Are you not entertained? If not, you’re about to be. Director Ridley Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator and its 2024 follow-up Gladiator II are cued up and ready for your own personal, private screening right here on Netflix. The first film — a historical epic about a Roman general, Maximus, who’s forced into slavery and becomes a ruthless warrior — took home Best Picture at the 73rd Academy Awards in 2001 and its star, Russell Crowe, received Best Actor honors. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Scott birthed Gladiator II, which takes place around two decades after the events of the first film. It follows an exiled prince, Lucius (Paul Mescal), who — like Maximus — is sold into slavery and becomes a gladiator. For the sequel, Scott even created a quarter-mile-long Colosseum replica to stage a massive naval battle. Did we mention there are sharks? 

Gladiator stars Crowe alongside Joaquin Phoenix (Joker), Connie Nielsen (Wonder Woman), Richard Harris (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), and Djimon Hounsou (A Quiet Place: Day One). Gladiator II stars Mescal (Normal People), Nielsen, Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth), Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us), Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things), and Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus). 

While Crowe’s Maximus fends off tigers in the arena, Mescal’s Lucius must contend with rhinos, the aforementioned sharks, and even angry baboons. But their biggest foes take human form, in those who endangered their families: Maximus vows vengeance against Commodus (Phoenix), after Commodus murdered Maximus’s father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Harris), and ordered the execution of Maximus and his family. In the sequel, Lucius is determined to take out General Marcus Acacius (Pascal), who led a raid that killed Lucius’s wife. The two main characters may have more in common than it seems, beyond even the commonalities of gladiatorial revenge. Watch both Gladiator and Gladiator II on Netflix now to find out for yourself. 

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