Alex Thorpe

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The original Gladiator was a classic This is a pretty poor sequel after 20 years. The lead actor has none of Crowe’s gravitas. I wondered how he got the casting, bland and doesn’t have the natural authority the role needed. The first film was memorable for taking you on Maximus’s journey, feeling the rage in every swing of his blade. The motivations of the characters naturally made sense. Here, the writing attempts a shoddy carbon copy of the first films key beats only executed markedly worse in every way. The main character swinging from a mummy issues rant to “I won’t lose you again” in the space of scene was particularly jarring. It felt hammy & overacted. Tiring of Pedro Pascal being in everything and even the fight scenes were a step down choreography wise, even if there were some nice set pieces. Nothing has weight, death is cheap, straying from the gritty realism of the original. Frigging sharks says it all. The final 1v1 fight is embarrassingly cliche. Worth a watch at home but not much else

Saw this tonight at the palace theatre in London and wish I’d just donated the money to a kids charity hoping in 30 years one of them blossoms into a future de caprio, because it represents a better chance of paying for talent than sitting through this pile of warm cat sick A year ago I attended my sisters year 6 kids play called “pirates of the currybean” and this made that look like an Oscar nominated seminal piece of art What is there to like? Terminally online culture warriors will enjoy the farcical casting choices and a committed masochist may extract some value from torturing their ears and eyeballs for 4 hours, these aside my well of positivity sadly runs dry The writing would receive criticism had an 8 year old girl handed this as homework having scribbled it from scratch on toilet paper 15 minutes prior Taking one of the major gaping messes of a plot device from the original works (time travel) and turning that into the subject matter of the entire play was a first mistake of sheer impressive incompetence, the rest are so numerous I suggest you invest your time in more intellectually productive activities such as picking your toenails or browsing the 1993 Argos catalogue before spending any time attempting to make sense of it It would be an insult to amateur theatre to suggest the acting was of that standard, but if you enjoy a hammier experience than a bernard matthews factory tour with disastrously untalented Z list actors endlessly shrieking at you, this might be the play for you The actor who played Harry was particularly notable in his absence of any performative qualities - I offer my condolences to the casting director, who’s children are surely in an active hostage situation, this being the only reasonable explanation for this guy finding his way onto the stage. I can only congratulate him on grifting his way to a role of this calibre. All in all, as a childhood reader of the books and enjoyer of the films, I’ll do my very best to scrub this tonight’s event from my mind, and would encourage anyone considering going to this to simply burn the money and enjoy the flicking glow and brief amount of heat it provides, an experience immeasurably more pleasurable than enduring this stain on the Harry Potter brand name

As a huge fan of the originals I don’t think I could be more let down if somebody had specifically created this film to tarnish the legacy of the old ones Where do you even start? Incoherent jumpy plot, awful cinematography, D-list support acting, cringeworthy one liners, tired Bollywood action scenes, chunks of tedious dialogue. A total mess of a film that got nothing right and missed every single standard set. Not a single redeeming quality, even the action scenes are a significant regression, tedious. Backed away from nearly all of the philosophy and more complex elements of the symbolism. Most characters ruined, new Morpheus had less charisma than Laurence Fishburns big toe. Purple hair girl belongs in low budget high school dramas. Absolutely zero chemistry on screen from anybody, including Trinity & Neo. This was the original director? Did they forget how to make a film in 20 years? This is so bad I refuse to associate it with the original trilogy. Give up now and hand off the franchise to somebody else, another Hollywood train wreck of the last couple of decades