To say Gladiator 2 was a sequel no one asked for is an understatement.
The first Gladiator was fun, had some respect for historical accuracy, and was a pretty accurate reenactment of the Rome tactics and gladiatorial games of Marcus Aurelius' time.
Gladiator 2, not so much.
To say it had so many blatant historical inaccuracies it would hurt a classicist's soul is accurate. Verily, it did.
Horrendously bad, it was.
It begins with a Roman fleet attacking Numidia under the Emperors Caracalla and Geta sometime between 209 and 211 AD. The leader of Numidia at the time is named Jugurtha.
The problem is the Roman Republic's War with Jugurtha took place in 118 BC, prior to the Roman Empire, and Numidia had been under Roman domian and control since then.
This does let them get some DEI credit for the film though portraying Jugurtha as Black, rather than North African Berber so there's that.
And no, the Roman generals at the time of Geta and Caracalla were not known to run ahead of their formation fighting enemies one-on-one. Not how it worked.
It gets progressively, and dare I say diversely, worse from there.
Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, as the master of gladiators. He does a fine job chewing the scenery and basically portraying himself out of Training Day. He's an enjoyable actor, but it kills the history of the period all the more, but again awesome diversity DEI credit.
The real Macrinus was the commander of the Preaetorian Guard and as far as is known was not involved in the death of Geta, but was involved in killing Caracalla and becoming Emperor for a short period before being killed himself.
Oh, and Macrinus, while from North Africa, wasn't Black, but again DEI cred.
Geta and Caracalla are portrayed as effeminate half-wit twin poofs. Again for DEI credit I suppose, when the historical record is rather different.
Also, they weren't twins with Caracalla being 11 months older. They were both active on military campaigns and Caracalla was held to be quite the military strategist and campaigner. They did hate each other though and far more than is portrayed in the movie.
Caracalla also never had a pet monkey. Lawdog is likely happy to know that.
Gladiator 2 even literally jumped the shark by having sharks in the Colosseum during the nautical battle scene.
While Rome did stage a Naumachia in the Colosseum at least once, the Romans did not capture sharks and have them swimming around the Colosseum during such battles.
Hilariously and painfully the naval battle itself was announced as a remake of the Battle of Salamis and described as a battle between the "Trojans and the Persians".
The Battle of Salamis was between the Greeks and the Persian - in 480 BC. The Trojan war was much, much earlier, in the 12th or 13th century BC between the Greeks and the Trojans.
The movie then continues with more and more historical inaccuracies.
There's even people sipping coffee and reading newspapers during the movie.
Coffee didn't come to Rome as a beverage before the 17th century AD, and newspapers weren't invented until the 1400s AD - over a thousand years after the events in the film.
I mean you can take license with historical events, but asking the audience to disbelieve a thousand years worth of an anachronism is asking for a bit much.
In short, if you haven't seen Gladiator 2 yet, I recommend you disbelieve it ever existed. Instead you can have a much better and more enjoyable use of your movie-watching time by watching Gladiator again.
