Gladiator II and the MAGAfication of History

How today’s culture wars are rewriting the image of the past in popular cinema

Period films are one of the most popular, and almost certainly the most enduring, genres in cinema. From the rugged Westerns of the early 20th century to the nuanced character studies of recent decades (American Gangster, Oppenheimer), Hollywood has always been able to bank on viewers’ interest and engagement with historical themes.

These films aim to recreate the past, but often end up better reflecting the morality, politics, and societal concerns of the time in which they are created.

In films set in the recent past, subtexts are often easier to decode. The Deer Hunter (1978) captures the disillusionment following the Vietnam War, while Black Hawk Down (2001) offers a pro-intervention narrative typical of the 9/11 era. The cultural zeitgeist can, however, also be revealed in films set in the more distant past, if viewers are prepared to read a little further between the lines.

Classical epics set in the Greek and Roman periods (Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Jason and the Argonauts, or more recent pictures such as Troy and 300) may be billed as typical swashbuckling Hollywood fare, but they nevertheless still reflect popular narratives of the time in which they are made, encapsulating contemporary anxieties and dominant social discourses. In this context, Gladiator II offers a lens through which to examine our present moment—one defined by the spectre of a second Trump presidency and further culture-war populism.

The contrasting depictions of heroes and villains in Gladiator and Gladiator II reflect the rise and normalisation of a Trumpian worldview over the last two decades. This perspective champions traditional values and machismo as the cure for cultural decline, opposing a corrupt, permissive, and sexually depraved elite class. Ultimately, Gladiator II demonstrates the entanglement of politics, history, and popular culture in our fragmented era.

Spoilers for Gladiator and Gladiator II are to follow, naturally.

Gladiator and Gladiator II

The follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic, Gladiator II is similar in plot to its predecessor (so much so that one critic called the sequel “pointless”).

Both films centre on unwilling gladiators: Maximus (Russell Crowe) in Gladiator, and his son Lucius (Paul Mescal) in the sequel. Both are also ostensibly motivated by the same aims: to avenge their wives (who are both killed in the opening sequences, leaving only one substantial female character between the two films); and to realise the dreams of Maximus’ mentor and Lucius’ grandfather, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, to save ‘the dream of Rome’, returning the empire from dictatorship to a republic by defeating the autocrat(s) who control the state.

Having seen Maximus seemingly achieve these aims, killing tyrannical emperor Commodus in the final sequence, we are instead shown in Gladiator II that Commodus was simply replaced by a series of further dictators, including the twins Geta and Caracalla who now rule the empire.

So far, so similar. However, the two films do differ in how Ancient Rome is depicted. In Gladiator, society is shown to be on the brink of collapse. Gladiator II, however, explores the aftermath of this collapse, and suggests a road to redemption for Rome’s population. Maximus’ quest is to preserve the republic, Lucius’ to restore the civilisation to past glories, delivering Rome from the social and cultural decay to which it has succumbed. This distinction has important implications when we consider the different contexts in which the films were produced.

Pax Americana, Pax Romana

Rob Wilson compared the world shown in the original Gladiator film to the Pax Americana. Like the Pax Romana depicted in Gladiator, the end of the Cold War saw the American Empire emerge as the sole, uncontested global superpower and, seemingly, the ‘end of history’.

Brief as it was, the Pax Americana brought about a period of intense reflection for the US. Was global dominance sustainable? At what cost had it been achieved? Could the promise of the ‘American Dream’ now be delivered? This existential angst is reflected across films from the Y2K era, including The Matrix and Fight Club. A.J. Black points out that this moral crossroads is also represented in Marcus Aurelius’ reflections on his legacy in Gladiator:

“How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher, the warrior, the tyrant? Or will I be remembered as the Emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome, you could only whisper it... It was so fragile and I fear that it will not survive the winter”

Aurelius’ dream, here, represents the American Dream. Aurelius and Maximus represent those seeking to maintain peace, delivering prosperity and stability to Americans, and those across the world, whilst the destructive Commodus is a parallel to the power-driven interventionism and paranoia of those who sought to maintain American control at all costs into the new millennium.

Gladiator II, and culture war populism

In 2024, America was facing a very different moral crossroads. With the Pax Americana seemingly in tatters, many Americans have turned their ire inwards, towards their fellow citizens, with a deepening political gulf between progressives and conservatives. No more sharply have these differences been felt than in issues of ‘culture war’ politics, which in many ways defined the battle lines between Trump’s republican party and Kamala Harris’ ‘campaign of joy’ during the recent presidential election.

A key difference between the Gladiator films is the characterisation of their antagonists. Commodus was played straight by Joaquin Phoenix, a ruthless, violent, pragmatist, but ultimately a not-quite-worthy-enough adversary to Crowe’s equally macho Maximus. However, in the sequel, Geta and Caracalla are depicted as campy, bisexual, androgynous, and sexually deviant, and their court has all of the hallmarks of an empire in decay (a pet money? Tick. Emperors in lead-white makeup? Tick. Literal gilded halls? See below).

Geta and Caracalla, with Caracalla’s pet monkey, Dondus

Geta and Caracalla stroll down gilded halls

This deployment of the ‘queer villain’ trope echoes the narrative built around the 2024 election by the Republican party. Trump’s campaign was explicitly set against progressive views on sexuality and other social issues, which he presented as evidence for the decaying of American family values (lest we forget the infamous ‘Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you’ campaign slogan).

