeminist media culture. If you like true crime, you should definitely check out her back catalogue. Whilst Dr Steenberg has published widely and regularly presents at conferences, our particular point of connection is her interest in gladiators.  She is the author Are you not entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

We hope that you enjoy our conversation as we unpack:

• Arena action scenes
• The naumachia scene from Gladiator II
• Macrinus’ role in this film
• Gladiators and celebrity
• Historical inaccuracy on screen
• Our vision for Gladiator III: Tokyo Drift

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Dr Lindsay Steenberg's book Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator Across Visual Media.
We recommend it!

Automated Transcript

Dr Rad 0:00
Hello. You're about to listen to a special episode of the partial historians, which is all about gladiator two, a movie set in the reign of Caracalla and Geta

so

Dr G 0:12
so we are warning you in advance that this conversation will contain spoilers if you have not yet gone to the cinemapost haste, my friends get there soon and come back and listen. Or if you don't care about spoilers, and in fact, you thrive in an environment where you know all of the details before you see a thing, please continue listening and enjoying.

Dr Rad 0:35
And it pretty much turns out as we all expected. Dr G Maximus came back to life and married me in the future, just as I always wanted. Finally, a New Zealand man finds his Australian bride, that's right, and now on with the show you.

Music. Welcome to the partial historians.

Dr G 1:10
We explore all the details of ancient Rome,

Dr Rad 1:15
everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles wage and when citizens turn against each other, I'm Dr rad and

Dr G 1:25
I'm Dr G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories. Join

Dr Rad 1:36
us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.

Hello and welcome to another special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr rad,

Dr G 2:00
and I'm Dr G

Dr Rad 2:02
And we are super excited because we're going to be talking about another gladiator movie today. Dr G, just when you thought you couldn't get enough,

Dr G 2:10
I can't get enough. That's why I'm here, exactly. And

Dr Rad 2:15
we are super lucky to be joined by an expert, an international expert, Dr Lindsay Steenberg is currently a senior lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, where she coordinates the graduate program in popular cinema. Her research interests are violence and gender in post modern and post feminist media culture. If you like true crime, you should definitely check out her back catalog. Whilst Dr Steenberg has published widely and regularly presents at conferences, our particular point of connection is her interest in gladiators. She is the author of, are you not entertained? Mapping the gladiator across visual media, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. Being astute listeners, I am sure that you have all correctly guessed that she is here to discuss gladiator two with us, which was at time of recording, just released in cinemas. Welcome Dr Steenberg,

Lindsay Steenberg 3:15
thank you so much for having me and for giving me the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subject matters gladiator movies, you're

Dr Rad 3:23
in good company here. You know, it's one of the things I think that we do the most around here. So look, we are so keen to talk a little bit about gladiator two with you, and also the aspects that you have looked at in your work. So we thought we might start off with the part that people probably remember most vividly when they see a gladiator film, particularly a Ridley Scott gladiator film, and that is, of course, the arena sequences. So please tell us what is often the function of the arena in Gladiator films.

Lindsay Steenberg 3:54
Okay, again, favorite subject matter within my favorite subject, yeah. So I've spent more time than really any human should, thinking about arena fights. And I can say that when it comes to the almost the genre of gladiator movies, they're the most important part. You can't have a gladiator movie if there's not any gladiating So I have spent quite a bit of time over quite a few different films, looking at the kinds of conventions, the way that the arena works. Why we keep going back there again and again? So in terms of what the function is really, it kind of defies the logic of a lot of action movies, which is, it isn't just story or spectacle, it's both at once. So you get them in a handy little place. The Arena fights almost a movie within a movie, it has a beginning, it has a middle, it has an end. You enter the amphitheater. You have some looking around to see what's there, some spectacle over architecture and bodies. You get the quality violence in the middle. And then you sort of exit the amphitheater, and that's the end of your of your. Little mini film within a film, they often are great places where you come to understand how power works in the film itself. It's a nice little structure. I mean, if you think about the way an amphitheater is designed in that in that oval kind of shape, it means everybody can see everybody else. So the kind of layers of the way that the looking works. It's like we in the cinema are looking at the amphitheater. The people who are in the audience are looking and being looked at. You've got the sort of authority figure sitting there watching, and we're watching them. Then you've got the people down on the sands doing their thing. So it really it becomes a way to further the plot, to show who's good, who's bad, who's skilled, who's dead. It also sort of provides an opportunity to raise the stakes of the plot. So you've got sort of Concerned Women are often there in the audience, rarely on the sands, and they can kind of look and look worried, or look very desiringly at the gladiators on the sands as well. That's a bit of a spectacle, in that sense, as well. And then the Gladiator, of course, is looking at the audience as well. And that's why you get are you not entertained? He's judging us for watching him. So it kind of does all of that at once, very economical kind of spectacle,

Dr G 6:10
a bit like an ancient panopticon where viewing is happening in all directions.

