'Gladiator II' and 'Wicked' briefings

Gladiator II

2 (out of 4)

            They don’t make ‘em like they used to, even the guy that used to make ‘em. I like Ridley well enough, sure he’s made more than his share of blunders (Napoleon, Alien: Covenant, The Counselor, Body of Lies, Hannibal, etc.) but his best (Duellists-tier), near-best (American Gangster-tier), overrated 'classics' (Black Hawk Down, Thelma & Louise) and even some forgotten fare (All the Money in the World, Matchstick Men, 1492), namely White Squall, still endure real nice — from the cut of this boomer blockbuster he’s finally circled back to sailing: “OY what if the gladiator battle was on the WA-UH!” Yes it’s been long enough for Gladiator 1.5 aka Gladiator Reborn (with sharks this time!) — let’s not even think about how they transported those, I don’t think you could pay me enough danerii to catch a shark in 200 AD.

The way this movie tries to both mimic Gladiator’s formula and outstrip it at the same time is confusing. Gladiator II is a legacyquel to its core, you can’t escape the gravity of ancestry and it’s almost as hard to sidestep the structural imitation — however, like the Hunger Games prequel (only so much worse), Scott thought he could give you the whole blood for sport revolt on fast forward, THEN try to get away with last minute character development out the door. It’s discomforting the way this movie’s blunt brevity softens the tragedy, the politics and even the spectacle of 2000’s brawny Best Picture winner, but just for mainstream entertainment, this is dumb as palm-rubbed dirt. There were only so many moments that actually convinced you of millennia-removed history made real — with something like 300 million dollars at hand, it really doesn’t come off like it. And what a shame since his films can be beautifully edited (this one’s like a best and worst of, ranging from judiciously airtight to just plain jenky), Ridley’s got long-tested skill with scale and LIGHTING, GOODNESS next to Wicked this is like a godsend, seeing composite CG shots where everything matches... he’s certainly not incapable of transporting you in passages DARN IT. Still, looks alone cannot counterweight a crumby script (and Wicked Part 1 basically has the inverse issue).

They know they have to be a little different, so they sub early CRAAaaaAAAZY Joaquin for some actual irredeemable weirdos (siblings played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) and revise the revenge so it’s aimed at someone who doesn’t deserve it, General Acacias as played by Pedro Pascal, channeling Eric Bana’s Hector from Troy with half the noble gravitas. This movie doesn’t have anything but recycled emotional investments, therefore a slightly variant shade of the stoic, scorned rage monster doesn’t suit Paul Mescal, he can't imbue Maximus Jr. (Lucius Vernus Aurelius, son to a murdered father) with the warm spark of his work in All of Us Strangers or channel the possessed mythic sadness on display in Aftersun. I really hate his character’s selective memories: “OH I have all these remote psychological imprints that would totally suggest that I have some trace of who I am but instead I’m gonna act like a stubborn little BITCH til the third act!” Finally the not so big twist basically borrowed from the Training Day playbook (1. let Denzel be Denzel until the script won’t have it anymore) isn’t a fresh step and leaves you bored after wearing you out. The original is like some Japanese fantasy movie, hardly more than a fun sword and sandals revenge flick, the linchpin of the 2000s wave of redacted, simplified, pop versions of the historical epic like Troy, Alexander and his own Kingdom of Heaven… and Gladiator II is the speedier, stupider version of THAT.

This won’t save a fossilized genre, and I don’t think such decent box office numbers will secure the old man’s obsession with genre entertainment after all these years. Frankly even if this is technically better than Exodus: Gods and Kings or less pompous than The Last Duel, this might be the most broken yet of his big, brash windows to the past, though if you count it, I suppose this is a touch more tolerable than House of Gucci. Armed with his defiantly boyish instincts and sweaty, gritty knack, his shape jumps from eager and economical to sporadic, flimsy and fractured — and I thought Napoleon felt undeveloped, riddled by disinterest and primed with unnecessary appeal to modern audiences. I’d rather be watching GI Jane, or GI Jane II for the that matter, CAN'T WAIT TO SEE IT!

Wicked

2 ½ (out of 4)

            Any upfront aversion to this ludicrously anticipated event film was less to do with Wicked itself and more uncertainty about director Jon M. Chu, even if In the Heights happens to slap. I was always indifferent to the idea of Oz-related media, but admit most of it is pretty good: The Wiz (a reasonably cool musical mutilated by Sidney Lumet's insistence on plopping you in the worst seat in the house, number after number), Return to Oz (a fever dream of 80s dark kids fantasy worthy of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth) and Sam Raimi’s underrated Oz the Great and Powerful are rarely punishing, in fact they’re peripheral pleasures.

