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Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending ofGladiator II.
Does it qualify as a spoiler to report thatGladiator IIends with the flash and clang of steel?
Their fight is satisfying neither as spectacle nor dramatic payoff.
Few would accuse the originalGladiatorof anticlimax.
By the climax, the viewer was as starved for catharsis as Maximus himself.
The whole movie had inexorably built to his knock-down, drag-out tussle against the man who killed his family.
Gladiator IIgives Mescals Lucius, estranged from Rome and his mother, a similar motivation.
Hes also the loving husband of Luciuss mother, Lucilla (a returning Connie Nielsen).
Like her, the audience might find its allegiances divided.
But the script by David Scarpa oddly resolves this promising conflict well before the end credits.
To put it mildly, thats not nearly as exciting as Commodus reaping what he sowed.
Theres little sense, as inGladiator, that the movie has been building to this matchup all along.
It doesnt help that the fight itself passes in a hasty, indifferently choreographed blur.
Mescal is a fine, sensitive actor, but hes out of his depth trying to fill Crowes shoes.
Mostly, these final minutes feel like a microcosm for the whole underwhelming film.
like a Vegas fight promoter leaning way too hard on his undercard.
But no comparison between the endings of these two movies would do the new one any favors.
Its truly a Hail Mary: a late, blatant attempt to trigger our nostalgic emotions.
But the grandeur of the originals ending has slipped away, like sand between fingers.
