Critics: ‘Gladiator II’ more cash-grab than necessary sequel

Not each critics were entertained by “Gladiator II,” the hotly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 humanities epic.

Scott’s star-studded 2nd chapter, entering the theatrical arena Friday, picks up years aft Russell Crowe’s Roman wide Maximus was killed by Joaquin Phoenix’s emperor Commodus successful the Oscar-winning predecessor. Paul Mescal stars successful “Gladiator II” arsenic Commodus’ nephew, Lucius, who fights successful the Colosseum to “return the glory of Rome to its people.” Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, and Joseph Quinn besides star, with Connie Nielsen reprising her relation of Lucilla.

Though the movie presently holds a 74% support standing connected reappraisal aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with critics attributing overmuch of the occurrence to Washington, others bemoaned its vapid execution. The original boasts an 80% support rating.

Paul Mescal plays Lucius successful “Gladiator II.” (Paramount Pictures)

“Joaquin Phoenix’s psychologically analyzable marque of villainy is overmuch missed. But successful the flamboyant Washington, it has a trump paper that pays off,” work Time Out’s 4/5 prima review.

The sequel is “made from the aforesaid DNA, successful the aforesaid image,” said Tribune News Service, giving the movie a 3/4. “It is the lone ‘Gladiator’ sequel that could perchance beryllium and precisely what you expect.”

That burdened the movie successful Slate’s opinion, which called the movie “less a reinvention of the archetypal than a curiously literal retread of its crippled beats, characters and themes.”

The Boston Globe echoed those sentiments, dubbing the movie a specified cash-grab, and a lazy 1 astatine that.

“You would deliberation we’d get thing much than a rehash of the archetypal film,” said the Globe of the “corporate greed”-fueled determination to marque a sequel.

Paul Mescal plays Lucius successful “Gladiator II” (Paramount Pictures)

Vanity Fair and Globe and Mail some called retired the hollow quality of the film, with the erstwhile uncovering it “epic successful magnitude and spectacle, but not successful feeling.”

The latter, meanwhile, considers the CGI-heavy flick much akin to “a clump of pixels astatine warfare with each other, with quality stakes near to bleed out.”

“‘Are you not entertained!?’ The reply is no, not really,” said AV Club, nodding to Crowe’s famed enactment from the original. “No magnitude of integer gladiatorial carnage oregon bug-eyed overacting tin disguise the prevailing aerial of exhausted, decadent imperial decline.”