Sitting in the dark watching Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 was the last place I expected to be. Not after sitting through last year’s Napoleon and certainly not before another four years of Donald Trump.
There’s much to enjoy about Scott’s latest and a few things to hate, including some particularly nasty brutality involving CGI monkeys. But that scene is also the visceral heart of the film. Gladiator 2 celebrates Ancient Rome’s bloodlust, embodied by the Colosseum, but it feels like it’s really about our bloodlust and explains so much about modern culture. Watching it feeding me one decapitation after another, I couldn’t help but think of WrestleMania, the rise of cage fighting, the ennoblement of Joe Rogan, populist political rallies, the politicisation of hate, debates about masculinity (whether faux or toxic), and, of course, riotous mobs.