Lindsay Steenberg 6:15
It absolutely is. And that and the sort of really seamless functioning of power works. You know, you don't have to work for it. The shape almost guarantees that. And you know, the movies love that. They love that shape. You can do some amazing things just with a nice little pan across the audience with a nice aerial establishing shot to see the shape of the amphitheater, so you can see, see deliberately, the way that power works in a very spatial sense. I

Dr Rad 6:39
must admit, I do love a good camera pan around the arena. It's

Lindsay Steenberg 6:45
got to be done. It's it's hard to tell who that gaze belongs to when you do the full kind of almost 360 probably to the gladiators on the sand. But it just get lets you see questions what the spectacle is. Maybe it's the audience. Because if you've seen, if you've seen the stars show Spartacus, the crowds and theaters are as much they're frequently naked. One wonders why? Well, I guess one does,

Dr Rad 7:10
yeah, they kind of

Lindsay Steenberg 7:12
look around and they're like, oh yes, look at the audience. So, you know, you get to do everything with that 360 pan.

Dr G 7:17
I think this sets things up really nicely, because you you've described it as this sort of miniature film within a film. And I do love that that kind of MIS on a beam aspect of it, and that leads us really nicely into thinking about what some of the conventions might be for these arena sequences. What are audiences expecting, and where have those expectations come from in cinematic history?

Lindsay Steenberg 7:39
Oh, I've got stuff on this. Let me tell you, it is a kind of mise en a beam. And one scholar describes it as a mise en spectacle. So, you know, a spectacle within the spectacle of the film. So the kinds of conventions that you get, it's really interesting. As somebody who studies film, I hate saying that, like, oh, it's universal. It's always the same. Because films, you know, reveal a lot about the time and place they were made and the time and place they're watched. But a gladiator fight is remarkably consistent. So the conventions are really, really sticky. We really like them. We're not giving them up as to where they came from. It's a little bit hard, you know, there's a there's a myth that may have basis in fact that when Ridley Scott was going to make the original gladiator film. Someone showed him a picture of the painting pelica verso, which has a gladiator waiting to kind of decide if he for the Emperor, decide if he's going to die. And it's, you know, so this neoclassical, sumptuous painting, and someone held it up and said, I want to make this painting into a movie. And that was how they kind of worked. So like in the Colosseum with those conventions. So the way the sort of typical, the typical arena fight goes is that you always want to have the pre fight sequence down in the backstage area, bonus points if it's in that nice little basement beneath the trap doors, kind of area that's very exciting. It always it often sounds really similar, like there's like whisperings of gladiators in the corner, this kind of metallic clangings, and then you have that beautiful from the dark tunnel into the amphitheater sequence. It's often sort of backlit, so you can see the outline, the silhouette. And then all of a sudden, you get the spectacle and that pan of of the arena and who's watching and who's there, the way that I sort of tend to shorthand describe what are the conventions of a gladiator fight. Are from the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. So Tina Turner's there, Mel Gibson's there,

Dr Rad 9:29
two men into. One man leaves, two men enter, one man leaves. You know, how

