Tea-Meter: 4/10

Never had high expectations for the legacy sequel to Gladiator, but I truly did not expect it to be this bad. I wasn't even entertained, I almost fell asleep twenty times, for this is a literal carbon copy of the original with none of the charm. It goes along plot-point for plot-point like the original, except now, everything feels incredibly disted and purposeless. I wasn't a fan of Gladiator 2000, but there was at least some emotional weight behind its critiques on greed, corruption, and power — here, it feels like Ridley Scott grabbed a bunch of concepts for stylized characters and shoved them into a poorly thought-out script where they're either not fleshed out enough, bear little connection to one another, or are just outright stupid. The runtime drags, it's a visual downgrade from its predecessor, and even the score, although good at times, doesn't match the theatrics of Hans Zimmer's original work. Anything this film tries to do is said a million times better in its predecessor, this is a hollow shell that tries to capitalize off of the glamour of the past with zero purpose in its existence. At least Denzel Washington had fun.