I have some tolerance for historical inaccuracy. In fact, the first Gladiator is still a film that I regard as a near masterpiece despite huge historical inaccuracies. Both movies showed printed pamphlets and papers despite the printing press not having being invented for another thousand years.
I'll forgive the fact that, in this video that we're calling a movie, the first battle sequence took place in a territory that the Roman Empire had conquered two hundred years before the setting of the movie.
I'll forgive that the Numidian artillery didn't exist for another thousand years.
I'll forgive that rhinos were never ridden anywhere, much less the Colosseum.
I was looking forward to the flooding of the Colosseum, which is a real thing that they did. But... FUCKING SHARKS? That never happened.
Still, I'll forgive all that.
What I won't forgive is bad storytelling in combination with blatant historical accuracy.
Remember the "Maximus the merciful!" scene in the first film? Ya know, when Maximus has the former champion beaten. Commodus signaled for Maximus to kill the former champion. Maximus refused.
Of course, yes, Maximus committed an act of treason in the first film. But, that wasn't his first bout in front of the crowd. The act of defiance tracked with Maximus's character. It made Maximus an attractive character, both to the fake audience in the film, and to the you and me when we were watching the film.
In this video, Lucius has a similar scene. Only, it's flipped. He's still a stranger to the Roman audience. The other gladiator gains the upper hand. One of the two emperors decides on mercy for Lucius. Lucius refuses, and very dishonorably kills the other gladiator.
Yeah, the emperor signaled for Lucius to kill the other gladiator; but, that was after Lucius had already stabbed him in the gut. The guy was already mortally wounded. Taking his head off was just a formality.
Forget that Lucius committed an act of treason, and that the emperors would have been calling for his head for a moment. Lucius is still a nobody. The crowd just saw him keep a fight going after the emperors had called the fight and killed the guy. This is an ancient honor culture. The crowd would have been calling for Lucius's head, too.
And that's just what the reaction should have been from the audience in the video. How are we supposed to take that? We don't know anything about the opposing gladiator. He's just a buff stunt man with no lines. He never gets an introduction. We don't know anything about the guy. All we know is that our supposed hero had a free pass from the emperors to not kill the dude, and he decided to kill the dude anyway.
Well, maybe that's part of his character arch?
Well, no. If that was the goal, it wasn't earned. Maximus had more justification to be pissed off at Rome and Commodus that Lucius had to be pissed off at Rome and Pedro Pascal (who seems to be getting jammed into everything regardless of whether or not he fits), and Maximus still managed to understand that there was a difference between the soldiers and the gladiators and the powers that be who forced their hands. They gave Lucius a fight scene in Rome at a smaller venue, where they tried to show him as somebody who was reluctant to kill a Roman fighter for the entertainment of the wealthy and the politicians before the rhino scene; so, it's inconsistent, it makes the character look bad, and it's historically preposterous.
When this movie was announced, I wasn't the only one to label this as a sequel that nobody asked for. All we got was a lot of copy and paste from the first movie, which is simply done worse.
Unlike the murder of Maximus's wife and son, Lucius's wife is killed in combat. It shouldn't be too hard to recognize that one has more impact than the other.
This all amounts to two armies of several thousand men converging at the border of Rome, not to fight in an epic battle, but to watch a seventy-year-old dude get into a sword fight with a dude in his twenties, which we're all supposed to believe is a difficult fight, all to hug and make up after the predictable conclusion of the bout.
"Are you not entertained?"
Well...no... I'm not. Not particularly.
Thanks for the good read (and laugh).
🍀♥️
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