尊敬的用户您好，这是来自FT中文网的温馨提示：如您对更多FT中文网的内容感兴趣，请在苹果应用商店或谷歌应用市场搜索“FT中文网”，下载FT中文网的官方应用。
Whatever Ridley Scott is on, it should be added to the water. A lot has been said — not all of it kind — about the veteran director’s recent films. His work ethic, though, is unimpeachable. Between The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon and now Gladiator II, Scott has spent his 80s making back-to-back epics with the collective running time of a long-haul flight, and serious turbulence en route.
不管雷德利•斯科特(Ridley Scott)在吃什么“能量秘方”，都应该推广给大家。关于这位资深导演近期作品的评论纷纷杂杂，且不乏批评之声。然而，他的职业道德无可挑剔。从《最后的决斗》《古驰之家》《拿破仑》到如今的《角斗士II》，斯科特在八十多岁的年纪连续拍摄了这些史诗级影片，总时长相当于一次长途飞行，且拍摄过程充满波折。
Some of those movies have been really very bad. Yet Scott’s stubborn charm is that you still never know what is coming next, or what form he’ll be on, just that the result will have been made with belligerent swagger. “Are you not entertained?” demanded the first Gladiator back in 2000. With Ridley Scott the answer, even buried in caveats, is generally yes. So it proves again with the sequel.
其中一些电影确实很糟糕。然而，斯科特的顽强魅力在于，你永远不知道接下来会发生什么，或者他会以何种形式出现，只知道结果总是带有好斗的派头。2000年，第一部《角斗士》中曾问道：“你们不是被娱乐到了吗？”对于斯科特来说，即使有许多保留，答案通常也是肯定的。这一点在续集中再次得到证明。
On form or off, power has always been a favourite theme for the director. Throw in the original film’s enduring popularity, and all roads were going to lead back to Rome eventually. Twenty-four years have passed since Gladiator, but with Scott keeping time, the sequel actually opens 16 after the first film, in which Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius went from general to rebel.
无论是在形式上还是在主题上，权力始终是导演最钟爱的题材。再加上原版电影经久不衰的受欢迎程度，所有的道路最终都指向罗马。自《角斗士》上映至今已过去24年，但在斯科特的掌控下，续集的时间线设定在第一部电影事件发生的16年后，在那部影片中，罗素•克劳(Russell Crowe)饰演的马克西姆斯•德西姆斯•梅里迪乌斯从将军沦为叛军。
Here the empire is defied from the start, with Paul Mescal as a foundling star of the resisting Numidian army. (Historical sticklers are only going to upset themselves.) Roman commander Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) rains down flame on the “last free city in Africa”. By the end of the battle, the story is scaffolded. Despite his valour, our hero is now a captured slave with a genius for violence. Cue the Colosseum.
在这里，帝国从一开始就遭到挑战，保罗•梅斯卡尔(Paul Mescal)饰演抵抗努米底亚军队的弃儿明星。罗马指挥官马库斯•阿卡修斯向“非洲最后的自由城市”倾泻火焰。战斗结束时，故事的框架已经搭建。尽管英勇，我们的英雄现在成为一个被俘的奴隶，拥有暴力天赋。罗马竞技场登场。
Mescal has built his career on a string of roles as sensitive young men in poignant dramas. Normal People and All of Us Strangers never asked him, as Scott does, to throttle a baboon. “It is an art, choosing gladiators,” announces Denzel Washington as Roman insider Macrinus, speaking, you sense, both for himself and a movie with a certain dry self-awareness. “Rage pours out of you like milk,” he smiles.
梅斯卡尔的职业生涯建立在一系列感人戏剧中扮演敏感年轻人的角色上。《普通人》和《我们所有的陌生人》从未像斯科特那样要求他去扼杀一只狒狒。“选择角斗士是一门艺术，”丹泽尔•华盛顿(Denzel Washington)饰演的罗马内部人士马克里努斯宣布，你会感觉到，他既是在为自己说话，也是在为一部具有某种干涩自我意识的电影说话。“愤怒从你身上涌出，就像牛奶一样，”他微笑着说。
Sorry. Milk? Self-aware only up to a point, it turns out. Writer David Scarpa tries a lot of one-liners, but the hit rate is not high. The actual drama can be choppier still. Mescal’s reinvention as action hero turns out to be relatively simple. Delivering a plausible response to the story’s clunkier plotting makes killer monkeys look like child’s play.