But Wicked was due eight years ago and has clearly been trapped in production purgatory (so much so that the Part 1 and Part 2 were there long before I could accuse them of cash-grabbery) after development began in 2010. Because of its tangential relation to the classic 30s flick, let alone Baum’s actual children’s book series, let’s forgive my plebeian theatre acumen, as well as how easily I gave up on consuming even half of Chu’s filmography — sorry I don’t have time for your debut (Step Up 2 the Streets) or even your follow-up, Step Up 3-D, sure I’ll watch a YouTube clip or two. But, uh, I would never, EVER touch your SET of Justin Bieber docu-tour-movies (2011’s Never Say Never and 2013’s Believe), and while we’re at it I also just can’t with G.I. Joe: Retaliation, no thanks, even if I did suffer through Rise of Cobra back when I was a dumb teen (and Snake Eyes as a dumb adult). I can’t believe I got swindled by Now You See Me 2 (like with G.I. Joe or Step Up, Chu appears to have had nothing to do with the original) and in between he spits out a low budget rendition of the 80s animated show Jem via Jem and the Holograms’ pauper to pop star fantasy-fulfillment. But this guy clearly only comes into his own when he helms the successful, historically significant (if not the best of his full frontal sense of entertainment) Crazy Rich Asians, the first Hollywood movie with an all-Asian cast since ’93 and clearly a step in the right direction, finally. Then, with a decent assist from Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights blew me away a few summers back in 2021, and remains his most volatile, impressive film partly by default.

As far as the source though, Baum didn’t want to impose moral lessons, akin to Oz’s overseas inspiration Alice in Wonderland — meanwhile Wicked scribe Gregory Maguire specifically sought big message-making apparently in honor of Dickens or something? For siphoning from prime American children’s fantasy and as the offspring of the wildly popular Broadway/touring musical incited in 2003, itself derived from Maguire’s saucy 560-page 1995 revisionist novel (praised and also criticized for turning Baum’s world upside down for the sake of moral relativism and pretty outlandish expansions on a Western wonderland setup) Wicked: Part 1 (2024) could be worse — at least kids are looking out for propaganda or something? It seems Baum wanted to end the books after six and they made him spit out 14, basically until he was dead! I’m sorry Hollywood where’s the fucking Nome King? OH RIGHT we only care about what we know well, since the wellspring for all this media is less Baum and really just Victor Fleming’s 1939 all ages musical spectacular, his crumby side project while he hammered out the forever and always popular domestic pinnacle of all cinematic offerings, Gone With the Wind, released the same year. ALL TO SAY, there was mostly reason to be concerned about the state of a two-part Wicked extravaganza, especially considering how awful and all-consuming the marketing has been. Plus, given that this first act totals 160 minutes while the full show on stage totals 165 (and looking at the story sum of Maguire’s novel, it would appear there wasn’t all too much borrowed) … my first feelings on this portion of the Wicked musical film adaption were exhaustion mixed with moderate enthrallment. 

As an unfamiliar I still couldn’t help but spot the original performers (Adena Menzel AND BLANKER) popping up to do a side by side piece with the new Galinda and Elphaba, but what makes this a natural rendition is how stupendously typecast and then impossibly well-met the performances by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande really are, they are just too suited it’s kind of freaky. Obviously in this big fat weekend with the most masculine of releases shadowed by the most feminine (Oppenheimer and Gladiator II dwarfed by Barbie and now Wicked) it’s a go-woke-go-broke-breaker, and yet, (UNLIKE BARBIE) this is one where all the politics of a supposedly very political book can’t be spotted past animal rights or ableism stuff (Barbie did indeed have wheelchairs working the dancefloor) — I guess I'm saying I always thought that Elphaba would be played by a black woman, why WOULDN’T she be? No offense to Menzel, obviously it’s just that the ‘race-swapping’ in this fantasy setting, for that particular character, isn’t only fine but recommended. Erivo, like Elphaba, is esoteric and vulnerable, and likewise the words blonde and vainglorious don’t NOT make you think of Ariana Grande, acting like Audrey Hepburn auditioning for Jane Austen’s Emma — but Cynthia outshines the doting thing’s falsetto at every turn though. With Chu’s flair for big ensemble numbers, effortless, whirlwind dance choreography, slick cameras moves and tricky editing particularly in the most comedic numbers, the middle of this movie is full on fun between the loathing, the life-lusting and that “Popular song,” all pretty joyous. All the two-handed competition was charming and the silent duet dance is a risky moment that really pays off — for awhile you’re sold you on why this story, and the arrangement of songs surrounding it, have become so ubiquitous with the cream of Broadway pageantry and passion. Next to The Lion King and Cats, what is there?

It does its best to make good on giving you what you can’t travel to or afford, meeting the masses with what they’re missing (major theater is like what opera was, an exclusive medium for the privileged, if only geographically) but its a pretty phony excuse for a slice of the best modern musical theatre can offer notwithstanding — sure it’s a sight sweeter than Les Mis and Cats (EAT IT TOM HOOPER, seriously) but nowhere remotely close to a classic. For only half the story Wicked often overstays its welcome, yeah I know it ends with fan-favorite “Defying Gravity,” Lord knows how they flew like Spider-Man onstage considering it didn’t even look good in a shiny 150 million movie. All the CG looks expensive and terrible next to the plentiful amount of setwork (especially those rotating library shelves!) and often Wicked compensates its technical shortcomings with livewire breathlessness, the insurance of the songwriting and reasonably respectful, noteworthy performances by our leads. Still it’s crazy that the undoing of a movie with such goodwill is just crappy digital VFX, sickly, sourceless lighting and the overbusy, bloated way with which it has to extend the whole affair for the sake of milking Jeff Goldblum, cutesy cameos and nineteen added dramatic pauses to the far more fluid literal show-stopping climax of “Defying Gravity.” How can Universal smack of Disney so? How can anyone stand THAT CRINGIFYING LEWIS CARROLL VERNACULAR?? Maybe it’d all make more sense if I was gay.