About a month ago, I watched Gladiator 2. I have never seen the original Gladiator, nor did I attempt to pick up the lore prior to watching it. Really, I was incredibly excited to watch a new Ridley Scott film after the press tour of Napoleon. Scott, when badgered by French journalists for its wicked historical inaccuracy, retorted, “Were you there? Oh you weren't there. Then how do you know?”

A valid question. A question that set the stage for Gladiator 2, which did not escape identical claims of historical inaccuracy (indeed I also thought it peculiar that the film depicts the seemingly impossible feat of bringing saltwater sharks into the colosseum). Sharks aside, the film was fun enough and, as expected, the action sequences were compelling, the rest of the film not so. An utterly cliché plot with some violence that makes my monkey brain go woo-woo, similar enough to pornography (structurally—where plot is secondary to the “action.” I want to clarify per my being raised in a puritanical society that I am NOT a consumer nor am I a purveyor of pornography), nestled under Martin Scorsese’s movies-as-spectacle-or-theme-park claim. Gladiator 2 was a spectacle, but in an almost more disappointing context given Scott’s rather illustrious career (Thelma & Louise, Alien, Blade Runner, etc. He’s got range!). 

I want to bring it back to Scorsese and the notion that films like Gladiator 2 are no better than theme parks. I find it fitting that most of the violence in the film happens in front of an audience of sorts (there are perhaps two or three that are not; the battle at the beginning, where it may be argued that the townsfolk are looking on, and the killing of the emperors). The subject matter makes that hard to avoid—the majority of the violence happens between gladiators, whether in the arena or not. 

The colosseum is packed to the brim with spectators who root for some gladiator or another—it’s comparable to a football game (I think that American football is modernized trench warfare) or any other sporting event. Sports are a form of spectacle, these battles are too. People bet on outcomes and viewers are impassioned by all that happens below them. The pain, injury, and death is ultimately just entertainment for the Roman audience. The stakes are higher for Lucius, the titular Gladiator 2, but your run of the mill plebian doesn’t know that. We, as the audience, are aware of the gravity of these fights.

There’s a level of dramatic irony in our participation as viewers watching these violent scenes unfold—we are wholly aware of most character motivations, and generally everything important that’s going on at the top. We’re privy to everything going on in Lucius’s head as he fights. It’s easier to sympathize with him when we know what he’s fighting for (and because Ridley Scott kills his wife in the opening sequence of the film. It’s hard not to feel bad for a widow). Irony is one word, voyeurism is another; as viewers we watch every private moment, moments that would typically have no spectator. Now, I think it’s easy to look at the medium and think, “Well, it’s all voyeuristic! Every film is about watching people’s most intimate affairs—the basis of narrative art is taking the consumer on a sympathetic journey with the hero!”

That’s true. Though, something about voyeurism in Gladiator 2 strikes me as different. I think it has to do with how we exist at times as spectators in the colosseum, and at times as invasive observers when they’re not fighting. It feels like the plot exists solely to chain the violence together. Maybe I think that because the screenplay sucks, but I also think that it isn’t entirely false. I’m reminded of the Mike Tyson v. Jake Paul boxing match—horrible, but topical. Most everybody in the United States and beyond had a favorite, identifying and sympathizing with one of the fighters. I rooted for Mike Tyson, and I grew increasingly frustrated, agitated, and eventually depressed as he gave such an abysmal effort in the fight. 

Gladiator 2 can’t just present unconnected pieces of violence to a crowd, and the nature of its existence as a film prohibits it from doing such. It’s unbecoming of the medium—even if the plot is bad, blockbusters must have a plot. So, it’s the voyeurism that builds the plot, and the voyeurism that gives the movie-going audience stakes. We are manipulated into identifying with the hero Lucius from the beginning of the film and manipulated to some degree between each fight scene with saccharin plot development. We sympathize with Acacius and Lucilla because they’re on Lucius’s side, and despise Macrinus because he directly opposes Lucius. 

Voyeurism in Gladiator 2 aims to destroy what might otherwise be too meta—the conscious act that we’re watching something watched by others. But how does this differ from your typical action flick?

There’s another aspect that lies within the gladiator/actor relationship. That’s yet another meta component of the film—a typical action sequence in a film devoid of spectators has the involved actors embodying the characters and fighting one another, with the only spectator being the camera. In Gladiator 2, the actors embody fighters that must attempt to garner sympathy and favor from the spectators in the film, but they must also achieve this with spectators watching the film. This double performance leads one to wonder—is the violence the same when there are spectators within in the film and when there aren’t? In the case of a gladiator, I’m certain that the life-or-death circumstances prevent total awareness of the crowd from infiltrating their minds. However, in the case of Gladiator 2, one must wonder if Lucius would indeed have presented or acted differently in any of his important fights. Even the final fight, not in the arena, had an audience composed of thousands of Roman soldiers. Is Lucius motivated by the crowd?

In the film’s opening sequence, he ends up underwater and ultimately captured by Acacius’s army—this is how he becomes a gladiator. This battle was violence in it of itself—spectator-free, no holds barred. Lucius loses, yet throughout the film, when he has an audience, he wins. Does Lucius hide all weakness when aware that he is being perceived? Voyeuristic insight into the actors/gladiators leaves us questioning real and fake.

It’s difficult to not bring back the pornography comparison. I dare assume that most pornographic content on the internet is staged for the express pleasure of spectators, a la Gladiator 2’s fights in the arena. Yet by nature of subject matter, the voyeuristic act is pushed to the extreme. We see individuals at their most vulnerable: naked, horny, and hedonistic. But it is ultimately all for show. Some videos contain an element of plot, as though attempting to garner some sympathy or predisposed feeling towards the people about to engage in sexual acts. Despite all the pomp and circumstance of introducing a narrative, pornography does not seriously pretend to be content of substance, and it does not pretend to be true intimacy. Actors are consciously performing—sounds, angles, and so on—are choreographed. The narrative need not be convincing, but the sex does.

Yet, it is the pretense that sex is a private act that influences how this media is consumed. There’s not a lot of fourth wall breaking in pornography—there’s an active attempt to hide all aspects of production to keep the illusion that the spectator is a voyeur. If it seems fake, just like violence, spectators cannot react the same way. The difference between Gladiator 2 and pornography is that Gladiator 2 isn’t a snuff film, whereas porn stars actually have sex.

There’s a blurry boundary between performance and authenticity across the board. Nothing we consume will ever be the real thing, like sports are, so we force some form of narrative or sympathy to give us stakes. Pornography is different because arousal can happen sans narrative when viewers have the “real deal” in front of them. Gladiator 2 needs these voyeuristic moments that differentiate private Lucius and public Lucius because the viewers don’t have real violence in front of them, and they don’t have anyone to root for without it. Sex doesn’t necessarily require a winner, so the tension you see in sport/war as spectacle isn’t needed in pornography.

As Scott asks—were we there, and if not, how do we know? How do we know who the authentic and real Lucius is, if he so exists at all? What are the real boundaries between what we will entertain as spectacle and not, and what are the prerequisite elements that a spectacle needs? I wrote a few months back about our private/public selves. I think Scott makes me wonder which, if either, is the authentic self.