'Gladiator 2' Is a Dismal Retread

Devising a logical sequel to the Oscar-winning 2000 blockbuster Gladiator was not a self-evident task, given that the hero of the original, Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius, does not survive the movie. Rather than go back in time and imagine an origin story for Maximus, director Ridley Scott and his longtime screenwriter David Scarpa (Napoleon, All the Money in the World) have chosen to set the story a generation after the events of the first film. That choice in and of itself was not a bad one: The prequel as an excuse for franchise extension has become such a cliché it’s generated its own genre of online joke (see: calling a particularly maddening news story or social phenomenon one’s “villain origin story”). But Gladiator 2 (or as it’s spelled in the opening title, GladIIator) sadly comes off as less a reinvention of the original than a curiously literal retread of its plot beats, characters, and themes.