I recently saw Galdiator II. I had it all, massive sets, the Colosseum, sharks, and baboon attacks. They threw money at everything, yet it all felt hollow and lazy.

The film just mimicked the earlier one, without any soul and impact. Paul Mescal lacks the imposing presence that Crowe had. The twin emperors were hilariously poor, the narrative was confusing and unclear, and the climax was fucking awful.

Let’s fix it.

I’d maintain Lucius as Maximus’ son wanting vengeance, but tighten it up with genuine feelings and purpose.


Act 1: The Fall

Open with the same Lucius and his wife enjoying a peaceful and happy life in Numidia. Rome attacks, they both fight bravely, he looses his wife in a heart-breaking moment. Lucius is captured and shipped to Rome as a slave.

In the ship, a fellow Numidian who once served in Rome recognizes something familiar in him.

“You fight like him!” the man says. “The way you swing your sword.. I saw Maximus do the same in the arena years ago. They say his son is hidden in Numidia.”

Lucius looks at the man - confused. “Maximus? That’s just a story my mother told me before she died.”

The old man leans closer to him, “Your mother never died, she is alive and trapped in the palace, forced to marry General Acacius.”

The act ends with him entering Rome and getting thrown into the galidator pit.


Act 2: The Arena

Lucius starts training under Macrinus, a charismatic, strong, and former slave. He pushes Lucius harder because he sees potential in him. Lucius first engages in combat in tiny venues, where he triumphs with skill and unadulterated fury. The audience begins to applaud him.

When he is taken to the palace to fight in secret while his mother watches from the shadows, taken aback by his moves, it is a pivotal emotional sequence. She sets up a secret meting following the altercation. She remembers when he was a child as she rubs the scar on his arm. She asks, “It can’t be… my son?”. In a poignant exchange, Lucius tells her what the elderly man told him on the ship, and she ultimately discloses how she sent him away to keep him safe following the loss of his father. She alerts him to Macrinus’s increasing influence and the corruption in Rome.

Macrinus uses Lucius as a pawn to destroy competitors, wreak havoc, and increase his own power among the Roman populace and army while also manipulating the two weak emperors to turn against Lucilla and Acacius in greater arena bouts. Macrinus discovers Lucius’s true identity at the end of the act, much as it did in the film forcing him to fully commit as a rebel.


Act 3: The Recokning

Lucius now turned into the best gladiator (like his father) and having gathered the support of his other fellow gladiators, steps forward as a true leader. With his mother’s guidance, he confronts General Acacius in the battlefield where Acacius admits he regrets and join forces with him (For Rome). Together they march with the loyal Roman legions that once followed Maximus.

While the army led by Acacius is fighting against the Roman army commanded by the twins outside the city walls, Macrinus and Lucius face each other in an epic one-on-one showdown in the heart of Colosseum. No sharks or CGI baboons, just rage, deep anger and skilled sword fighting.

Lucius finally defeats Macrinus and standing over his enemy gives a short but powerful speech “Rome does not belong to tyrants or slaves to power. Let us build a better empire — one of strength and honor.”


Act 4: Conlusion

Lucilla is finally freed. Acacius redeems himself by fighting valiantly in the battle and managing in capturing the twins but is mortally wounded. In the final moments, Lucius and his mother arrive at the Colosseum at dawn. They honor Maximus, his wife and Acacius by burying the token from his wife and his father’s ring in the sand. Lucius then walks away from the throne with his mother leaving Rome in the hands of the people as Maximus and Marcus Aurelius envisioned.