That’s all correct, and the new movie also has the Colosseum flooded deeply enough that there are large sharks eating combatants in the naumachia. Then there’s the infamous cafe and newspaper scene, and of course, the one gladiator riding a rhinoceros with full tack as a war horse.

All of which could be somewhat forgiven if it was a decent movie, but it’s also predictable and overly derivative of the first one, utterly anticlimactic, and Paul Mescal joins Sam Worthington in being a “star” who has all the action-movie charisma of a floppy skin tag. I’ll withhold overall judgment until I see Hamnet.