I watched Gladiator II on Netflix over the course of two days sometime last week. It was OK. Not sure it was as good as Gladiator, which I saw in a theater and at least once online. The special effects were fine, Denzel Washington was fine, crazy Caracalla was a demented Roman aristocrat, one of two brothers ruling the empire.
But I couldn’t help but think about the political situation in the United States. Both of the Gladiator films are about political corruption and the problem of succession in the state. President Trump tried to derail the succession of Biden to the presidency. Now, in 2025, who knows what kind of back-room deals these rich guys are cutting with one another as Trump attempts to grab as much power for himself as he possibly can.
The problem of succession is a deep one. The ruler is the top of the pyramid. Who rules the ruler? Who determines the ruler's legitimacy?
Shakespeare must have written a half-dozen or more plays about the problem. There’s an HBO series about it (which I haven’t watched). The issue is one of legitimacy: Who has the right to rule the state? American democracy solves the problem by having the leader elected by the people. But elections can be tampered with. George W. Bush won his election by a hanging chad and a decision of the Supreme Court. Was that a legitimate win? What would have happened if Gore had contested more vigorously? Who knows?
Aristocracies handle succession by birthright, which is often enough contested. The Roman Empire was basically an aristocracy, with a Senate, and with legitimacy ultimately conferred by the military, which plays a central role in both Gladiator films. It seems, though, that succession was a bit iffy. That was certainly the case in both of the films.
Anyhow, Gladiator came out in 2000, the year Bush won the presidency. A bit over a year later 9/11 happened, which cast doubt on America’s place in the world. And two years after that Columbia University celebrated its 250th year. It was during that year that I attended a dinner at Columbia as a guest of Seth Neugroschel, a Columbia graduate. During that dinner some Big Deal Historian at Columbia came around to our table and talked about how empires often had a life span of two hundred years or so before they began to crumble. But that measure, America was in the danger zone, a bit over a quarter of a century past it’s 200th anniversary. Was 9/11 the beginning of the end? That was a question we pondered at the dinner table.
And that’s what was on my mind as I watched Gladiator II. The film reeked of sleaze and backstabbing and general political and institutional nastiness. Is that were America is in 2025, 250 years after the country’s birth? Gladiator II was in the works well before the 2024 election. Indeed, first thoughts about the film began soon after Gladiator. The two films seemed to have been conceived in an atmosphere of decay and atrophy and are thus expressive of it. How are we to apportion that between Ridley Scott’s personal interests and the political atmosphere of the country? I don’t know.
Anyhow, those are the thoughts Gladiator II has provoked from me. As for the film itself, watch it for the effects, for Washington, and the rest, well, it’s there, it tells a story.
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