Gladiator II: An Uninspired, Boring Slog
It's not a good sign when a rhino is the character you empathize most with in a movie (and white rhinos are one of my favorite animals). This is Gladiator II though. A film that encapsulates everything wrong with modern Hollywood. The movie was a waste of time, so I'll be mindful of your time with this review. Gladiator II is beat-for-beat quite similar to Gladiator . The problem is that Gladiator II doesn't understand what made the original so great. Repeating lines verbatim, having similar shots and showing footage from the previous installment doesn't make the new installment a worthy successor. Gladiator II has poor acting, bad CGI ( Wicked with a smaller budget looks much better), terrible editing and horrendous pacing. Some characters could have been interesting like General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), Emperor Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Emperor Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). I also have questions. Why is Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) always walking around in secret? Is this the...