Turns out Christopher Nolan wasn’t any less entertained by Gladiator II. In fact, he picked the sequel as his favorite film of 2024 in a new Variety feature, praising Ridley Scott for “once again showing us who we are simply by inviting us to enjoy the crazy inflationary ride.”
Beginning his written breakdown, Nolan hearkened back to the original and explained part of its greatness was Scott knowing “we’re there to see our own dark desires at a comfortable remove” without “making parallels with our time.”
“Why are there sharks in the Colosseum? Because we demand them, and Scott masterfully gives them to us,” Nolan wrote about Gladiator II, which he believes succeeded by once again putting a mirror to society: “As he reveals how the games are used to manipulate public opinion, we can’t help but see shadows of our own public arena projected onto the sand.”
Nolan continued by lauding Scott’s ability to balance the “individual pathos of the original” with the “expansionist demands of the sequel’s central themes” as well as “raising the game” with his action sequencing.
“The staging of his action — his incredible, hyper-observant, multi-camera mise-en-scène (so different to the original) masterfully wrestles the action into clear and jaw-dropping sequence after sequence,” he wrote. “The effect is not just to entertain, but to drive us towards awareness of the movie’s themes.”
Concluding, Nolan added, “Despite all his success, Scott’s contribution to the evolution of cinematic storytelling has never been properly acknowledged… This has never been as clear as in the masterful opening shot of Gladiator II, where Paul Mescal’s hand gently cradles the grain harvested from the original movie’s swaying wheat
Read Nolan’s full blurb at Variety. The piece also features picks from Michael Mann, Barry Jenkins, Seth Rogen, Fede Alvarez, and more.
It’s worth noting that Scott’s own cinematographer, John Mathieson, recently described the filmmaking of Gladiator II as “really lazy” and “quite impatient.”
In our Gladiator II review, Senior Entertainment Editor Liz Shannon Miller agreed with Nolan’s assessment of its “epic battles and transportive sweeping filmmaking,” but said the film was “undercut by a script tragically burdened by cliches.”
Pre-order your physical copy of the movie here, and see all the ways the sequel connects to the original film.