Lindsay Steenberg 9:33
do you do a gladiator fight? That's it. That's what you do. It's just two men enter. That's the scenario. That's the setup. But within that, of course, there's nuance, there's always a moment where the camera is going to spend a little extra time looking at the gladiator who wants you to have time to enjoy that he is part of the spectacle. You know, you're going to have a moment where, if the gladiator fight is between more than just one versus one, you're going to have a moment where the men bond, you know, where Maximus is like, you know, if any of you. Been in the army. Stick with me the same in the second film, like, Okay, guys, we're going to do this together. So you get the bonding, the Brotherhood of the gladiators. You sort of do that. You get that moment of the salute, which I know historians, it makes them a bit itchy, because it never happens, but Hollywood says it did, and apparently we love that. We want the gladiatorial salute. I noticed that in the second gladiator film, they don't really do that. I think they're sidestepping. They're trying not to get them themselves into some historical trouble. But the we who about are about to die, salute you is, is part of so many gladiator movies that we really like that, that part. So you normally get the salute before or the presentation of the gladiators before the fight. The fight is interesting because I am currently also writing a book now on fight scenes, so I spend a lot of time watching fighting. There's not as much fighting in an arena fight as one might expect. A lot of it is talking, planning, staring at rhinoceros, thinking about what you're going to do next, you know, giving a nice little speech to the crowd. How very dare you watch me staring at the Emperor? So, you know, the actual percentage of sword on shield action is quite small because it's, it's a narrative spectacles, whether as well as a violent spectacle. So you'll always get that talking the moment of sort of dialog in there. And then, of course, you always have the thumbs up or the thumbs down again. I think it's something that makes historians itchy, but it's something that Hollywood says, Yep, we want it. We want thumbs up, we want thumbs down. It's really easy and where it all comes from. I mean, I've probably, I've probably watched more gladiator movies than than most humans. Any human it comes from. The beginning of cinema, you get these kind of biblical or historical epics that were made in Italy. I mean, Hollywood loves a biblical epic. So you know, right down, even in the in the silent era, or the early era of cinema, that you still got these kind of conventions. You still would have somebody fighting animals inside of an amphitheater. You would still get the thumbs up, thumbs down. So it's, I'd say, that the gladiator fights on screen are as old as cinema, so they often involve Pompeii. That's that's a place we like to fight, and

Dr Rad 12:07
we like it when the volcano erupts during a gladiator we

Lindsay Steenberg 12:11
really do. If you can get gladiators fighting for their lives behind the volcano exploding, we get disaster movie. We get action movie. It's all

Dr Rad 12:17
happening exactly, and what are they going to do to finish the fight or run?

Lindsay Steenberg 12:21
I think you'll find both. They're running, fighting what's happening, and

Dr Rad 12:27
they should grab their romantic interest as they leave, because you

Lindsay Steenberg 12:31
don't want to leave her. I mean, you do. A lot of ladies have been killed in Gladiator movies. They Yeah, in movies that were we watch now. Sometimes she doesn't even get a name. Maximus, wife has no name. She she's the dead wife, the murdered wife who who prompts him to vengeance. That didn't always used to be the case in an old Italian pedlum film, you often had the ladies had names. But in the millennial sort of moment, it was all about the sort of the gladiators trauma rather than any kind of romance. It seems that, you know, after Maximus, there's no love story anymore. We've abandoned that which is one sadness and violence. We want

Dr Rad 13:14
those Wistful glances. You

Lindsay Steenberg 13:16
know, so much wistful yeah,

Dr Rad 13:18
now I am so curious to ask you now what you thought about the arena sequences in Gladiator two. Because I must admit, I really quite liked the first gladiator film, and I remember when it initially came out, there was a lot of talk, obviously, about the way that they'd staged those arena sequences, particularly the ones that involved the Tigers and that sort of thing. And there is a really curious thing that Dr G has often picked up on, which is the picking up of the arena sand and the rubbing between the hands that Maximus and now Lucius does spoilers, everybody. But yeah, so we'd love to know what you think. Yeah, we'd love to know what you think about the arena sequences in Gladiator too.

Lindsay Steenberg 14:01
I mean, I was, I was in it for the arena sequences. That's what I was there for. So glad that there were sharks involved. It was, I don't know too much, I think it was delightful. In terms of the arena sequences. I did do the kind of slightly nerdy film thing. I brought a notebook to the cinema hoping that no one would notice, because I wanted to count the arena sequences, because in the original film, there's five arena sequences, and they range from that first one in North Africa, where he fights in that wooden structure, and it's quite sort of homespun, I guess, the amphitheater, and then up into the logical Yeah, just a little a baby, baby amphitheater, and then he goes to the Colosseum, and part of the shock and awe of that fight is the structure, the architecture itself, like this is Rome. So I was quite curious to see how many there would be and where, and they echo each other so closely. We get the first fight sequence with Lucius and this terrifying CGI, apes, monkeys.

