A new face in a seemingly foreign land, Macrinus wanders into town turning heads and with an interesting idea to sell that Rome’s worst take to without hesitation. A man of mystery and with “many names” in his past, it’s only in the final act that we learn Washington’s manipulative gamesmaster is a byproduct of a forgotten era. Bought into slavery during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (the late Richard Harris from “Gladiator”), he’s a secret of a past even Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) either chooses to forget, or is completely unaware of.
This trope of the sins of the father being laid upon the children echo that of both “Black Panther” and “The Dark Knight Rises.” Perhaps not as volatile as Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger (who himself was inspired by Denzel Washington’s performance in “Glory”), the past catching up with the present is certainly here, just as is the case with Marion Cotillard’s Talia Al Ghul, returning to break the Batman after he killed her father Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) in “Batman Begins.”
How his success rate compares to the other two is up for debate, given that Killmonger seemingly sticks it out longer during his Wakanda takeover, and Talia is around enough to see Gotham crumble. What might stir some cinematic trauma, however, is a key confrontation in “Gladiator II” that suffers the same fatal flaw as Zack Snyder’s most divisive entry in the now defunct DCU.