A rugged legacy sequel that never stood a chance against its Oscar-nominated box office rival seeks to entertain on streaming

When Ridley Scott’s highly-regarded historical epic Gladiator first dropped in the year 2000, cinematic history was both quietly and loudly being made. References to Russell Crowe’s line “Are you not entertained?” would go on to obnoxiously populate every relevant review and headline (guilty as charged), all while talks of a grotesquely expensive sequel inched in and out of the zeitgeist for over two decades.

That sequel was finally realized last year in the aptly-titled Gladiator II, whose own legacy chiefly amounted to a head-to-head battle against Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, known forevermore as “Glicked” in the spirit of the far-superior Barbenheimer battle of Summer 2023. It ultimately lost that fight (grossing $462.2 million against Wicked‘s $733.8 million), but it’s been a different story over at Paramount Plus.

Per been crowned king of the Paramount Plus film charts at the time of writing, beating out an eclectic group of competitors including the oft-charting Top Gun: Maverick (fifth place), recent Oscar nominee September 5 (eighth place), the best-ever Transformers film Transformers One (10th place), and its own flesh and blood Gladiator (sixth place).

Set sixteen years after the events of the original film, Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal as Lucius Verus Aurelius, the son of the late Marcus Aurelius and the exiled prince of Rome, which has since been overtaken by corrupt emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). Reluctantly allying with dodgy conspirator Macrinus (Denzel Washington), Lucius endeavors to overthrow the pair while working as a gladiator in the Roman Colosseum.

Like its predecessor, Gladiator II is dad cinema incarnate, trafficking in intimately rugged action and political intrigue with enough creativity to put it a cut above other prominent dad cinema vehicles (such as the grossly tiresome Den of Thieves franchise).

Also like its predecessor, the film stops short of fully exploring its cerebral potential, and so doesn’t fly as high as it should. The Western fixation on domination and power is on enough of a display to warrant a reflection or two from the audience, but Gladiator II doesn’t seem to actively invite those reflections. Additionally — and this is true of the 2000 film as well — there’s a parallel between the Colosseum and the movie theater that’s begging to be drawn, but Gladiator II, for whatever reason, refuses to bite.

According to Scott himself, there’s a third film on the docket, and dollars to donuts it will commit these same benign sins as the previous two films. The jury is still out on when we could be seeing that, or if we will; per The New York Times, Scott also plans on fitting a Bee Gees biopic and an adaptation of the novel The Dog Stars into his filmography, both set to shoot this year, and the storied director isn’t getting any younger (he turns 88 this year).

Then again, it’s probably unwise to assume that anybody — including the Grim Reaper — is going to succeed in telling Ridley Scott what he can and cannot do, so if Scott decides we’re getting Gladiator III, then we’re probably getting Gladiator III.