Dr G 14:58
Yeah, we. CGI baboons

Lindsay Steenberg 15:01
aliens. Like, why didn't they have fur? I find

Dr G 15:05
it was a shocking choice. It

Lindsay Steenberg 15:07
was such a strange choice. And I find monkeys very frightening. So I was like, Whoa, I would I'd rather they would be, yeah,

Dr Rad 15:12
they were frightening, but also so unreal, like, so unrealistic for the first fight, like you said, like the first film. It seemed right that we started off in that sort of humble, provincial setting. Yeah, with this one, it feels like we started too big and

Lindsay Steenberg 15:28
and then with a with a strange, almost science fiction element. So yes, what I think marked the Coliseum or the the amphitheater fights of the first film was the combination of this digital spectacle like the crowd generation software was state of the art at the turn of the millennium, and people were really impressed with it, but it was also that it was rooted on the sands in that authenticity of like face punching action. So this in that fight, I thought, okay, here we're going to get that lovely combination of digital augmentation, but authentic, like corporeal authenticity. And then I don't know, crazy bald monkeys came, so I was sort of like, okay, I'm willing to I'm it was okay. But then that they was, soon as they got back to Rome, I felt okay. We can recall, we can recover this the arena fights were pretty spectacular. I'd say the choreography of the violence within the amphitheaters was probably more nuanced. It speaks to a franchise based American cinema that demands very sophisticated fighting. It doesn't just want your John Wayne walk up, punch a guy in the face and leave no it doesn't want that thing that they used to do in sort of Hollywood swashbucklers, where you sort of gently slice somebody, they bend over and they die. They wanted to have that kind of brutal realism, and it did deliver. So I haven't, I haven't crunched the numbers on the density of the violence, but I suspect if it follows the pattern that all other Hollywood movies do, there will be more violence, Less talking, more fighting. And I would say that kind of I loved the naval battle, probably just for the spectacle rather than, I don't know where the boats were gonna go. It was a pretty tight space,

Dr G 17:08
a tight space with artificial islands. So where were

Lindsay Steenberg 17:13
they gonna go and the sale? Did they need a sale? They didn't need a sale. But, you know, they crashed together. And we did get some some fighting there. And it, I kind of it felt like the sequel to 300 which was sort of 300 but in water, this was sort of like Gladiator, but in water speed. So I felt like that's, that's what they were doing, like now it's not safe to get in the water. The sharks were great. I loved them, and so were the kind of battle they had the rhinoceros, which I have to admit, I I felt very emotionally attached to that Rhino, and the little sad noises it was making, oh, poor Rhino. And then Pedro Pascal brings his mustache into the amphitheater for some quality, sort of like Oedipal father surrogate son kind of moment. And it that that sort of like that was a good kind of way to wrap up a narrative moment, but make it violent so that you get plot moved lots of violence. And then, of course, it was a little disappointing that Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal didn't fight each other in the Colosseum, but I understand that they wanted to fight in water and beyond Rome, so I forgave them for that. I just kind of wish they'd brought it back into the Colosseum for the final point. Oh, that

Dr G 18:25
would have been a moment, yeah, because it did feel like the river sequence, if we can call that body of river, is maybe the smallest tributary of the Tiber I've ever seen. It

Lindsay Steenberg 18:37
was a modest, little, very

Dr G 18:39
modest, yeah. I'm like, Guys, are you sure this is where

Lindsay Steenberg 18:44
you want to have your final fight? Yeah, I

Dr Rad 18:46
think you put your finger on something there. I actually was not that enamored of Lucius as a character. I think that you did a good job in the action sequences. There was enough brawn there and everything. But I must admit, I found Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington much more compelling to watch. And I agree. I would have loved to have seen them come together rather than what we actually got, which is, of course, is Lucius and Macrinus coming together after his confrontation with his stepfather. I'm going to call

Lindsay Steenberg 19:22
him Pedro Pascal, is the surrogate dad we all didn't know we needed. Yeah, he's always picking up something like whether it's a little Yoda or, you know, video game character,

Dr G 19:34
finding the child in all of us along the way. I want to hone in for a little moment on the nomarchia sequence, because I think this is one of those things that as a lover of Roman history, even though I'd be I'm very willing to pick up on the detail. I was super excited that this was something that was included in this film, because I feel like it's highly unlikely that I'm going to get to see a sea battle. People in the Colosseum, again, in any film in my lifetime. And I'm interested in your assessment on how well Ridley Scott is bringing that idea to life, and how his conception of it sort of compares to some of the ancient evidence we have for this kind of thing happening. Well,

Lindsay Steenberg 20:18
I was very excited about it as well, and it has been the foremost question that I've been asked, you know, by colleagues, by students, just interested, friends, going there, they didn't flood the Colosseum, how that's so unrealistic, and they kind of see it as this way over the top spectacle. And when I say no, they they did. This was a thing that happened. There were naval battles. People watched them. People are a bit astonished. Now, I

Dr G 20:41
can't, I can't

Lindsay Steenberg 20:43
testify to any evidence that sharks were involved. I think they're sort of quite how did they transport the where was the tank? There's many, many of this would mean