抱歉。牛奶？事实证明，自我意识只能达到一定程度。作家大卫•斯卡帕(David Scarpa)尝试了很多短梗(one-liners)，但爆梗率并不高。实际的剧情可能更加波折。梅斯卡尔作为动作英雄的重塑过程相对简单。他对故事中笨拙的情节做出了合理的回应，这让杀人猴子看起来像是小儿科。
Still, his presence is less puffed-up than Crowe’s, and his character’s link to the first film is neatly revealed. (Though I might have been having a bad night. Failing to see the twist coming, my notes from the screening read: “All new story unrelated to . . . oh”.)
尽管如此，他的存在感比克劳的要低调得多，他的角色与第一部电影的联系被巧妙地揭示出来。
Scott just keeps on trucking either way. The best of the film is its sheer bloody-minded heft, a blockbuster fuelled by an insistence on bigger, sillier, movie-r. There are crazy set-pieces and Machiavellian intrigue. Again, the film comes to mirror its characters. For twin emperors Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger), cranking up the barbarism of the Colosseum is their own survival tactic.
无论如何，斯科特都在坚持不懈地前进。这部电影最出色的地方在于其纯粹顽固的庞大，一部由对更大、更荒诞、更电影化的坚持推动的大片。影片中有疯狂的场景和马基雅维利式的阴谋。影片再次反映了角色的性格。对于孪生皇帝盖塔和卡拉卡拉（由约瑟夫•奎因(Joseph Quinn)和弗雷德•赫辛格饰演）来说，加剧罗马竞技场的野蛮行为是他们的生存策略。
The same goes for Scott. The solemn pomp of the first movie is only half-restored. I’d be amazed if the sequel is remembered by Christmas, let alone in 24 years. But the ideas are more pulpy and loopy, and the film more fun for it. “What we do in life echoes in eternity,” Gladiator intoned. Have some of that, says Gladiator II.
斯科特也是如此。第一部电影的庄严华丽只恢复了一半。如果续集能在圣诞节前被人记住，更不用说在24年后，我会感到惊讶。不过，影片的构思更加通俗和天马行空，因此电影更有趣。《角斗士》曾说：“我们今生所做的事情将在永恒中回响。”《角斗士II》则回应：“来点这种感觉吧。”
That runs to crunching violence and more zoological mayhem. Meanwhile, the queasy spirit of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is doubled by the flouncing decadents played by Quinn and Hechinger. All is now imperial rot. “This city is diseased,” Mescal says, sounding more like the star of a sequel to Taxi Driver.
这导致了激烈的暴力和更多的动物混乱。同时，华金•菲尼克斯(Joaquin Phoenix)饰演的科莫德斯的不安灵魂被奎因和海辛格扮演的颓废者加倍放大。现在一切都是帝国的腐朽。“这座城市已经病入膏肓，”梅斯卡尔说道，听起来更像是《出租车司机》续集的主角。
Watching Gladiator II, you recall how long ago 2000 was — a time before 9/11, Facebook, or the financial crisis, let alone more recent convulsions. Then, an American epic could still tell a simple tale of classical heroism. Now Hollywood is all but kaput, and any story of ancient Rome feels fated, like this one, to feel loaded by the moment, filled with references to a dying “Roman Dream”.
观看《角斗士II》，你会想起2000年是多么久远的事情——那是在9/11、Facebook或金融危机之前的时代，更不用说更近期的动荡。那时，一部美国史诗仍然可以讲述一个关于古典英雄主义的简单故事。如今，好莱坞几乎已经衰落，任何关于罗马的故事都注定会像这部影片一样，充满了对一个垂死的“罗马梦想”的追忆。
Francis Ford Coppola too recently connected the modern US with the same point of history in his barmy Megalopolis. Scott instead gives us the kind of giant B-movie only he can make, with all the attendant potholes and pleasures, and a sly last word. Beware the thrill of watching savagery, the film suggests. The show never ends well.
弗朗西斯•福特•科波拉(Francis Ford Coppola)最近也通过他疯狂的《巨城》将现代美国与历史上的同一时期联系起来。相比之下，斯科特带给我们一部只有他才能制作的巨型B级电影，伴随着所有相关的缺陷和乐趣，以及一个狡黠的结尾。电影暗示，当观看野蛮行为时要小心。这出戏永远不会有好结局。
In UK cinemas from November 15 and US cinemas from November 22
11月15日起在英国影院上映，11月22日起在美国影院上映