After more than two decades in development limbo, countless rejected drafts permanently memory-holed to studio vaults, and near endless studio dawdling, Ridley Scott (Napoleon, Blade Runner, Alien), seemingly inexhaustible even as his 87th birthday quickly approaches, makes a triumphant return to cinemas with the much mooted, mostly anticipated sequel, the aptly, if inartfully, titled Gladiator II, the sequel to Scott’s 2000 endlessly quotable, generationally popular, Gladiator, a historical epic set in Ancient Rome. With the original title character, Maximus Decimus Meridius (Oscar winner Russell Crowe), the former general turned slave-gladiator, done and dusted at the end of Gladiator, any sequel would have to work around his literal and figurative absence, the former narratively, the latter, thematically. The part legacy sequel, part remake scripted by Scott’s…
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