Dr G 20:52
that the salt the water in the Colosseum would need to be salt water. It seems very unlikely. A

Lindsay Steenberg 20:58
little tricky, a little tricky, but the fact that it's within the realm of possibility, I think that is something that is I was like, Yes, I want to see this. I want, I want all that CGI has to offer to bring this spectacle to me. Because I have seen naval battles in other gladiator films. I think I can only recall one I looked at my list before speaking to you, there is a 19 I've wrote it down, 1962 film called The Last Days of Herculaneum, or the destruction of Herculaneum, depending on the translation and they have, they stage a naval battle. Our hero is going undercover as a gladiator for reasons we we don't need to know. There is a lot, it doesn't matter. But he goes and they have this, and it is a low budget Italian- French co-production. So this is the days of those cheap muscle men, Italian films, which are kind of joyful and really fun to watch. And he goes and there's a pond, and they stage a full sort of canoe battle with, you know, all the finest that you know, homespun low budget gladiator movies had to offer. So I found that was one of the most memorable gladiator moments that I recall out of all the Italian movies that I watched, Steve Reeves, the former Mr. Universe, Breaking Chains and stuff and throwing trees. I'm like, no, no, I was in it for that pond battle. That was great. It was slightly awkward as they all tried to fight on tiny boats, but that sort of shows you the what if you just got together, grabbed a camera and some rafts and tried on the pond, versus Ridley Scott's imagining of all the tools and the toys and the spectacles and the islands and the sharks and the arrows and the fire. So I, sort of part of me, wanted it to be even more over the top. We're here. We're on the water. Let's make it happen. I mean, we know that it's a possibility, so let's just roll with that. But I expect he had to sort of temper his his shock and awe vision to be able to still tell a story, because it's hard to make the human element stand out in that kind of a naval battle. Naval battles, I think, are often quite tricky in terms of staging a fight scene. You have to be on the two sides. If they're just shooting at each other from their opposite boats. That's a different kind of scenario. If you want the stakes to be personal, they have to go on each other's boats. They have to get close enough. So I think in that sense, it did work. People who I saw the film with suggested that it was very video game like that. That moment seemed a little bit like an Assassin's Creed video game. So I think there was something kind of like, this is the next level to it as well. But I think they, I think they did a good job. I enjoyed it. I like I said, I would have liked even more just, I throw it all, throw it all at a water fight scene. I

Dr Rad 23:45
have to ask, What? What is more? What is more? On top of islands and sharks and ramming, it could have

Lindsay Steenberg 23:49
been islands. It could have been sure. I mean, we could have brought some, some women right into the amphitheater, and perhaps an emperor could have fallen at least one of them. I mean, there were two. There's a spare. Let's get, let's get Caracalla.

Dr Rad 24:00
Let's have one of them drown. Yeah, maybe

Lindsay Steenberg 24:03
some

Dr G 24:04
nunchucks falls onto a boat. Yeah?

Lindsay Steenberg 24:08
An explosion or two, like, bring Michael Bay on to consult, something could explode.

Dr Rad 24:12
You're right. You know, we've also had the Colosseum actually start to collapse and the crowds start to fall into, you know,

Lindsay Steenberg 24:21
the crowd falling in later. So that was, yeah, more, maybe more sort of Errol Flynn style, like ropes, a little, little swinging in there as

Dr G 24:31
well. Yeah, missed opportunity that one. So, yeah, it was, it

Lindsay Steenberg 24:34
was enough. It was definitely excessive. But somebody could have ridden a shark,

Dr Rad 24:38
yeah, you say Right? Because that was the main thing that people have said to me, they're like sharks gamma.

Lindsay Steenberg 24:43
I mean, yes, like I said, I don't think there were sharks, but there could have been other that they have reported, other animals, look

Dr G 24:50
but the thing that I've talked to people about, and I firmly stand by, is that if the Romans could have put sharks in there, they would have

Lindsay Steenberg 24:59
that's a. Exactly what I said. I'm like, Look, if they could find a way to get a shark into an amphitheater, they would have been 100% behind it. They've been a yes,

Dr G 25:09
very keeping in the spirit of the Romans, could

the sharks fight each other? They would have found a way to make this happen. So

Dr Rad 25:15
really, the great tragedy of this is that the Romans themselves will never see this movie. They will

Lindsay Steenberg 25:20
never see the movie about themselves, although, I mean, when it comes to sort of Rome on screen, the interesting thing is that that, of course, it is, is rarely about Rome. Gladiator is as much about America as it is about Ancient Rome and what we think it was like. So the heroism we see there is very American. Yes,

