This Cladiator 2 : scriptwriter seems like 6 years old girls and produced + directed by 12 years old boy . OMG . What a rubbish . Sorry
This review from Constantine Janovsky , hos pointed exact my point of vision:
Just from Imax, well the budget saves but of course it's a very superficial movie. The 👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼script confused me the most: during the film there are a series of scenes, but it's very difficult to discern the general connection between them in particular and the overall picture as a whole. The motivation of the characters just gallops: here's a scene where the hero is evil, and then suddenly he's noble and all-forgiving, it feels like somewhere during editing they just threw out a good part of the character development. They try to emphasize each scene with sound, but this is not Zimmer, so the result also leaves much to be desired (a couple of weak remakes on the theme of the original film are also not impressive).
Regarding the actors - well, it's like Denzel stands out in one corner separately and somewhere in the other all the others are in a crowd. Mescal, well, doesn't shine, but of course he's not even close to Crowe (who only became a megastar after the first film). Pascal, as always, is good (in fact, his character is the most interesting, but unfortunately, due to the will of the script, he also does not have that much time). Apparently, to compensate for Phoenix, they decided to put two villain emperors this time, but their images turned out too cartoonish. Connie Nielsen has certainly aged, yes. It's just that again, the script is built in such a way that all the characters seem to be in place, but the interaction with each other is somehow unconvincing or something.
The battle scenes again - in IMAX, yes, it will do, but it feels like all these 300 million were just enough to not lose face. The scene in the forest from the first film still evokes strong impressions, but here it is somehow completely soulless.