Trump and his supporters have also consistently sought to portray him as an outsider to the Washington machine, a red-blooded, masculine American man prepared to take on the corruption that had festered in American politics, and finally “drain the swamp”. The fictional role of Trump as the saviour of American democracy echoes a ubiquitous archetype in American cinema, reflected in epic historical films from 300 to Sparticus: the man who will deliver liberty from corruption.

This archetype is also represented in both Gladiator protagonists. However, where Maximus is matched against an amoral but essentially parallel antagonist in Commodus, Lucius is set up to take on two effete, explicitly queer characters, who make the soft-spoken, smooth-chested Paul Mescal look like John Wayne in comparison.

Lucius (L) and Maximus (R) in Gladiator II and Gladiator

Interestingly, Ridley Scott has said that he sees Donald Trump’s analogue in Gladiator II not as Lucius, but as Denzel Washington’s scheming Macrinus. The character, who is also implied to be queer, is, much like Trump, a seemingly amoral outsider, prepared to do whatever it takes in his pursuit of power. Unlike Trump, however, Macrinus expresses no outward, populist appeal. He does not purport to speak for the people of Rome, claims no moral imperative in his desire for control, beyond a disdain for the current ruling class (which does, to be fair, chime with elements of Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric).

Lucius, however, does appear motivated by a populist imperetive. In the final sequence of the film, he declares to a massed crowd that :“Marcus Aurelius’ dream of Rome is dead... let’s rebuild it together”. Lucius’ arc and motivations in the film can be seemingly then be simplified to:

Masculine hero seeks to restore liberty, justice, and traditional values from a corrupt, decadent regime, led by awkward, unpopular, queer sexual deviants, unify the people, and Make Rome Great Again.

Whilst Macrinus does share the desire for power for its own sake that those who oppose Trump accuse him of, Lucius shares Macrinus’ desire to topple and replace a corrupt regime, but with the populist moral imperetive that many of Trump’s supporters believe him to have.

Whether Scott was conscious of it or not, Lucius’ character arc in Gladiator II reflects the core fiction at the heart of the Trump campaign.

And this fiction has a particular resonance with Trump voters. In a poll conducted by YouGov in the final days of the 2024 election campaign, 95% of those voting for Trump agreed that “It is important to preserve our country’s traditional values and moral standards”, compared with 53% of Harris supporters. 89% agreed that “American values and beliefs are being undermined and cherished traditions are under threat”, a sentiment only shared by 33% of Harris supporters, whilst 97% of Trump supporters agreed that “Americans should make our country great again” (42% of Harris supporters felt the same, although possibly for different reasons).

Panic at a culture in decline

The fear of cultural decline represented in Gladiator II and embodied in Trump’s campaign is not new. Ultra-conservative Western states have long warned of the dangers posed by perceived decadence, such as Geta and Caracalla’s hedonism, to societal stability. During the Graeco-Persian Wars in the 6th Century BCE, Greek authors disparaged the Persian court’s wealth, luxury, and permissiveness, contrasting it with Greek sobriety and morality. Ironically, the Romans later invoked similar rhetoric to justify conquering the Greek empire, framing its ‘degradation’ as evidence of moral decay.

These ideas might have remained historical relics, were it not for their reinterpretation during European imperialism. Greek and Roman writings were fused with emerging race theories, Darwinian evolution, and longstanding anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and homophobic biblical interpretations. This worldview held that internal moral and racial degeneration posed a greater threat to European empires than external forces. Early classicists and race scientists used Rome’s fall as a cautionary tale, blaming its collapse on women’s ‘interracial interbreeding’ with non-Aryan groups and men’s supposed homosexuality, which allegedly led to a decline in moral purity.

This paranoia fuelled eugenics movements around the turn of the 20th century, such as mass sterilisations of African Americans in the US South, and a system of de facto sexual segregation in the UK, championed by figures like Francis Galton. Trump’s political identity echoes this history. His “Build the Wall” slogan and flirtations with the Great Replacement Theory reflect imperial fears of cultural and biological dilution. Rooted in distorted Classical interpretations, these ideas reveal troubling continuity between ancient anxieties and modern White supremacist ideologies.

Conclusion: The danger of hero narratives and historical projection

Gladiator II is, of course, a work of fiction. Its historical inaccuracies have been widely mocked, and Ridley Scott has openly acknowledged that his films prioritise drama over factual precision. Yet, as a product of the mid-2020s, the film reflects contemporary political and cultural anxieties, echoing a Trumpian worldview. Central to this is the idea of a civilisation teetering on the brink of collapse, undermined by the perceived moral corruption and sexual deviance of its leadership.

In the film, Rome’s salvation lies with three hyper-masculine figures, with Mescal’s Lucius ultimately restoring strength and unity, following groundwork laid by Macrinus and Pedro Pascal’s Marcus Acacius. This mirrors the cult of personality surrounding Trump, who styled himself as the sole figure capable of “draining the swamp” and reclaiming control from corrupt elites.

The use of Ancient Rome as a backdrop magnifies the danger of such narratives. It risks presenting contemporary divisions as eternal struggles, rooted in the mythos of Western civilisation. By framing modern anxieties as battles between heroic defenders and decadent villains, these stories grant undue legitimacy to fears of societal decay. Worse still, they risk presenting the fate of Rome as a cautionary tale, reinforcing divisive political agendas under the guise of historical inevitability.

The film’s director and stars may well present Gladiator II as a film emphasising the victory of unity over the divisive tendencies of Macrinus, or the autocracy of Greta and Caracalla. However, the film could just as easily be read as another entry into the culture war, MAGA fiction canon.