Dr Rad 25:38
it's okay. So now that you brought this up, I definitely would love to probe a little bit more about this, because one of the things I felt after seeing gladiator two, I didn't like it as much as the first film, and I felt that it was because it was kind of a typical sequel, you know, and that the villains were worse, the explosions were bigger, you know, There was more action, but I felt there was a little less heart and soul and story, and like the main character, for me, was lacking. I mean, as kind of laughable sometimes, as Maximus is, in some ways, there's something so strangely compelling about him, as characterized by Russell Crowe, which I did not find with Lucius so much as I did with fake characters like Macrinus. And I also felt that the first gladiator did have a more obvious commentary on contemporary America and that sort of thing with its I always got the impression that it was sort of talking about how the American people are distracted from politics and what is really going on by entertainment and those sorts of messages, which actually sort of stem a little bit from, obviously, what some of the critics of ancient Rome said as well about their own society. So I'm curious to know what you think about gladiator two and what it speaks to at this moment in time.

Lindsay Steenberg 26:57
Yeah, absolutely. The first one did seem to be a very kind of, you know, it's putting a toga on something, but it is commenting on, what is it like to live in a spectacle driven society? What's it like to kind of worship celebrities, to create a celebrity who becomes so powerful that even the Emperor can't give them a thumbs down. That idea, the sort of the Oliver Reed moment where he says, You know, I didn't succeed because I was the best. I succeeded because I was the most loved. I was most famous. To me, that was an excellent kind of way of thinking about how this fighter performer worked, and how celebrity can be built and manipulated. Whereas there was, I thought that there was going to be a little bit of the similar kind of thing, you know, Lucius would be built up as this celebrity gladiator and and that celebrity would be something that we could think about that seemed to have been emptied a little bit. Yes, he was famous. They were chanting. They liked him, but that didn't seem to make much of a difference. They also quite liked Pedro Pascal's character as this heroic general, but that didn't seem to be something we were thinking about. So it did seem to be a little bit emptied out of some of the more poetic, allegorical moments that the film had, which I found a bit disappointing, because, you know, a nice ancient allegory worked so well, and that idea that the barbarians are at the gate, or, sort of, you know, something is falling, we're under threat. That's something that that gladiator really wanted to think about, you know, what happens when the Empire Falls? What happens if we imagine something beyond this kind of rule? Whereas I found that sort of Lucius speeches were sort of, they don't end tyranny, which is, yes, nobody wants tyranny, but it didn't seem to be very specific. It didn't seem to speak to the moment of what would happen after. So I was a bit disappointed for that missing satire commentary. I was sad when Maximus died. I mean, he was a bit funny sometimes, you're right, he was a bit over the top, and his trauma was so over the top. My name is Gladiator, and I loved it. I loved that melodrama, and I did feel moved when he died. And you know, he was this dream of Rome. Could it ever be good enough to sort of be worthy of his death? Of course not. There was no, no real sacrifice that we were meant to mark in the second one, because Lucius didn't die. Maybe it would have been better if he died. Do I sound horrible, because then he would have fallen again for Rome, and you know, Pedro Pascal's general didn't that that moment didn't have enough gravity and weight to really make us be like, oh, oh, okay, we've lost something here. And you know, why was he there? Why did they want to stop their takeover of Rome to save Lucius? It some of the things were sort of missing in that it was, I think, standard run of the mill, mid level gladiator Movie. Yeah, what it didn't do was chew the scenery too much that I was expecting. I thought that Denzel Washington was going to go full Oliver Reed. He didn't like, like Kiefer Sutherland in Pompeii. I thought he was going to go, yes, he he sort of held a kind of emotional center in the movie that. So it didn't spin out of control. But yeah, I think I don't know whether it depends on when you see it. You know, if I saw it when I was younger, and I hadn't seen a film like it, does that make it more impactful? So maybe if I were 15 years old, seeing this film, knowing Paul Mezcal from other shows, like normal people, I would feel like I did in sort of watching the first film. I'm not sure if it is, but I do feel it was a bit a bit more superficial than the first Yeah.

