It may be set in Ancient Rome, but like its predecessor, Gladiator II says a lot about the current state of democracy, AJ writes.
The myth-making of the lone hero has a long tail in cinematic history, across everything from the classic western to modern action movie. Many of the greatest or most profoundly memorable pieces of cinema are built on an unwavering protagonist, sometimes reluctantly, standing up as a David against a Goliath.
Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s ‘legacyquel’ revisitation of the picture that revived a faltering career, is no exception. The marble chiselled Paul Mescal, who could have been ported out of the Roman Empire given how classical his features are, follows in the footsteps of Russell Crowe’s iconic Maximus as he determines to have his vengeance in this life or the next. They are, both inside and outside of the text, peas from the same pod.
What’s interesting is just how Gladiator II hammers home a similar point made in its predecessor about what this lone hero archetype represents and, more crucially, what he serves to guard and protect. Gladiator II never misses an opportunity to bludgeon its audience with a point the 2000 original served to make implicit more quietly, and that perhaps best reflects the age it is being made in. The age of the democratic sledgehammer.
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In a previous piece discussing Gladiator, the parallel was drawn between the Roman Empire and the United States at the end of the 20th century when Scott made the original film. Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), was the fading lodestone of the American Dream of that century; a figure who represented stability and peace while surrounded by barbarians within and without. If Marcus is everything America aspired to be, his twisted son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who contrives his death, is perhaps everything it truly is.
These are broad stroke interpretations, and Gladiator is about more than simply the decaying American Dream as the 20th century bleeds into the 21st, only a year before 9/11 hastens the country’s descent into populism. But these aspects have always feel key to both Gladiator movies. Scott’s films are about a taciturn hero who battles the system and gains ‘strength and honour’ along the way, helping to bring the masses with him, but to me they’re films about the power of democracy and the importance of keeping it intact.
When characters discuss Rome in both Gladiator films, as Connie Nielsen’s earnest Lucilla often does, they talk of it in broader mythic terms as an ‘idea’, and while it can be considered analogous to America, on grander terms Rome equates to democratic norms. The will of the people. The people having a voice. Brave men fighting for Rome, for democracy. Both Gladiator films are about tyrants having corrupted that system – first in Commodus taking the power Marcus knew he wasn’t fit for (as an avatar for fascist tyranny). The latest film introduces twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), a pair even more sallow and unhinged than Phoenix’s manchild – and the lone hero who brings them down.
In Gladiator II, it all ends up a little more complicated and insidious thanks to Macrinus, the former gladiator and slave turned political Machiavelli (played with lip-smacking relish by Denzel Washington). He murders, blackmails and contrives his way to (almost) take tyrannical power. The hero he faces, Mescal’s Lucius – grandson of Marcus Aurelius and, as the film makes explicit, son of Maximus – is like Crowe’s hero, both the avatar of democratic security and someone who hopes of a more inclusive figure. “There is no dream of Rome,” Macrinus tells him, battling away Lucius’s conviction that there has to be. “This is all there is,” he’s told. All roads lead to tyranny.
Read more: Gladiator II | Is this the first post-January 6th blockbuster?
If you want to draw a potent analogy to modern day America, which to many has just begun the process of transforming from democracy into some form of techno-theocracy, you could suggest in Caracalla a form of Donald Trump-style unfitness for power, though Commodus in his small-man vanity and peevishness better fits the President-Elect to me.
What works better is Macrinus as an Elon Musk of Ancient Rome; a disruptor, someone who comes from capitalist stock and whispers in the ear of those with more specific levers of power for his own gain, helping to control those power structures in the process. James Harvey recently suggested Gladiator II could be the first “post-January 6th” blockbuster, referring to the Trump-inspired, election-denying insurrection on Capitol Hill in 2021 that, astonishingly, still didn’t prevent a majority of Americans giving Trump a second roll of the dice.
There isn’t a perfect through line, of course. Geta and Caracalla were not democratically elected, Trump was, for better or worse. Macrinus is a genuinely intelligent, calculating game theorist in a way, one suspects, Musk absolutely isn’t. The point, however, is that Gladiator II in timely fashion reflects a different point of democracy under threat than the first film did. If Scott’s original evokes America at the “end of history”, a progressive superpower struggling to hold onto its dream, then Gladiator II sees the dream further out of reach than ever. Not only have the idiots taken over the asylum, at the expense of masses hungering for food and basic provisions (their own cost of living crisis perhaps), those idiots are at the whim of external forces who an ineffective Senate and legislative body cannot buttress against.
Where then does this leave the lone hero? Hollywood still appears to believe in the strong-willed, noble saviour who can overcome these corrupted institutional forces. Maximus gave his life to both save ‘Rome’ and his son in the process, and Lucius – even more of a rage-filled avenging angel than his father was – is prepared to do the same. Other franchises rely on such heroes too. James Bond recently served a similar function. Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series is one of the more potent examples, having for years relentlessly flung himself in the way of shadowy organisations, nuclear weapons and even all-powerful artificial intelligence as the one man stop gap against the end of not just democracy but the world.
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An argument could be made that superhero fiction was built around costumed heroes, originally men or women alone but more recently in teams, working to maintain the status quo and protect freedoms. Hollywood remains steadfastly liberal in believing in the dream of Rome, the idea of democracy and progressive ideals, and uses the lone hero – a David battling Goliaths – as a way of keeping our dream alive as audiences. We’re seeing, outside of cinema, democracy begin to decay, as demagogues propped up by far-right disruptors and regressive press outlets seek to bring the populist ‘strong man’ to power, the means of protecting what the few have amassed at the expense of the many.
That is why we still need the lone heroes. Characters like Bond and Lucius, who believe in a less disrupted, more secure world. Seeing them on screen feels important right now, even if they’re increasingly positioned as an artefact of the past. Ethan Hunt always has a new doomsday plan to prevent. James Bond another maniacal bad guy. And one suspects, should Ridley Scott make Gladiator III, another tyrant will be on the Roman throne, forcing Lucius back into the Colosseum once more to win the support of the masses who can’t help but be seduced by tyranny time and time again.
You can find A J. on social media, including links to his podcasts and books, via Linktr.ee here.
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