Gladiator II – Retrograde Heroism: From Virtue to Vice

by Ted Giese

Gladiator II is set about around the year 200 A.D., around twenty years after the events of 2000’s Gladiator. Director Ridley Scott again gives audiences a man with a secret past and a dead wife travelling on a grief-stricken path of vengeance that leads him through the Colosseum’s harrowing gladiatorial dangers to the equally hazardous halls of political intrigue and power within the Roman Empire. 

In the first film’s conclusion, the gladiator Maximus—a demoted Roman General of the murdered Emperor Marcus Aurelius—kills the ruling Roman Emperor Commodus, Aurelius’ deranged and psychopathic son in the Colosseum. Maximus also dies from his wounds. Commodus is survived by his sister Lucilla and nephew Lucius. Gladiator concludes with a glimmer of hope that Marcus Aurelius’ desire to hand the empire back to the Roman senate might happen. In the afterlife, Maximus is happily reunited with his family who had been murdered under the orders of Commodus near the beginning of the film. Ultimately, his love for his wife and dead son, who was around the same age as Lucius, is the driving force for the loyal and principled hero Maximus to face off against the duplicitous villain Commodus. 

While the original Gladiator film implies that Maximus and Lucilla had romantic feelings for each other in the past, it also implies that nothing came of it. The fact that Maximus’ dead son is around the same age as the widow Lucilla’s son Lucius only heightens the drama adding to the plot a melancholic layer of what could have been.  

Gladiator II, however, retcons these events. Lucilla now reveals that her now adult son Lucius is the product of an adulterous sexual relationship between her and Maximus. This change turns Maximus from a noble, virtuous, grieving hero into a philandering adulterer too self-centered to realize that Lucius is his own flesh and blood. Scott cuts the legs out from under the character making him morally weak, tarnishing his heroism.  

Sixth Commandment You shall not commit adultery. What does this mean? ‘We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honour each other.’

Scott follows a similar storyline in Gladiator II. Lucius, like Maximus before him, arrives in Rome without everyone knowing who he is. While fighting as a gladiator of Macrinus, he becomes embroiled in drama centred on the unpopular co-Emperors Geta and Caracalla. Unlike Maximus’ owner/manager Proximo, who had won his freedom fighting in the Coloseum, Lucius’ owner/manager is the ambitious nouveau riche Macrinus—a former slave of Aurelius who has risen to high status and wishes to take the Roman Empire for himself by overthrowing Geta and Caracalla. Ultimately, following the deaths of the co-emperors at  the hand of Macrinus, Scott’s film concludes with Lucius and Macrinus engaged in hand-to-hand combat, not in the Colosseum like Maximus and Commodus but by a bridge over the river Tiber outside the city.

This change turns Maximus from a noble, virtuous, grieving hero into a philandering adulterer too self-centered to realize that Lucius is his own flesh and blood. Scott cuts the legs out from under the character making him morally weak, tarnishing his heroism. 

While many of these characters, apart from Maximus, are dawn from real people none of these events took place as Scott depicts them. Gladiator II is filled with many visually “cool” things—like a gladiator mounted on an armoured battle rhino and sharks attacking gladiators in staged naval battles in the Colosseum. And while these events may partly resemble real-life events, the film isn’t interested in telling actual history. They’re utilized merely because they make for cool imagery on the screen. For audiences seeking a sword-and-sandal popcorn flick, Gladiator II will easily fit the bill. Unfortunately, while Scott took liberties with history in Gladiator he has taken even more liberties with Gladiator II.

It is good for Christian audiences to remember that, during the first century A.D.—well before the events of this film’s historical context—both St. Peter and St. Paul, along with many other Christians, were martyred in Rome, some under the watchful eyes of pagan spectators. While Scott is not obliged to include every aspect of Roman history in his film, there’s surprisingly little reference to Christians in Gladiator II even though Christianity was on the rise in the Roman Empire around the year 200. Historically significant men like Justin Martyr and Polycarp had already left a mark on the empire’s growing Christian population. But Scott only includes one dismissive comment about Christians. One emperor suggests crucifying someone, to which Macrinus responds: “Crucifixions are for thieves and Christians.”

Christian viewers will also want to contemplate what they believe concerning the afterlife. Scott presents a thoroughly pagan depiction of the afterlife complete with visions of the dark boatmen who ferry souls across the river Styx to their final abode in Hades. Jesus in the Revelation to Saint John says of Himself: “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). By the year 200, there was a growing Christian response to the pagan conception of the afterlife—Christian teaching which stressed that the dead were still awaiting the final Judgement of Christ Jesus.

Gladiator II is a prime example of why audiences need to remember not to get their history from historical Hollywood epics. Sometimes directors are clearly not that interested in accurately portraying recorded history. Viewers on the fence about Scott’s Gladiator II and looking for a nostalgic experience may be better served by revisiting Gladiator which is certainly the sharper, more charming, and virtuous of the two films.

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Rev. Ted Giese is lead pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Regina, and movie reviewer for Issues, Etc.

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