Dr Rad 30:46
And it felt like it was divided between Lucius, Lucilla and the general, as he's so often called, Pedro Pascal character, gotta have a call in the game, just the general. Yeah. It just felt like it was maybe more divided between them, whereas the first film, it was really all centered on Maximus, even though there were other people who got involved, like Gracchus and Lucilla and that sort of thing. This one, I felt like it was, again, like a typical sequel. There were more distractions and rabbit holes, and there was just, there was just less to root for, I think, with Lucius, you know. And it was just Yeah, I was that was actually the main thing that disappointed me. It wasn't so much the you know, as you say, the arena sequences were executed really well in terms of their cinematography and the spectacle and that sort of thing. But I just felt I was lacking that, that classic gladiator message that films like Spartacus and glad he had to have, yeah,

Dr G 31:42
if I may, I think the reason why you might be disappointed is because the general represents the kind of vision that Maximus was attempting to pursue but was unable to fulfill through his death in the arena, and for him to exit the film so suddenly means that actually, that that narrative aspect is completely lost, and all we're left with now is what we now know is the idea of the natural Imperial inheritance that has already been laid out by Marcus Aurelius through Commodus. And we know how that goes, and it doesn't go well, so there's not a lot of optimism Fauci is coming into this. No, even though he's very angry and he's filled with rage, he's still a prince of Rome. And are we supposed to go for those guys? Because the other ones that we've got on show in this movie, Caracalla and Geta, not, not great, exactly. They're

Lindsay Steenberg 32:39
not, they're not great. They're standard Roman villains. They're, you know, excessive and effeminate, which, you know, classical Hollywood often equates with sort of perversity. Yeah, the notion that it is this ATRA lineal kind of inheritance, like he's his destiny is to be Prince of Rome. It felt like what I kept thinking, what Weren't we going for a republic was that I thought we were talking about a republic. No, yeah, we're good.

Dr Rad 33:04
And there's so much that's left unexplained about, you know, they just have this, you know, this scene where Lucille hurries Lucius out of the arena after Maximus and Commodus both die to get him to safety, to explain how he exists and how this whole storyline is possible. But there's no explanation about Well, why didn't Gracchus and the rest of the senators step up and do what they wanted to do in that power vacuum moment? How on earth did Caracalla and Geta ever get into power where did they come from? Exactly, there's a total lack of any, you know, connecting the dots there, which, which is why it's so frustrating. Because you're like, I don't understand. It seemed like Maximus was getting there. I felt like the only moment where there was a possibility for something similar was when the general dies. Although I didn't really love the timing of that. When Lucius says, Is this how Rome treats its heroes? I'm like, Okay, well, that's a little that's something a little bit different. There was maybe some possibilities there in terms of some, you know, some commentary about how, you know, people can be treated, particularly how good people are treated in more corrupt societies. But again, it never went anywhere. He just, he just died. And that was that it wasn't really followed through in any major way.

Lindsay Steenberg 34:22
I think some of it, too is down to the shorthand that Marcus Aurelius has as a good emperor, and the sort of recent movement towards sort of popular or vernacular stoicism. So, you know, there are places on the internet where it's called broicism. It is this kind of popular, populist philosophy where, you know, it's used a lot people like martial artists or MMA fighters. So you've got the sense that Marcus Aurelius is a good philosopher king, and that Lucius, you don't have to answer the questions because he is. Angry and stoic at the same time. So it isn't that you want to get rid of the kings, it's you just want a good one, not a bad one, which I think to me, even though I knew that Commodus wasn't going to die and leave a republic in his wake, because we may have studied a little bit of history here, I loved that. That's what they went for, that they were like, You know what? We don't want a good king. We don't want a bad king. We want no king, no king. So this one kind of backpedaled on that a little bit. So I thought, Oh, you could have, especially since the two emperors were awful and, you know, have this interesting moment in US leadership there, there was, there was room to do some interesting things that they sort of

Dr Rad 35:39
picked away Exactly, yeah, and Caracalla and geta don't have the backstory that Commodus does as much as Commodus is obviously Caligula 2.0 in the way that they've presented him. You understand very clearly that he has this tortured relationship with his father and never living up to expectations and so and he just has this desperate desire for love and family and connection and so. And maybe it's also partly down to how Joaquin Phoenix obviously played him, because he's a brilliant actor, but you have a certain amount of sympathy and understanding for Commodus, even whilst you totally know he's the bad guy wheras Caracalla and Geta again, there is nothing redeeming these guys nothing, and they have such interesting back stories in real life. It's crazy to me that that none of that was used a real

Dr G 36:30
missed opportunity. I

Lindsay Steenberg 36:31
was gonna say you could hear the difference in the two films too, because in the first film, the the music that you know, the scoring, had the really, meaty themes for Commodus and for Maximus. And, you know, I've read a really interesting article about how the entire film, you hear it, and it is these two motifs coming together and then moving apart. And it's this struggle between two interesting men struggling for power and paternal love, whereas the scoring in the second film, I heard the ghost of some of the classic themes from the original, but didn't quite set up its own unique motifs and identity for its characters. So in some ways, you could hear the difference in the story as much as you could see it. You didn't get those really notable kind of kind of motifs sliding through the film.

