Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Exodous: Gods and Kings (2014)
Napoleon (2023)
I’m a fanatic obsessed with every movie Ridley Scott has done since The Counselor (2013), a period which includes his (to me) highly acclaimed RED camera quad. So if you choose to read what follows, disclaimer: I’m stubbornly unqualifiable when it comes to my bias in favor of being a Ridley Scott apologist. I know Gladiator (2024, Ridley Scott) sucks (in some ways). But I will rave about it as a masterpiece nonetheless. (And I’m intentionally dropping the II because the new Gladiator is a cash grab for a younger generation of ticket buyers that you know has no qualms replacing its predecessor in the arena in cold blood.) The best form of revenge is to be nothing like the one who inflicted you is talking about this movie.
Like Michael Bay, a Ridley Scott movie is fodder to be torn apart yet maintains a unique visual/pacing that’s impossible to mistake for anyone else. David Scarpa’s script is late Scott—the equivalent of thrash metal, all muscle all the time. Paul Mescal is less of a star presence as we might have taken Russell Crowe for, and that’s all for the better. Gladiator starts off with a coastal invasion and then delivers a steady adrenaline drip of gladiatorial blood matches up until the house lights come on. So detracting critical reviews are all the more welcome; Gladiator enjoys taking a beating more than Scorsese’s LaMotta.
The characters in Gladiator are shallow, and cynically underdrawn because here, it’s more efficient and what the crowds really want. Women don’t belong here. Mescal’s wife is expendable in the opening scene—who could miss the feeling as soon as she appears she’s going to be slaughtered? Same with Connie Nielsen: she’s ruthlessly employed as a concession to the studio as a callback to the source who’s sacrificially executed in front of the large crowd (both diegetic and non). Pedro Pascal’s a pussy, which makes him the antagonist. The plural protagonist in Gladiator is actually Mescal and Denzel, who despite their ideologies, earn hero status by mowing down bodies for entertainment and prey on the subjugation to power of the masses. The gates of hell are open night and day.
Gladiator indicts the audience’s tastes and politics more harshly than Joker: Folie á Deux and just about as accurately as Idiocracy. Ridley Scott has posited the twins’ status of aristocracy as code for all the few hundred million dollar budgeted movies being made nowadays: young, spoiled, fickle, entertainment-addicted, amoral, falsely appointed polarizing tastemakers. One can easily imagine how many hits Barbarian Bites Dog Monkey would get on youtiktaktube. Their Rome rotting is why ours is, tentpoles and review aggregators. But what fun right?
Denzel should have been the victor. He had the political acumen Mescal didn’t. That would have been real life. But to gain their hearts and minds ($$), we all know the studio has to instead deliver a vengeful climax. And I still can’t stop laughing when I think of the final shot. When Mescal asks his father what to do and we get that music cue and the gag me with a stick schmaltzy hand through the wheat field it’s the biggest fuck you to the audience no effort to the point of hilarious that makes me so happy about how unabashedly cynical this thing is. I can’t wait to see this again.
11/18/2024 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA
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