Dr G 37:23
I think, yeah, this is one of those things where it's like, do you have Hans Zimmer and his team on board, or do you not have

Lindsay Steenberg 37:31
he's some some film music. People don't care for him very much. But the score of gladiator was really and then Lisa Gerrard, I think that her contribution there, I think really raised it. It just makes a big difference for how you remember the film, and how the film kind of prompts you to feel, and for the scoring in that, yeah,

Dr Rad 37:49
I shouldn't really venture an opinion here, because I'm I cannot to be unbiased, because I actually walked down the aisle to the theme from Gladiator.

Lindsay Steenberg 37:58
It's a very memorable theme.

Dr Rad 38:00
It is

Lindsay Steenberg 38:02
the the much talked about similar melody to the Pirates of the Caribbean fight theme to the to the music and Gladiator I mean, you just have to kind of hum that, and people are ready to find their swords that it's, yeah, it's not exciting. So it was a huge part of that. And I don't recall kind of fight moment with the same musical kind of weight to it. It felt a little bit, you know, I'm not a musicologist, but it felt a lot like the kinds of scoring that you used to see in biblical epic epics from Hollywood, quite orchestral. And I was sort of like, okay, I recognize this. It's just I can't remember it once it's over. And I like to remember the music and think, okay, yeah, that makes me feel like I'm I'm ready for an amphitheater fight. Well,

Dr Rad 38:45
when you think about some of the more notable gladiator films from the past, and I am going to go to Spartacus, just because it's the one I know best, yep, but should Spartacus has that very memorable scoring all throughout it from Alex north, and I know that for some younger people these days, it's a bit much, because there is music every single moment, yeah. But they have, as you say, they've, they very clearly had themes for each character. You know, virinius theme is beautiful. It's a really lovely piece of music. And even though I can see it, I can see that, okay, yeah, that maybe it's a little too much music, but at the same time, it gives the film such a signature, and I only have to hear a few notes, and I'm I'm right back watching that movie, because it does just work like that, I suppose, in our brain. So yeah, I think that there is a lot to be said for scoring, even though it's kind of a bit of an invisible, yeah, part of a movie,

Lindsay Steenberg 39:38
the scoring. And then the other thing that's quite invisible, which I'm always paying attention to, is the stunt performance. So I'm fascinated by the way that that spectacle it, you know, it wasn't just Denzel, Washington, Pedro, Pascal and Paul mescale. It was all of the stunt performers who did an astonishing job of jumping out of boats and, you know, grappling on the sands. So you. I thought that part of it was, was pretty astonishing, but there would have been no point in fighting the twin emperors. They weren't, you know, they're not like Commodus, who we, I think we all know, or most people know, wanted to be a gladiator. So he has, like, you knew it was gonna, it was all coming to that we are gonna find this final battle in the Colosseum. Whereas, you know, not, not so much the similar kind of sort of gladiatorial backstory for the for the

Dr G 40:28
one. And to hone in a little bit, because I think Macrinus is my favorite character in Gladiator and my theory is that he's actually the protagonist of this film. Yeah, he's the one who is demonstrably acting in ways that further plot points, and we see his whole arc across the course of this film as well. And I'm wondering if when we're thinking about it, rather than focusing on our disappointment with maybe what felt like a bit of a flat Lucius, unfortunately, despite, I think, a really workable performance from Paul Mescal. Instead, we get a really sort of shining light with Macrinus, who seems comfortable in his costumes, and, you know, is owning every room that he moves into, and is finding ways to make things happen for him rather than against him, when it could go either way, really, before he gets there. I'm wondering how this might be a useful way to think about this film. I

Lindsay Steenberg 41:25
think so. And I think Denzel Washington's performance really did stand out in this film, like he was interesting, he was baffling in some ways, because at one point I thought, well, he wants the same thing as Lucius. Let's topple Rome. Let's do it. Let's go and I think that's what he wanted. We're not sure why, and I sort of like that. They never gave him a tragic backstory or tried to kind of bulk that up. It was just, this is what I'm doing. This is politics. I am the puppet master. I, you know, I will manipulate everybody to get what I want. So I think if you look at it from that journey,